Forecasting the election using simulations

Here's a cool site that forecasts election results using regression and simulation techniques. Note that many of the percentages you will see on the site are probabilities of winning, rather than percentages of the vote. The site is http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

McCain's use of text analysis

The Times is reporting that Republicans offered an Oxford professor $10K to prove that Obama's autobiography was ghost-written by William Ayers, America's favorite Weatherman. Get the full story here.

Obama's success due to marketing science?

A recent article suggests that Obama's campaign has benefited from the work of a psychologist, Drew Western of Emory University. The full article is here.

Science without theory

Kevin Kelley's post on doing science without theory is interesting. I disagree with it wholeheartedly, but is worth reading.

Full text is here.

How people perceive the world

In yesterday's NY times, David Brooks has a nice piece on decision-making. It dovetails well with the Professional Vision paper that you read last week, along with our discussion during Emily's talk. One of the comments he makes is this: "Perceiving a situation seems, at first glimpse, like a remarkably simple operation. You just look and see what’s around. But the operation that seems most simple is actually the most complex, it’s just that most of the action takes place below the level of awareness. Looking at and perceiving the world is an active process of meaning-making that shapes and biases the rest of the decision-making chain."

Read the full text here.

Distinguishing fact from fiction

The central problem in empirical research is distinguishing fact from fiction (unless you are a postmodernist, in which case the task is to distinguish fashionable, status-enhancing fiction from embarrassing fiction). The Snopes site tries to track and verify urban legends.

It's interesting to search for events and names of current interest, such as "Obama".

Unusual economic indicators

A long time ago, it was noticed that hemlines fluctuated with the economy: the higher the hemlines, the stronger the economy (I'm not hinting, just saying ...). Now, a number of other correlations have been found, from the sale of laxatives to the tempo of hit songs. See the full article in today's New York Times.