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Arthur Spirling Profile
Arthur Spirling

@arthur_spirling

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Professor @Princeton

Princeton, NJ
Joined December 2015
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
Today is my first day in 5 years where I am *not* a DGS. It has been a pleasure, and I've learned a lot. Reflecting today, I won't give you one of those self-serving "7 traits of highly successful grad students" lists. Instead, here's 6:
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 months
not to be too conspiratorial, but one very odd detail I noticed on close inspection: that all these people appear to happy and having a good time, despite being obviously British
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
10 months
everyone’s ragging on this but the QS ranking criteria are actually very transparent. Equal weight is given to - research output - teaching quality - being in Britain
@spectatorindex
The Spectator Index
10 months
Best universities in the world. 1. 🇺🇸 MIT 2. 🇬🇧 Cambridge 3. 🇬🇧 Oxford 4. 🇺🇸 Harvard 5. 🇺🇸 Stanford 6. 🇬🇧 Imperial College London 7. 🇨🇭 ETH Zurich 8. 🇸🇬 National University of Singapore 9. 🇬🇧 UCL 10. 🇺🇸 University of California, Berkeley (Source: QS World Uni Rankings)
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
academics: how do you get through the post-lunch productivity slump? eg in my case I had lunch in 2015 and never recovered since. thanks for any tips
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
we took all the armor *off* to incentivize skillful, evasive piloting. first guys are coming back now. seems to have worked
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
hey guys, political historian here. just a note that it has generally worked out very well whenever a powerful actor says that they---potentially uniquely---understand and plan to implement "the will of the people" Absolutely nothing to worry about.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
5 years
Yeah ok I can’t run a marathon in two hours and won’t win a Nobel at 46 but I got eduroam working on my phone so pls be respectful of my achievements.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
um, guys? as a professor, let me just say that the *mature* way to respond to a public grievance is to spend the ensuing decades nursing it, bad mouthing the person's work and rejecting it in blind peer review at journals for no good intellectual reason.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
1 month
Will regret this, but: is it so strange that the prime minister of a major economy should have a large competent personal stuff including round-the-clock medical support? Why does the UK commentariat have such low, amateurish expectations of their state?
@Otto_English
Otto English
1 month
Not entirely convinced that Liz Truss's memoirs are going to cut through to ordinary Britons.... struggling to pay bills and juggle their lives
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
It’s difficult, but try to keep your “normal” routine where you can. For example: I built a home gym, joined, and then never went.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
Pretty wild that we have to pore over the opinions as if they represent deeply serious scholarship, rather than as hoc motivations for political decisions. The sheer power of the court to arbitrarily change lives makes these observationally equivalent
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
Don’t worry, the nudge guys still have a few ideas: - serving the vax on a smaller plate - putting the vax at eye level in the store - leaving the lid to the vax jar open, rather than closed - putting up signs saying “well over 60% of people don’t like covid”
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
Fact check: partially true. The best year for trucking jobs was 1896, when the truck was invented, and the market saw growth of ∞%
@JoeBiden
Joe Biden
2 years
Last year has been the best year for manufacturing jobs and trucking jobs since 1994.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 months
TIL: this is Margaret Hamilton, a computer scientist who led the Software Engineering Division of MIT, which contracted with NASA to develop the Apollo program's guidance system. She was the first person to print out an Ackman tweet regarding Business Insider.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
1 month
not an RCT so obviously can’t claim causality. If anything it’s probably bookings causing the eclipse
@Jamie_Lane
Jamie Lane
1 month
With the eclipse approaching in less than a week, over half of U.S. cities along the eclipse's path are fully booked for the night of April 7th according to data from @airdna
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
these are my hypotheses, which I formulated from theory prior to running my regressions
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
hey guys, Brit here: in American English, is it “could give a shit” or “could NOT give a shit”? This is for one of those cover letters to the editor so I want to make a good impression
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
sorry but this is canon
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
hey guys, good news: I know folks wanna get off Twitter and I just heard about a platform which already has a high density of academic users and someone will gladly create an account for you if you don’t have one already. see y’all over at Editorial Manager
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
Introducing my kids to “Star Wars” and I’m just curious if you guys start with the prequels or go straight to the 80s stuff? The earlier ones seem more kid-friendly, but they didn’t enjoy Eisenhower’s memo to ARPA so maybe Reagan’s announcement of the SDI should be first?
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
cousin marriage
@AnaSamways
Ana Samways
8 years
What’s considered trashy if you're poor, but classy if you're rich?
