Chris Hanretty

Yeah, I certainly don't want to endorse sticking my head in the sand

a man 's hands are reaching out towards a keyboard with pmittf.com in the lower right corner ALT: a man 's hands are reaching out towards a keyboard with pmittf.com in the lower right corner

This you?

Conjecture: any title of the form "The effects of X on Y" can be replaced with a better title of the form "X makes Y go [up|down]"

As I've said before: what is good for me as a social scientist is bad for me as a citizen.

I gave a talk about the effects of voter ID this morning at a sixth form college. Thanks to @iandunt.bsky.social they'd read about my research on the towns fund

This seems like a bold call from John if it's unqualified -- so I'm interpolating "if overall levels of support remain the same"

I was thinking what the RCT design is. It's probably quite expensive. I don't think there's a natural experiment here or anywhere unless there are some very racist planning regulations restricting the opening of restaurants serving non-indigenous food.

This is week ten of my course now sorted

Table 2. Effects of Ethnic Food Enjoyment on Anti-Immigrant Attitudes & Policy Support. Variable Perceived cultural & economic threat of immigrants (M1) Pro-Afro-Caribbean immigrant attitudes (M2) Pro-European immigrant attitudes (M3) Pro-Asian immigrant attitudes (M4) Voter support for anti-immigration politicians (M5) Country/region −0.02 (0.12) 0.01 (0.01) 0.04 (0.01) 0.03 (0.01) −0.03 (0.01) Settlement type 0.01 (0.02) 0.05 (0.02) −0.02 (0.03) 0.02 (0.02) 0.01 (0.03) Education −0.12 (0.01)*** 0.15 (0.00)*** 0.17 (0.01)*** 0.13 (0.01)*** −0.07 (0.01)* Age 0.14 (0.00) −0.03 (0.03) −0.02 (0.00) −0.03 (0.00) 0.11 (0.00)*** Gender −0.07 (0.03)** 0.04 (0.03) 0.03 (0.04) −0.00 (0.03) 0.02 (0.04) Political orientation 0.22 (0.03)*** −0.19 (0.02)*** −0.22 (0.03)*** −0.15 (0.05)*** 0.29 (0.04)*** Perceived neighbourhood diversity −0.00 (0.02) 0.02 (0.02) 0.01 (0.02) 0.05 (0.02) 0.02 (0.02) Right-wing newspaper consumption 0.13 (0.02)*** −0.05 (0.02) −0.10 (0.02)*** −0.08 (0.02)* 0.17 (0.03)*** Right-wing party 0.07 (0.05)* −0.07 (0.05)* −0.03 (0.05) −0.07 (0.05) 0.15 (0.06) Employment status −0.04 (0.02) 0.02 (0.02) 0.02 (0.02) 0.02 (0.02) 0.00 (0.02) Number of non-White friends −0.09 (0.01)** 0.11 (0.01)*** 0.11 (0.01)*** 0.11 (0.01)*** −0.07 (0.01)** Ethnic food enjoyment −0.10 (0.00)*** 0.12 (0.00)*** 0.11 (0.00)*** 0.14 (0.00)*** −0.07 (0.00)** Total R2 (Adjusted) .20*** .15*** .18*** .14*** .29*** N 1,025 1,025 1,025 1,025 1,025

Country/region is a numeric variable which has Scotland as being six times greater than Northern England. Whilst I agree with the sentiment, the fact that a lecturer in quantitative methods has just dumped this variable in a regression without thinking... smdh

Lots of redundant variables in the data, numeric codes (1=rural; 2 = suburban; 3 = urban) included as though continuous... Yep, checks out!

Henceforth the red robes will only be worn as an away kit when the Canadian Supreme Court is playing the US one.

I would say good luck, but when portions are already well through the publication process, I don't think you'll need it!

The last paper published by the PBoC was in 2023.

It was the only paper they published in 2023.

*gasp*

Going to launch a campaign for
British withdrawal from the OECD, just for a laugh

Possibly useful for @vlazarov.bsky.social next time he has to run the big survation MRP models 🤓

The answer with many of these things is "wait for someone to write an abstraction layer", like the amazing @paulbuerkner.com and brms team

I just started experimenting in WinBUGS (and OpenBugs!) before moving to jags; I never really felt I understood strong typing in Stan.

Happy that Bayesian modellers can benefit from ML frameworks and developer eyeballs to get speedups; worried I have to learn a new programming language

Let's say we did some breakthrough social science and found that quadratic voting was the answer to all society's ills. Would politicians rush to adopt it the way they have rushed to adopt AI? I doubt it (4/4)

This is why everyone lost their shit over "nudge" approaches. It would be nice if unobjectionable micro changes had desirable macro consequences. But micro changes usually have micro consequences (3/n)

Take one British problem: low productivity.

Proportional representation is associated with higher labour productivity www.jstor.org/stable/40270...

But PR threatens the two largest parties, and is unlikely to be adopted for that reason (2/n)

Part of the reason there won't be £1bn for breakthrough social science is because doing things differently in the social realm can involve some people losing out (1/n)

Excellent work from my SU colleague Einar Bäckström on the temporal dynamics of the winner loser gap in democracy satisfaction using a regression discontinuity in time design across 21 European countries.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Desk reject!

Experts now rate the U.S. as a "mixed" or "illiberal" democracy Experts say political violence, Trump's attacks against non-partisan agencies and institutions, and partisan gerrymandering are their top concerns

A new report from Bright Line Watch finds experts now rate the U.S. as a "mixed" or "illiberal" democracy. The rating is dragged down by Trump's attacks on institutions, a weak legislature, political violence, and partisan gerrymandering www.gelliottmorris.com/p/experts-no...

Definitely thought a new probability distribution had just dropped...

A win for the establishment' In response to the ruling, Baroness Mone said it was "shocking but all too predictable". "It is nothing less than an Establishment win for the Government in a case that was too big for them to lose," she said in a social media post. From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1792rk7ynko

Yeah, sure, you're a peer of the realm but you've been stitched up by the "Establishment", great, it's words-have-no-meaning Wednesday www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Is it though? They could sincerely be racist and proud of it, and AIUI the lizard man constant doesn't include sincerely held beliefs

The earnings returns to postgraduate degrees in the UK | Institute for Fiscal Studies This report provides estimates of the earnings returns to completing postgraduate degrees, for British and Northern Irish students studying in Britain.

When in fact the returns to getting a PhD are negative! ifs.org.uk/publications...