James Manley

Fantastic work! I don't know you but looks like this work and more is at www.maryquiroga.com/research

We’re proud to be participating in the 3rd @wfp.org Global Impact Evaluation Forum 2025! Join the live stream tomorrow for a panel session featuring a presentation from our President, @tiapalermo.bsky.social: wfp-org-conference.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Will you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course in the future? No. Why won’t you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course? These tools are useful for coding (see this for my personal take on this). However, they’re only useful if you know what you’re doing first. If you skip the learning-the-process-of-writing-code step and just copy/paste output from ChatGPT, you will not learn. You cannot learn. You cannot improve. You will not understand the code.

In that post, it warns that you cannot use it as a beginner: …to use Databot effectively and safely, you still need the skills of a data scientist: background and domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability. There is no LLM-based shortcut to those skills. You cannot LLM your way into domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, or coding ability. The only way to gain domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability is to struggle. To get errors. To google those errors. To look over the documentation. To copy/paste your own code and adapt it for different purposes. To explore messy datasets. To struggle to clean those datasets. To spend an hour looking for a missing comma. This isn’t a form of programming hazing, like “I had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow and now you must too.” It’s the actual process of learning and growing and developing and improving. You’ve gotta struggle.

This Tumblr post puts it well (it’s about art specifically, but it applies to coding and data analysis too): Contrary to popular belief the biggest beginner’s roadblock to art isn’t even technical skill it’s frustration tolerance, especially in the age of social media. It hurts and the frustration is endless but you must build the frustration tolerance equivalent to a roach’s capacity to survive a nuclear explosion. That’s how you build on the technical skill. Throw that “won’t even start because I’m afraid it won’t be perfect” shit out the window. Just do it. Just start. Good luck. (The original post has disappeared, but here’s a reblog.) It’s hard, but struggling is the only way to learn anything.

You might not enjoy code as much as Williams does (or I do), but there’s still value in maintaining codings skills as you improve and learn more. You don’t want your skills to atrophy. As I discuss here, when I do use LLMs for coding-related tasks, I purposely throw as much friction into the process as possible: To avoid falling into over-reliance on LLM-assisted code help, I add as much friction into my workflow as possible. I only use GitHub Copilot and Claude in the browser, not through the chat sidebar in Positron or Visual Studio Code. I treat the code it generates like random answers from StackOverflow or blog posts and generally rewrite it completely. I disable the inline LLM-based auto complete in text editors. For routine tasks like generating {roxygen2} documentation scaffolding for functions, I use the {chores} package, which requires a bunch of pointing and clicking to use. Even though I use Positron, I purposely do not use either Positron Assistant or Databot. I have them disabled. So in the end, for pedagogical reasons, I don’t foresee me incorporating LLMs into this class. I’m pedagogically opposed to it. I’m facing all sorts of external pressure to do it, but I’m resisting. You’ve got to learn first.

Some closing thoughts for my students this semester on LLMs and learning #rstats datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-12...

Doesn't the mdpi domain make it all instantly clear?

At least the gap is dropping in the more recent years, though the last 10 years have been crazy for everyone. I wonder what's happened there...

World Cup gonna go great

There it is! Thank YOU!

Tried to read the excerpt (maureenogle.com/the-price-of...) but it returns an error.

Thanks for your work in putting together this work, though: I look forward to reading it!

Stay tuned for follow-up, where we conduct an RCT involving vulnerable women in this area - half abducted as children - to assess the impact of:

1) cash only

2) cash+group life-skill training

3) cash+group mental health counseling

W/ @eeshani.bsky.social & @mirandainez.bsky.social

Tell Students the Truth About American History We owe it to Americans of all ages to be honest about the country’s past, including its contradictions.

I spent October traveling to schools throughout the South talking to students about American history. What I found were young people who understand we can tell a story that includes both the positive and the negative. As one 8th grader in Memphis said, “Doesn’t seem that hard, just say both things.”

100%!

I have on occasion found working papers posted on researchgate that were useful. That one is the more predatory.

So we just took $15 billion from American kids to send $20 billion to Milei's Argentinean rock concert: America first, right?! Only makes sense when you factor in that the $20 billion will go to making American billionaires ever greater....

Perhaps partly attributable to the Yankees loss?

Boooooooo

Klein is often this way: he invites someone for an "interview" so that he can speak. To be fair, occasionally he make good points; and then of course there are many times he needs to learn to be quiet.

This is how Trump ends democracy The past week has revealed Trump’s policy road map to veto one-party rule. Will Americans let him follow it?

In the past few weeks, a series of developments has revealed a disturbingly credible policy pathway to power consolidation.

We now know what a Trump-led authoritarian state in America would look like — and how we would get there from here.

There it is, sorry! And thanks for sending the quote; hopefully social scientists can figure out how to make the most of cash transfers in diverse contexts.

Thanks for your thoughtful post! Let's not forget the recent work in developing countries, though, showing unexpectedly large impacts on child health bsky.app/profile/matt...

I saw a wp dated 2012, so I was envisioning a 13 year process... glad to hear it's not quite that bad!

Congratulations again on the paper! Just out of curiosity, I think I see versions online that date back quite a while. How long did it take for this very cool experiment to get accepted? Was there substantial change to the paper? Looking for a story to tell my Master's students about the process...

I'm looking at agricultural productivity in Cambodia and everyone is pretending financial inclusion will increase productivity....

Is your published version quite different from the 2021 working paper? I hope not since I don't have access to REStat!

Regardless congratulations on a huge success!

As a former student said to me recently: “Mouth full Scripture, Heart full of Hate.”

The most important idea in all of economics is not competition, but cooperation.

Texts of Terror by Phyllis Trible is a little book that works through several of them. Unfortunately I have heard that Trible herself was rather terrible, stealing the work of many of her students; still, the work covers many rough passages so it might be an easy way to organize your study

My system administrators don't allow access to this website, or I'd love to support both iPUMS and DHS, who make my teaching and research possible...

Not to mention that the grain was probably provided by US farmers who lost that contract to DOGE

Thanks for sending this! Every once in awhile I'm tempted to go back to the NYT but pieces like this remind me what a ridiculous organization this is.

13 of my papers! At least a citation would have been nice.

She makes good points but the fix isn't simple: I think she says to include demographic and earnings profiles of hh members "as done in [the two attached articles]" documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/1... openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/c...

And as always call your representatives! The 5 calls app is so easy to use- I made 3 calls in about 10 minutes.