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
hi guys, Brit PhD here. Just discovered that when your US advisor tells you to "get ready for the market by hitting as many pubs as you can" they do *not* mean getting absolutely smashed on a bar crawl the night before your job talk. Embarrassed now, tbh.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
6 years
Not sure what's wrong with the new Gmail: it keeps delivering me rejections from major journals, despite my work being of deep and general interest. Hope they fix this bug.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
@profmusgrave weird one, but the nature of “fame”. Only *really* famous people were famous.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
6 months
in the arena,
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
5 years
News: I'm delighted to have been promoted to full professor @NYUDataScience @NYUpolitics ! My parents didn't go to college, but worked so very hard to give me opportunities. This game can be tough, and I've been so, so lucky. Thank you to *everyone* who made this happen for me.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
my claim: “Rogue One” is the best movie with a real number in the title that does *not* indicate a position in a series (eg Terminator 2 is out). Feel free to show I am correct by posting wrong answers below.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
First conference? Here's what you do: you go up to the biggest baddest most cited guy in the place and challenge him to keep his presentation on time. Just straight to his face. they'll think you're crazy, but no one will mess with you after that.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
For folks who haven't had enough of my bad takes, here's an essay on "rejection" in academia. It's personal, though I hope someone will find it helpful. Good luck out there. pdf: markdown:
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
7 months
Won’t add to the clueless professor takes, but just remember that the cruelest, most psychopathic posts you’re reading on here are very much a minority opinion (yes, even in the academy) and algos are there partly to cultivate/stoke your outrage engagement.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
1 year
hey guys, Brit here- polls posted on a whim that decide big controversial things that can’t really be undone, all on a 52/48 majority always work out great. No question
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
1 year
After 8 wonderful years at NYU, I’m moving to @Princeton ! It has been the honor of my career to serve @NYUDataScience and @NYUpolitics . I am acutely aware that to whom much has been given, much is expected, and I hope to provide public goods in my new role. Let’s go!
@PUPolitics
Princeton Politics
1 year
Politics is excited to welcome @Arthur_Spirling , a scholar in political methodology, to the department as a full professor in 2023-2024! Read more about Spirling's research and accomplishments ⬇️
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
6 years
*looks for bad science examples for upcoming methods class* *Notes the "study relied on people remembering the amount of carbohydrates they ate" over "25 years".* *smiles, nods*
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
8 months
I see we’re at the stage of anti-academia in here that we’re now claiming with a straight face that it offers less time flexibility and intellectual freedom *on average* than non-academic jobs. OK.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
just do OLS
@mykola
Myk - 🇺🇦🌻🇵🇸🍉 - Here To Help
4 years
Please quote this tweet with a thing that everyone in your field knows and nobody in your industry talks about because it would lead to general chaos.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
8 months
This Karikó career progression is remarkable: (1) fired from an Ivy (2) work endlessly rejected (3) creates an amazing technology that saves billions of lives and changes history for the better I know how to get you the first two thirds of the way there — follow me for tips
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
10 months
look, Berkeley is a great university, and CMU , Princeton, UChicago aren’t too shabby… but none of them is as close to the Brompton Oratory as Imperial, and that’s what counts. Better luck next year guys
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe encouraged a lot of people to think turkish delight is delicious
@zunguzungu
Aaron Bady
3 years
What book in the 20th century most misled the most people for the longest time?
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
6 months
LMAO at this anachronism — pyramids weren’t even built until well after napoleon’s death.
@DiscussingFilm
DiscussingFilm
6 months
Ridley Scott on shooting a sequence where Napoleon’s cannons fire at the Pyramids. “I don’t know if he did that, but it was a fast way of saying he took Egypt.” (Source: )
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
1 year
today, Amsterdam is a cyclist's paradise, but this wasn't always the case. During the last Ice Age it looked like many similar cities in northern Europe, with dangerous megafauna everywhere. Amsterdam shows us what's possible when we care about livability.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 months
A tough “revise and resubmit” can be intimidating and anxiety inducing, especially in young scholars. I’ve found you can avoid these feelings by just writing papers that the journal rejects. Follow me for more tips
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 months
sounds bad but are there any papers on how changing the minimum wage in PA relative to NJ would affect employment in the fast food industry?
