Secret Data Sunday – ABC News (in the US) Stonewalls over their Dubious Iraq Public Opinion Polls

Below is an email that I sent to Kerry Smith, the Senior Vice President for Editorial Quality at ABC news, back in November of 2016. She did not reply..   Dear Ms. Smith, I am a professor of economics specialized in the quantitative analysis of armed conflict.  I have a big body of work focused on …

Data Dump Friday – Four new Iraq public opinion polls from early 2005

The first four Iraq polls on the conflict data page are newly posted.

What can you do with the Peru Data?

Somebody asked a fair question in the comments surrounding the release of the Peru dataset: what can you do with it? That is a very big question that I can't fully address in a blog post.  Still, I'll try to offer a few useful thoughts.  Perhaps some readers will jump in with better ideas.  Also, I'd …

Secret Data Sunday – International Rescue Committee Edition

I haven't posted for a while on this subject so here's some background. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) did a series of surveys in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).  The final installment summed up the IRC findings as follows: Based on the results of the five IRC studies, we now estimate that 5.4 million excess …

Data Dump Friday – Event Data for the Peruvian Conflict

I know there have been some pretty disappointed campers out there the last two empty Fridays. But now it's time to cheer up.  Data Dump Friday is back! Moreover, as a special treat I'm throwing a change up containing some Peruvian conflict event data this time rather than the usual fare of public opinion data …

Pinker versus Taleb: A Non-deadly Quarrel over the Decline of Violence

As promised, I've just posted the slides of the talk I gave yesterday at York University (with some overnight modifications). You can get background with links for further background here. Somewhat bizarrely, Steven Pinker's 2011 book was rocketing to the top of the Amazon best seller list due to a Bill Gates Tweet right when I was …

Secret Data Sunday – Nassim Nicholas Taleb Edition

When data are central to scientific discussions, as is typically the case, then the relevant data should be open to all. OK, we don't have to be totally rigid about this.  People may sink a lot of effort into building a data set so it's reasonable for data builders to milk their data monopoly for …

Secret Data Sunday – AAPOR Investigates the Trump-Clinton Polling Miss Using Data you Can’t See

The long-awaited report from the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) on the performance of polling in the Trump-Clinton race is out.  You will see that this material is less of a stretch for the blog than it might seem to be at first glance and I plan a second post on it. Today …

I’ve Done Something or Other and Say that 470,000 People were Killed in Syria – Would you Like to Interview Me?

Let's go back to February of 2016 when the New York Times ran this headline: Death Toll from War in Syria now 470,000, Group Finds The headline is more conservative than a caption in the same article which reads: At least [my emphasis] 470,000 Syrians have died as a result of the war, according to the …