Happy Holidays! I hope everyone is having a great holiday season and enjoying time with family and friends. Prescriptive Realism I just received the December 2011 copy of Perspectives on Politics. As I was flipping through an article immediately caught my eye: “A Realist Foreign Policy for the United States” by Rosato and Schuessler. In this piece the […]
Hello All, I am still reading Experimental Political Science and the Study of Causality by Morton and Williams and in Chapter 5 the authors discuss how randomization in experimental design actually works like an “idea” instrumental variable (IV) in terms of controlling for confounding variables. Essentially there are three conditions for an ideal IV: (1) Statistical […]
Hello Again, I just installed “Jet Pack” for WordPress, which lets you use LaTeX code within your posts. I really wanted to get a look at how it works. Simple multiple regression equation: $latex \hat{Y} = \alpha + \hat{\beta_{1}}x_{1} + \hat{\beta_{2}}x_{2} + \hat{\beta_{3}}x_{3} + \hat{\beta_{n}}x_{n}… + \epsilon_{i}$. This feature is really, really nice for writing […]
Hello Everyone, Causal Inference and Experimental Design One of the primary advantages of experiments in the social sciences is their ability to help us isolate causes. According to the Rubin Causal Model (RCM) also known as the Neyman-Rubin Causal Model (named after the researchers who developed and formalized the logic) we are essentially looking for […]
Hello Everyone! My name is Nicholas P. Nicoletti and I am a student of Political Science. I am a fourth year Ph.D. student at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Visit my website for more information. A few weeks ago I began putting together some application materials as I am getting ready to go on the […]