Academic

Why Heuristics Matter

Posted on November 19, 2008
      

Shading Shows Uncertainty

Posted on November 19, 2008
In the October 2008 American Statistician: A new technique is presented for illustrating several probability distributions on the same axes. The density strip is a shaded monochrome strip whose darkness at a point is proportional to the probability density of the quantity at that point...

New at ICPSR

Posted on November 19, 2008
Of interest, new at ICPSR: 22404 Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data [United States]: Arrests by Age, Sex, and Race, 2006 23600 Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data [United States]: Hate Crime Data, 2003 [Record-Type Files] 23625 Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data [United States]: Hate Crime Data, 2002 [Record-Type Files] 23781 Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data [United States]: Hate Crime [...

ReDeckStacking the SEC

Posted on November 19, 2008
The SEC is getting a makeover, called the “Restacking Project”. It is a response to “a recurrent complaint” from various offices that people were “frustrated by the time it takes to communicate,” even with people in their own divisions, who might be on different floors...

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Burrowing Again!

Posted on November 18, 2008
Gotta love the games: Just weeks before leaving office, the Interior Department’s top lawyer has shifted half a dozen key deputies — including two former political appointees who have been involved in controversial environmental decisions — into senior civil service posts...

Happy Anniversary!: V.O. Key Edition

Posted on November 18, 2008
Fifty years ago, V.O. Key published “The State of the Discipline” in the APSR. A few tidbits: We are, in a sense, the victims of our own success. If we are to narrow the gap between our knowledge and our responsibilities, we must devote greater resources in manpower and ingenuity to the systematic analysis of [...

Some of Rehnquist?s papers released - the Court?s dining table called into question

Posted on November 18, 2008
A relatively small portion of Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist’s personal papers were released to the public on Monday. The New York Times reports: The papers released Monday are a small part of a collection of documents donated to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University after Chief Justice Rehnquist?s death in 2005...

Today in Presidential History: Drug Czar Edition

Posted on November 18, 2008
November 18, 1988: Reagan signs legislation creating the cabinet-level position of drug czar. Also in the legislation: the death penalty for drug traffickers who kill.       

Just Do It

Posted on November 18, 2008
From Phdcomics.com.       

Today in Presidential History: Law & Order Edition

Posted on November 17, 2008
Live from Orlando: “I am not a crook.”       

?If I had a million dollars?

Posted on November 16, 2008
I’d buy you a fur coat, but not a real fur coat, that’s cruel.” So sang the Barenaked Ladies. But what if you had 200 hundred million dollars and you were the dean of a top 15 law school trying to break into the top 10? A number of law blogs, including Leiter Law School, [...

Coffee? Tea? a Depression? ? Anyone?

Posted on November 11, 2008
Judge Richard Posner suggests that an economic depression might not be that bad for the country and that depressions often have a silver lining. His co-blogger, Gary Becker, counters that if there’s a silver lining, then it’s awfully thin...

Customized political science graduate program rankings ?

Posted on November 08, 2008
… available here. You can rank programs in other disciplines as well. Programs can be ranked based on a number of criteria such as placement rates, time to degree, faculty quality, cost and funding, and demographics, among others.       

A new LSAT?

Posted on November 07, 2008
Possibly. Of course, changes were already made to the LSAT a short time ago, but they were nothing to write home about. A new study out of Berkeley which suggests a more meaningful change is outlined in a recent WSJ Blog post. Here’s an excerpt: Former Berkeley law prof Marjorie Shultz (pictured) thinks they can do [...

Bitter Lawyer?

Posted on November 04, 2008
Recently featured on the WSJ Blog, “Bitter Lawyer” is an interesting website providing insights on the world of large law firm associates. You can find tales of associate abuse at the hands of partners, interviews with legal actors and actor lawyers, and some funny webisodes from the site’s series “Living the Dream...

Hack the vote?

Posted on November 02, 2008
An interesting video is provided below which shows a professor demonstrating how easy it is to hack a voting machine and steal votes. (It takes less than 7 minutes). This is part of the recent Princeton report on Sequoia voting machines. More videos from the report are available here, here, and here...

