shira mitchell

CC @fontikar.bsky.social @njtierney.bsky.social 🥾

blog post: beyond balancing

in midterms, voters tend to support the out party for balance

do polls still help predict midterms ? yes

The ultimate New York City lover’s treasure hunt is back Friday, Oct. 17 through Sunday, Oct. 19: bit.ly/3IHnHwn

The Elephant in the Sampling Frame: Lessons from Basu's Parable In Basu's circus story (PDF), the owner wants to estimate the weight of fifty elephants and suggests weighing Sambo, who looked “average” three years ago, and reporting $50y$. A statistician counters ...

highly recommend reading @soodoku.bsky.social's post (even if it is about elephants and not bears)

www.gojiberries.io/lessons-from...

it was for me too !

blog post: Fat Bear Week

Basu's Bears is a lesson in:

1) using auxiliary information (pre-salmon-feasting weights)

2) how bad an unbiased estimator can be

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/09/23/s...

CC: @shirokuriwaki.bsky.social @rnishimura.bsky.social

blog post: random sampling is not leaving

we turned to response instrument Z because random sampling is "dead"

but does this method still rely on starting with random sampling ?

blog post: random sampling is not leaving

we turned to response instrument Z because random sampling is "dead"

but does this method still rely on starting with random sampling ?

that makes sense !

Z0 = treatment at time 0
Z1 = treatment at time 1
Y1 = outcome at time 1
Y2 = outcome at time 2

teammate 1 is regressing Y1 on Z0
teammate 2 is regressing Y2 on Z0, Z1, Y1

teammate 2 wants Y1 not to be imputed with Y2, right ?
teammate 1 wants Y1 to be imputed with Y2, right ?

thanks, Lucy ! What if each teammate is running a different analysis with a different "Y" ? my "Y" might be your "X" ? would we have a different imputation procedure for each of us so that each person's "Y" is no used in imputing their "X" ?

blog post on imputation (again):

we want E[Y|X] but X can be missing

@lucystats.bsky.social @sarahlotspeich.bsky.social @glenmartin.bsky.social @maartenvsmeden.bsky.social et al. say:

random imputation should use Y
deterministic imputation shouldn't

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/09/09/s...

I learn from every interaction with Maria. I attended a talk of hers yesterday. I highly recommend reading her work.

blog post: connections between survey statistics and experimental design.

split-plot designs are analogous to cluster sampling.

blocking is analogous to stratification.

featuring an experiment by Arjun Potter and colleagues at NM-AIST !

CC @davidbroska.bsky.social @austin-van-loon.bsky.social

💧🥞🐢🐶

blog post: Thomas Lumley writes about Interviewing your Laptop

what are the problems with using LLMs as survey respondents ?

how are these similar to problems with poststratification ?

CC @tslumley.bsky.social

GitHub - finite-sample/rank_preserving_calibration: Rank preserving calibration of multiclass prob. Rank preserving calibration of multiclass prob. Contribute to finite-sample/rank_preserving_calibration development by creating an account on GitHub.

Now with 'nearly isotonic' ...

github.com/finite-sampl...

cc @shiraamitchell.bsky.social

We are hiring !

Data Scientist – Analytics: job-boards.greenhouse.io/blueroserese...

and

Research Analyst: job-boards.greenhouse.io/blueroserese...

‘it can be used as a drawing medium’ !! (Wikipedia)

Survey Statistics: answers from the BLS
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/08/19/s...

excited to soon get these references !

blog post: answers from the BLS

2 weeks ago we learned about the CES employer survey that produces the jobs count.

we asked: why use employment size in stratification but not nonresponse adjustment ?

BLS responded !

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/08/19/s...

thank you !!!

Following @shiraamitchell.bsky.social's post on problems with multiclass calibration: statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/08/12/s...

see a proposal for a solution + related package (v0)

Yes ! I assume methods can always be improved. This is why I'm happy the BLS is so transparent and open to discussing their methods. I will keep you posted with what they say !

the BLS is so helpful in their communication !

🤖 But wait! There's more! You can check out @shiraamitchell.bsky.social 's most recent update on the details of Calibration, posted yesterday! statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/08/12/s...

Survey image of voting in the U.S. It presents three pictures of the U.S.A, each composed of different colored voting dots. It is titled, "Figure 4. 2016 Republican Vote by Racial Group in Congressional Districts", and the 3 U.S.As are composed of voting dots for White Voters, Hispanic Voters, Black Voters.

🤖 Ever been a bit confused abt calibration in statistical modelling? My friend @shiraamitchell.bsky.social has got you covered!! She works on survey statistics for Things That Matter--like elections--and has kindly taken the time to explain some things!
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/06/03/s...

the article talks about both love and capture-recapture (i.e. what @hrdag.org calls Multiple Systems Estimation) !