Finally had some inspiration to play with the 'colorpalettes' package in @statacorp.bsky.social. Tried out one of the Wes Anderson palettes (originally made for R, I believe) and now I feel like I've been missing out for the past several years... 😕

🚨 Interested in survey experiments? I'll be giving a virtual talk on (false) null results in experiments--and how to protect against them--at SWERP on 3/13 (3/12 8pm EST). Hope to see you there, and thanks to @sysilviakim.bsky.social for inviting me! Link to join: swerp.netlify.app

🥳 Well, the small milestone has arrived. It's nowhere near many others, but it would've been impossible for me to imagine ever happening when I first started the PhD With the kids having school canceled today & tomorrow after a 9-day vacation, this is a nice gift. Thx citers!!!

🚨Fully revamped paper with @iganson.bsky.social: We study levels of, and partisan differences in, "unconditional political bias" (UPB). This is a partisan's own admission that *nothing* a politician could do would lower their support for that politician.

Had a 𝐰𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐮𝐥 time presenting on survey experiments & null results in @semrasevi.bsky.social's class at U of Toronto! Such great student questions! 🚨If you would like me to present in your course, please feel free to reach out--I truly love talking w/ others about this topic!😁

Are Americans polarized in their attitudes toward higher education? 🤔 Using some @electionstudies.bsky.social data, the answer seems to be: Yes, but not dramatically so, and there's a tendency for more experience with higher ed. to be associated w/ more positive ratings. 👍

I will find it hard to pay much attention to his approval rating until it dips below this 35% mark. To me, that would signal a true shift. But it still might be unlikely. For reference, Richard Nixon—Nixon!—left office at 24%. That’s probably the real “floor,” not 0%.

💡For those teaching stats, data literacy, methods--I just wrote a short Medium piece for @asjadnaqvi.bsky.social's amazing Stata Gallery. The piece covers how and why graphs with two y-axes can be so deceiving. Includes an applied example (with code). Hope it's useful! 😁 Link 👇

Ever need to add reference lines in @statacorp.bsky.social graphs? If so, you've probably noticed that the lines go *behind* bars/bins. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Today I discovered a hack to fix this. Instead of using e.g., "xline()", use "scatteri". Ref lines will go *on top* of bars, not behind. Code in thread 👇

We all know about omitted variable bias: when X⬆️Y, Z is ➕ correlated w/ X & Y, & we omit Z, it biases the effect of X on Y upward (too positive).🥱 But what about when the true effect is 𝐧𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞? Is OVB just the mirror opposite, biasing the effect to be too negative? No.👇

Hoping to coin a new term: parAInoia Definition: The increasing feeling of dread (felt among teachers/professors while grading a paper) that a student's work was written, at least in part, by AI. Example: "It took forever to get my grading done because I was feeling intense parAInoia."

Stata users: if you aren't already, definitely start using bookmarks to create headings and sub-headings in your .do files. Such a big help! **# in a .do file creates a heading; **## = subheading; **### = sub-subheading. Then double-click on them to jump right to that section 👍

Always amazed how, each semester, teaching data analysis inevitably teaches me something new. This week I learned that spatially correlated residuals in FE models (w/ data from Bailey's great book) probably doesn't require clustering SEs. Thx to @nickchk.com's AMAZING website--what a resource! 🙏

I think a lot about how quant & qual methods relate/differ. At its best, qual research feels like shining a huge light inside the black box that quant folks often ignore. 👍 At its worst, qual research feels like a scatterplot for which the researcher gets to choose which dots to show. 😬

Join us tomorrow as we repeat ourselves. Join us as we repeat ourselves tomorrow. Tomorrow, we repeat ourselves. Join us!

Wrote up a little intervention post/explanation for my class about why using LLMs for trying to learn programming (as first time learners!) is bad and detrimental datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-11...

ANES Data Release! electionstudies.org/data-center/... The 3-wave ANES panel is now available. It merges data from 3 election studies (2016-2020-2024), the first time the ANES has collected interviews of the same respondents across 3 presidential elections.

Halloween fun fact 🎃: "Skeleton" has its own IMDB page. 💀 In fact, it stars in one of my favorite horror movies as a kid: House on Haunted Hill (1959 version). Not necessarily the best performance in the film, but also not bad given that it lacks a central nervous system.

🚨 I created a new guide on how to make nice dot charts. These can be really informative, yet remain weirdly underutilized. The examples are with @statacorp.bsky.social but the logic applies to all software. Link in thread. 👇 Made it mostly for my students but hope you find it useful, too! 😁

A short-and-sweet guide to developing research questions published in @nature.com. Lots of good advice here 👍

Are you or one of your students considering doing a Ph.D. in a social science? I've spent a lot of time talking about this w/ students & finally wrote something up. IMO, there are only 3 good reasons to do it. One of them needs to be true--otherwise, don't. medium.com/the-quantast...

🚨 Very flattered to have a piece, w/ the terrific @miacosta.bsky.social, in the new @apsa.bsky.social Experiments Newsletter! In it, we offer some thoughts on how to think about how "realistic" experimental results are. Might be useful for students 😁 connect.apsanet.org/s42/newslett...

If you use Stata and you want to make nice coefficient plots, this article by @uptonorwell.bsky.social is really fantastic! medium.com/the-stata-ga...

Just submitted book revisions 🥳 and wanted to write something a little more "fun." I've been wanting to write this one for a long time and just posted it on Medium (no paywall 👍). For the profs out there, it might serve as a useful class reading (?). Hope you enjoy! medium.com/@jvk221/3-st...