Joel Stein on Halloween

Posted on October 31, 2008
LA times columnist Joel Stein has a problem with Halloween - and a solution. Here’s a start: Holidays are for children and conservatives. And the one holiday that is still just for kids — free of campaigns to replace Santa with creches, painted eggs with crucifixes, fireworks with flag lapel pins — has been ruined by [...

Top 25 pricey colleges ?

Posted on October 28, 2008
…for undergraduate education - as detailed on the Consumerist. It’s helpful in that it combines the cost of room and board, but given that many students now live off campus, it would be interesting to see a pure tuition top 25. Here they are: Highest Total Cost 2008-2009 College | Total Cost 1...

Prediction Markets?

Posted on October 27, 2008
Well, not quite. Intrade isn’t publicly-traded (it’s a “Irish incorporated service business“) and Knowledge Networks is held by private equity. But Harris Interactive is publicly-traded. Here’s the share price since Dec...

Moneylaw on professors playing poker

Posted on October 27, 2008
On the Moneylaw blog Jim Chen has an interesting post that features an analogy between faculty hiring and decisions to admit new members to a poker club. I also liked the picture (above) that he used - the bulldog with an ace in his lower paw is pretty sneaky - look out for that one...

The *real* victims of the financial crises ?

Posted on October 25, 2008
… the high end financial executives, of course. Gawker provides a funny youtube video chronicling life after the high life in NYC (below). Perhaps this guy can find fulfillment on Odd Todd - a site devoted to helping those who are unemployed pass the time...

Why model?

Posted on October 22, 2008
The Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science Blog has a post on an interesting paper by J.M. Epstein concerning modeling. Here’s an excerpt: In summary, while most mathematical treatment of statistical modeling tends to be focused purely on prediction, there is a good reason why the cost of interpretation should be considered...

The impact of the down economy on academia?

Posted on October 21, 2008
… more specifically on hiring trends, on Leiter and Alfred Brophy on the Faculty Lounge Blog here and here. They make some interesting comments and predictions. I may post on this later when I’ve had more time to think about the topic, but I’ll posit two quick thoughts here: 1) any downturn in the economy creates [...

The Americans have invaded Britain

Posted on October 20, 2008
… The American Moms, that is - check it out on Althouse.       

Update on moneyball for law firms

Posted on October 17, 2008
Paul Caron has a summary of blogs on moneyball for law firms and there is also a recent ABA Journal article on the study. We now know that two factors in associate success (as defined by hours billed and months tenure) are group hobbies/collegiate sports and grades in certain classes (no, we don’t know which [...

Ok, I was wrong ? employment rights in presidential debate

Posted on October 16, 2008
In the post prior to this one I lamented the fact that employment rights had not received much coverage in the presidential debates and predicted that they would receive zero treatment in last night’s debate - but they did. Here’s a summary of that treatment (of sorts) from CNN’s fact checker: Fact Check: Would Obama ‘take away [...

Employment rights in the next presidential administration

Posted on October 15, 2008
On the Marquette Faculty Blog, Paul Secunda sets forth a number of preferred priorities for the next presidential administration in the area of employment rights. I actually wouldn’t mind hearing about these issues during tonight’s presidential candidate debate...

Moneyball for law firms?

Posted on October 14, 2008
  As kind of an aside in a recent post, ELS’s Bill Henderson notes a study by Kerma Partners on lawyer productivity/success at large law firms. The idea is that law firms want to develop better indicators or predictors of lawyer success at their firms...

What the Markets are Saying

Posted on October 08, 2008
As of this morning, Obama got the bigger bounce:       

The Consequences of Research in Professional Schools

Posted on October 08, 2008
New from NYU Stern: “New Study from NYU Stern Demonstrates Measurable Return-On-Investment of Academic Research on B-School Performance“ In publishing the first empirical evidence measuring the value of academic research on business school performance, NYU Stern Marketing Professor Peter Golder, with Debanjan Mitra of the University of Florida, use data to challenge the widely publicized 2005 [...

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