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
just trying to keep my teaching materials current tbh
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
Yeah there’s a “Lambda” that is alive and can teach us things as humans. A lambda that deserves respect, and perhaps even our love. Let me introduce you to
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
5 years
Pro-tip: if you get one of those emails claiming to be from a famous economist needing $$ urgently, ask them abt the extensive poli sci lit in their research area. If they're unaware, they're legit, and you shd just send them the gift card.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
1 month
I’m assuming chatGPT will basically kill off the college admissions essay as a value proposition. Of course, there will also be downsides
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 months
Calculus *is* the basics of statistics (I mean this completely unironically btw)
@DanMulroyjr
Dan Mulroy
2 months
Why is calculus the default higher level math in high school and not statistics? Is there a reason I don’t know about? I feel like society would be way better off if they understood the basics of statistics. I’m honestly curious.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
tbh, I found this to be the hardest teaching year of my career: students were great, but it was tough. Well done if you got this far! Materials for my "Text as Data" #textasdata class (lectures+"flipped") below. Hope someone finds them helpful.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
just curious: what are you guys charging for a full-slide ad in your talks and lectures? I know it’s annoying for the audience, but hard to turn down the $$ rn. thanks.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
Media: professors are so goddamn petty and pedantic with their "faculty lounge politics". They never see the big picture. Professors: first, let me begin my comments by clarifying that most faculty do not have a "lounge" in the sense implied by Carville (2021). That is...
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
Academics: PLEASE DO NOT CITE OR CIRCULATE!1! also Academics: here’s a screenshot of my student’s work, let me share it with you real quick on twitter
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
5 years
Pro-tip: Tenure is the ideal time to shed Imposter Syndrome and replace it with Survivor Guilt.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
just trying to keep my teaching materials current
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
1 year
hey guys, data scientist here. Seeing a lot of terminology being misused. how it works is: anything *before* 1701 is technical a "Bayesian prior" (bec it's prior to Bayes) anything *after* 1761 is known as a "Bayesian posterior".
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
spare a thought for the unluckiest among us: male junior faculty at Ivies who took paternity leave this semester— and now find themselves using it to do childcare.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
1 year
@alixabeth yes, but to the Almighty, because they’re overjoyed I’ve finally finished
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
i guess you guys are just real good at worldle yeah?
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
wanna polisci phd? Gotta do econ classes in college. Wanna econ PhD? Gotta do math classes in college. Wanna math PhD? Gotta skip college. Just how it is
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
"open borders" ? This week, *thousands* of immigrants will graduate with STEM degrees, and they will have no way to live/work in the US outside of extremely restrictive/onerous employer-tied quota schemes. And we're talking about "open borders"? Cmon.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
the political scientist who shot the bear fifty years before the econometricians got there was not cited.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
1 year
quick warning to folks heading to Chicago: it’s a common tourist scam to be invited to a “conference” about “politics” but it’s you get there and it’s just guys talking about statistics and math. also they make you pay to provide the content. just be alert
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
I regret to inform you that this guy from Good Will Hunting got his PhD in 2003, tenure in 2009, and is now a full prof writing hot quillette takes about how today's ABDs don't work hard enough
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
hi guys, Manhattan parent here. I know the corona test is being rolled out, and obviously I want my kids to be ready: how much should I be paying for test prep? Thanks.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
1 year
OK, here it is: a line in the sand (in @Nature ). I am very wary about scientists---including political scientists---embracing/pushing proprietary LLMs. Let's try an open science approach. Hope this take is a useful one.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
hey guys check out this word cloud of relevant non-Econ social science research cited in the top 5 Econ journals 1980-2022
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
5 months
it’s already complete
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@PhD_Genie
PhD_Genie
5 months
Complete this sentence: Having a PhD doesn't necessarily mean that you are smart. But it does mean that you are ______________
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
hey guys, let me explain: unlike america which has two “sides” (dems, GOP) France is know as “l’hexagon” because it has roughly six sides. each side has its own party and that’s why the vote is pretty divided today
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
10 months
@AngusJBA 75% of the top schools located in “Cambridge”
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
the very worst NYC fashion trend rn is for dads in their 40s to be handsome and in good physical shape. looks ridiculous and im not getting sucked into this dumb fad
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
Fellow academics: I don’t want to give this stuff oxygen, so I’ll keep it simple: if you’re not an expert in public health, please don’t use your platform to distribute public health advice. No caveats, no nothing.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
my god, is there a more frightening email subject line than "your tweet"?
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 months
The academics I know can talk about anything for 30 minutes, especially if you tell them they only get 15 minutes to present it
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 months
@SevaUT One of the saddest things in international relations, perhaps in life as a whole, is a one-sided "rivalry." In this case, to the extent the US even has a rival, Russia would be so very lucky to be it.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
don’t want to give air to this nonsense, but it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of academia: students from anywhere doing a graduate degree in the US strengthen *American* knowledge of that subject via their collaborative research.
