Category Archives: Computer Wonkistry

Cybercrime – Can you afford not to ignore it?

Kate Lister posted a piece about the dangers of cyber crime, especially emanating from Russia and former Soviet States, and East Asia.  Oh, and West Africa, too. Yawn. I’m really sick of these sensational studies claiming that there are zillions … Continue reading

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Presenting the World Development Indicators

I oftentimes find myself wanting to merge economic data with my datasets to control for things or look for relationships. One of the best sources of such data is the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.  Unfortunately, almost all of the … Continue reading

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Musings on Correlation (or yet another reason I fear for those non-methodologically inclined students in my cohort)

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means for two variables to be correlated.  Scientists throw around the term like it’s uniformly understood, but I fear that an understanding of the concept is elusive to substantive researchers who aren’t … Continue reading

Posted in R, Research Methodology, Social Science, Statistics | 7 Comments

Measuring the EIU Democracy Index (with Polity IV)

Yet again, I have conjured up an (academically) unusual dataset on democracy! This time it’s the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, a weird little gem.  The dataset is the basis for a paper the Economist publishes every two years.  Because … Continue reading

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More fun with the Failed States Index (and the State Fragility Index)

So the other day’s experiment with the Failed States Index and the Polity Data didn’t yield the linear trend I had originally expected.  After all, the two measure fundamentally distinct things.  But perhaps there’s another dataset which will match linearly. … Continue reading

Posted in Computer Wonkistry, International Relations, R, Social Science | 3 Comments