Presentation: Explaining Polarization

Today, I am attending the ‘Day of Sociology’ conference at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. I look forward to all the presentations, together covering the broad field of Sociology in Flanders and the Netherlands.

Also, I will present a working paper on polarization of attitudes on abortion in North America. It’s called Explaining Polarization of North Americans’ Abortion Attitudes, 1977-2006 and it authored by myself, Ariana Need, and Manfred te Grotenhuis. The abstract of the paper:

This study finds that North Americans’ attitudes towards induced abortion have become increasingly polarized between 1977 and 2006. This is in line with previous studies that treat polarization as a distributional characteristic. We improve upon existing studies by formulating an explanatory model for attitude polarization that distinguishes between macro-level and micro-level polarization.

A partial explanation for macro-level polarization of North Americans’ abortion was found in declining rates of church attendance. On the micro-level, we find that frequent church attendees are relatively restrictive towards abortion compared to people hardly ever attending church, and that this difference is more polarized in states with Medicaid provision of abortion, parental involvement legislation, high levels of apostasy, and high abortion ratios. Finally, in these same contexts, frequent church attendees were found more polarized amongst themselves as well.

Sex discrimination in graduate admissions? A real-life aggregation paradox

A 1975 study on graduate admissions at Berkeley found that male applicants had a substantially higher likelihood of being admitted, compared to women. However, upon closer examination the presence of aggregation paradoxes do not legitimize the conclusion that women were discriminated against.

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The Human Fertility Database

Data comparability is a valuable thing, and achieving high levels of compatibility is exactly the goal of the Human Fertility Database. From the website:

The main goal of the Human Fertility Database (HFD) is to provide access to detailed high-quality data on cohort and period fertility to a broad audience of users. We are trying to develop the HFD into an important resource for monitoring, analyzing, comparing, and forecasting fertility as well as for studying causes and consequences of fertility change in the industrialized world. The uniform format of HFD data will facilitate comparative analysis across countries and regions and encourage analysts to move beyond the simple indicators such as the period Total Fertility Rates.

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Simpson’s Paradoxical Card Trick

Imagine this card trick. A statistician divides a regular deck of cards into two sets: one of 20 and one of 32 cards. Next, he urges two groups of students to investigate the cards, and hands out one set of cards to each of the groups. Both groups start counting the cards, and cross-tabulating the numbers based on several ways they can come up with. Quite rapidly, a member of the group with 20 cards observes an interesting pattern. Amongst the cards his group is studying, an interesting pattern emerges: a disproportionally large number of black court cards. A hypothesis is formulated: could it be that their ‘blackness’ causes them being a ‘court’ card more frequently?

The results are drawn up in a table and shown to the entire group:

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WorldBank on iPhone: Great initiative, but not quite there …

Last Tuesday, I wrote about the Open Data initiative of the World Bank, and mentioned the iPhone App that provides access to a great amount data. Isn’t it lovely to be able to access information on a large number of indicators, covering many countries and years? Always wondered how the fertility rates in Samoa developed over time, or are you finding yourself discussing country-differences in the government dept as a percentage of GDP? Now you can have the information in your pocket, and access it everywhere, every time. For free.
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World Bank Open Data Initiative

Following upon my declaration of the Decade of Data, I think it is very impressive that the World Bank decided to share its data. As part of their ‘open data initiative’, data from their large number of databases is made available through the internet. Together, these databases encompass over 2,000 indicators of countries all over the world, many of them covering a time-series of 50 years. Topics include:

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Attending QMSS2: Analysing the lifecourse

I am very proud to have been accepted for participating in the Summer School on Analysing the life course. This summer school is part of the Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences 2 (QMSS2) program, funded by the European Science Foundation (ESF).

This June, I will thus head to Bristol, and learn about advanced methods for the analysis of complex event history data. From the program website:
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Have a great Decade of Data!

Now that I am trying to get to a regular blogging schedule, I realized that I have not wished my readers a happy new year. Although I am traditionally late with these kind of things, I suppose now is too late to wish you all a very happy 2010. But, perhaps it is not too late to wish you all to have a great new decade?

I think that 2010 could be the beginning of a beautiful decade. The Decade of Data perhaps? There have been so many data-related developments the last couple of years, that I tend to believe that a lovely stage has been set.
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Super Crunchers – Ayres (2007) – 1/2

With the Triumph of Numbers, I read and wrote about the power of using numbers, and how the observation of empirical regularities led to the basic knowledge on how to use such numbers. Already in the triumph of numbers, it was indicated how valuable (numerical) data were regarded to be, for instance by the recollection how the first censuses were regarded as state secrets, because the information could be used to make assertions about the military strength of (rival) nations.

Unfortunately, I.B. Cohen’s Triumph of Numbers ended quite abruptly with a description of Florence Nightingale. It felt unfinished. But the use of numbers has evolved since, and quite substantially so.

How much our use of numerical data has evolved, and to what extent is has invaded our daily lives (without many of us knowing it!), is convincingly described by Ian Ayers, in his magnificent book ‘Super Crunchers’ (2007).

Companies know more and more (and more!) about you: you buy products online, you speak with the customer relations department (with a person behind a computer), you gain discounts with customer cards, and of course you are careful to make sure you receive you frequent flyer miles. Right? If not, you may have bought it all using a credit card, the transactions of which are stored anyway. … Continue Reading

Statistical Tools – Te Grotenhuis and Van der Weegen (2009)

How does one teach statistics? Is it more important to start with mathematical thoroughness, or to help students to gain a conceptual understanding first? Few give a comprehensive introduction to statistics for those without the otherwise indispensable mathematical background. Manfred te Grotenhuis and Theo van der Weegen recently published an introductory book on statistics, explaining statistical concepts using words and graphs, rather than formulas.

Less than a year ago, I wrote these exact words. I then discussed the publication of a Dutch book on statistics, to which I provided minor assistance. Now, I repeat these words to introduce the Enligsh translation of this conceptual introduction to statistics, called Statistical Tools. Again, I contributed to this publication, this time by providing a first, rough, translation from Dutch to English. Let me repeat below what I wrote before on this blog, for of course this still holds relevance for the translation to English:

With the focus on practical application rather than statistical theory, the first chapter starts explaining the goal of inferential statistics, meanwhile introducing the concepts of measurement and variables. Considerable attention is paid to the importance of high quality data to perform your analyses on. The second chapter … Continue Reading