Blog

A Galton board with selection on significance

For a while now I’ve wanted to modify a physical Galton board to show selection on significance. I was never able to get around to it, so instead I made a virtual version.

The problems with selecting on significance

Current research production practices in the social sciences put a premium on statistically significant results. A common gloss on this is that our goal is to discover things,…

Personal Finance Basics for Canadian Academics

A few academics have recently asked me about personal finance, so I thought it might be helpful to collect my thoughts in one place. I also want to share this because I knew…

Reflections On A Year Of Rowing

I did my first indoor row on February 26, 2023. I rowed 1018 metres in 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I walk a decent amount and skate in the winter, but this was the start of my…

Development Studies programs should not shift their attention to the global rich

Many Development Studies programs, including mine, are going through some soul searching about their place in academia and the broader international development ecosystem.…

Global poverty trends with national discounting

Every Fall I teach a third-year undergraduate course on Poverty & Inequality at the University of Guelph. The first third of the course is on normative issues and some…

The Academic Job Market in Canada

Since moving back to Canada, a number of Americans have asked me for advice on the Canadian academic job market. After doing this a few times I realized: 1. it would be…

Isaac is a lucky boy

About two weeks ago, my first child, Isaac was born. We spent a standard two days in the hospital and then went home. After about 5 hours at home, in his third day of life…

The Drunk World Bank Twitterbot

I made a twitterbot that posts pseudo-random tweets formed from samples of text from the five most recent World Development Reports. My reasons for writing the bot, in order…