@atrupar
Aaron Rupar
4 years
"If Chinese students want to come here and study Shakespeare & the Federalist Papers, that's what they need to learn from America. They don't need to learn quantum computing" -- Sen. Tom Cotton proposes restricting Chinese students from studying science & tech at US universities
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
“Can you explain this gap on your résumé?” hmm it’s \bigskip I think
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
I guess now’s the time to reveal I’ve been experimenting by randomizing the quality of my solo papers to see how it affects citation. been doing the control arm for 15 years: about to write some good ones
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
5 years
Did ctrl+ on the black hole photo and was delighted to see it contains my unpublished job market paper from 2007.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
10 months
if only these top US places could pay something like UK academic salaries, they’d have the sort of faculty satisfaction and managerial harmony that schools in the old country enjoy. Here’s dreaming, I guess!
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
11 months
References in the bibliography no longer counted against the word limit at @AJPS_Editor . Seems like the right move. I expect other journals will follow.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
One thing I hadn't properly appreciated about the pandemic is the "no new people" academic effect: you don't go to conferences, so you never meet anyone "new". Zoom just doesn't lend itself to that sort of serendipitous friendship/network building. And I miss it.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
10 months
Getting dragged in the QTs so here’s the big reveal for new readers. Inter alia: - I’m British - I attended British unis - I work on Britain And yet and yet.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
it’s called “regression” because you can always “go back”, and change the specification to get better results
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
I guess most people know this, but the most reliable way for professors to have *any* influence into the future (including 200 y from now) is via teaching and advising. Nothing else comes close, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
1 year
What’s funny about this is that you can, without needing the labels, immediately tell which line must represent the most popular choice for academics seeking engagement with the world.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
got some of those “noise cancelling” headphones for zoom, but I’m still getting devastating questions on my talks. anyone solved this? Thanks
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
Hey guys, quick reminder that it’s not actually good or normal that in an extremely rich mature democracy we still don’t know the results of an election for which the polls closed over two days ago (not talking about runoffs btw)
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
10 months
I don’t think we can have “open science” if this sort of thing (or threats of the same) against people posting data and commenting on its plausibility are anywhere near successful. Deeply troubling development.
@danengber
Daniel Engber
10 months
Francesca Gino has filed a $25 million defamation lawsuit against Harvard University and the Data Colada bloggers ( @uri_sohn , Leif Nelson, @jpsimmon ). We've updated our story on her 2012 paper from this morning:
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
guys, in terms of replication, does it make a difference if I generate the fake data at the start or end of my source file?
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
“Her late Majesty the Queen saw a total of 15 Prime Ministers, a record that no monarch will ever bea…”
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
5 years
Luckily, Political Science avoids this kind of divisive parochialism by recognizing every nationality equally: "American" and "Comparative"
@DinaPomeranz
Dina D. Pomeranz 🟣
5 years
Economics research tends to be focused on certain countries, while other countries are studied much less by academic economists. This map by Das and Do shows the number of published econ papers about each country, per million of citizens:
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
1 year
Feel like ~90% of my knowledge or “expertise” does not come from research. It comes from *teaching* on that subject and being forced to actually read and understand it properly.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
5 years
Academic success is far more correlated with (early) luck than we’d like to admit. And the Matthew principle applies to our game like no other.
@JohnHolbein1
John B. Holbein
5 years
What’s your spiciest take about academia?
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
academics: oh no! I cannot find where this book was published, and I need that info for the bibtex file! normies: ok, but presumably you're citing the book because you have read it, so just pick it up and check what address it gives on the front pages? academics:
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
4 years
let me put the tax news in precise political science terms: $750 is what it costs to attend like 0.6 APSAs
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
6 years
Wow! Stunned to win #polmeth emerging scholar awd, and deeply appreciate all the lovely tweets, emails people sent. Thanks to every person (incl R2!) who helped me along the way! (note to regular readers: I'll be backpedaling my 'all awards are elitist' position for a few days)
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
10 months
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
2 years
heading to montréal APSA soon and tbh I’m a bit apprehensive about language if I need assistance. Embarrassed to ask, but just in terms of the Ubers/hotel/conference staff, is it rude to expect them to know/be comfortable with base R? thanks
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
woke mob of peer reviewers cancelled my submission to a top field journal. Orwellian.
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
🚨 New Paper !🚨 Want to measure how different groups (e.g. GOP v Dems) "understand" words differently (e.g."immigration")? check out our "Embedding Regression" paper (w @prodriguezsosa @b_m_stewart ). Inference framework + software. Comments welcome! (1/4)
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@arthur_spirling
Arthur Spirling
3 years
hey guys, I’m looking for a stargazer package, but in reverse: i give it the LaTeX results table I want to publish, and it generates the R code, data and writing I need to get it into a top journal. Any pointers? happy to use a devtools git install.
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