Inflation was a big issue--maybe even *the* issue--in 2024. But do citizens understand how to interpret inflation rates? Using some new data from @verasight.bsky.social, the answer seems to be largely: no. On top of that, Republicans show significantly less understanding than Democrats.

Truly wild to see that this just hit 300 citations on GS 🤯 It's a good lesson for PhD students--this started as a short homework assignment for a class on causal inference. At first I just wanted to know if MC placement matters. But over time, it turned into much more & led to several more papers.

My article on incumbency advantage in presidential elections is now out w/ issue and page numbers 🥳 Key finding: Being an incumbent president comes w/ inherent electoral advantages after 1 term. After 2 terms, a party is not inherently *dis*advantaged--just no more incumbency advantage.

A look at partisanship in the U.S. right now--what partisans will tolerate, what they won't, and where the parties differ. (From an ongoing project with @iganson.bsky.social; n = ~1,100; graph made in @statacorp.bsky.social 😊)

Hard to express what a relief it is to have just submitted the first complete draft of my book manuscript to @ucpress.bsky.social 😮‍💨🥳 5+ years in the making. 249 pages. 82,000 words. 0 ChatGPT. 😉 A million thanks to all those who gave me guidance and inspired me along the way! 🙏

Rs forgetting about the deficit is a classic case of what Kane & Anson call "deficit attention disorder." Their classic article: link.springer.com/article/10.1... @uptonorwell.bsky.social @iganson.bsky.social

For those currently writing and/or grading papers, always good to keep this distinction in mind

Do most people understand how inflation works? That drops in the inflation rate don't mean drops in prices? 🤔 No. And misunderstanding is significantly associated with vote choice in 2024. Thanks to @verasight.bsky.social and @peterenns.bsky.social for letting me field this question 🙏

Had a great time presenting in @stecula.bsky.social 's PhD class on null results in experiments. Thank you again, Dom! If anyone who teaches experiments would like me to present for a course in the Fall, just email or DM me--happy to do it! 😁

Had a great time presenting on null / non-significant results in survey experiments to Samara Klar's Ph.D. class at University of Arizona! 😁 🚨If you teach a course on experiments in the Fall and would like me to present, feel free to email/DM me--I'd be happy to do it! polisky

🚨New WP! What is political bias in its most extreme form? What factors are associated with it? And how can it be reduced? At next week's @MPSAnet conf., @iganson.bsky.social & I will present our paper "Rejoining the Cult" that offers answers these questions: go.shr.lc/4j9bg9j 🧵

Happy to share a new working paper with @uptonorwell.bsky.social! The subject of partisan bias is only increasing in its importance, and in this paper we conceptually distinguish "blatant bias:" i.e., nothing can dissuade a partisan's support for a leader. preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/...

🚨New WP! What is political bias in its most extreme form? What factors are associated with it? And how can it be reduced? At next week's @MPSAnet conf., @iganson.bsky.social & I will present our paper "Rejoining the Cult" that offers answers these questions: go.shr.lc/4j9bg9j 🧵

A perfect encapsulation of our current moment: Celebrating the destruction of the Dept. of Education whilst misspelling “Department”

This is a really thoughtful take on my recent @jepsjournal.bsky.social paper. Carlisle looks at my 7 Alternative Explanations from a statistical power perspective—highly recommend!!! Thank you, Carlisle!

Super important and timely new study by some great folks at @stonybrooku.bsky.social 🙌

For anyone who's just becoming interested in politics, navigating it must be harder than ever. Exhibit A: This is the *WH's* own response to the charge that Trump confused transgender mice w/ transGENIC mice. They cite the studies, NONE of which appears to be aimed to "making mice transgender" 🤷🏻‍♂️

Quick note that a fun way to visualize correlations in @statacorp.bsky.social is with Jann's "heatplot" package.👍 Install with -ssc heatplot- , then run -help heatplot- & scroll to the correlation matrix example. *Maybe* will also make it more fun for students to learn correlation analysis 🤔

🚨It's finally got an issue and page numbers 😊 If you ever do survey experiments and maybe, just maybe, sometimes get null results, this article might help you (plus it's Open Access!). www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🚨It's finally got an issue and page numbers 😊 If you ever do survey experiments and maybe, just maybe, sometimes get null results, this article might help you (plus it's Open Access!). www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🚨New WP! Congress makes many bills but passes very few laws. 🤔 Nicole Huffman, David Stack, & I show that introducing "symbolic legislation"--i.e., bills with no hope of becoming law--comes with sizable benefits from one's supporters. preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/...

Today I gave perhaps the most intimidating presentation I've ever given: Intro to Data Visualization. I normally don't sweat it at all, but this time the audience was...my son's kindergarten class😬 Fortunately, @statacorp.bsky.social has a lot of tricks that made it a little more fun 👍

The four phases of having your kids be off from school for winter break for 16 straight days...

Absolutely love the New Year’s Eve “Twilight Zone” marathon and, honestly, this graph might be one of the most sinister things to have ever appeared on the show 😵‍💫 @graphcrimes.bsky.social

📊Ever use or teach interactions in regression? I’ve been using/teaching this tricky concept for years & finally decided to write a guide. Link below; no paywall👍 Meant for users of any software but @statacorp.bsky.social code is provided 😁 CC: @asjadnaqvi.bsky.social medium.com/the-stata-ga...

📊Ever use or teach interactions in regression? I’ve been using/teaching this tricky concept for years & finally decided to write a guide. Link below; no paywall👍 Meant for users of any software but @statacorp.bsky.social code is provided 😁 CC: @asjadnaqvi.bsky.social medium.com/the-stata-ga...