Category Archives: Methodology

Five observations on data coding

Posted on September 6, 2023 by schrodt735

A note re: social media: After years of not posting anyway, I have now fully abandoned Twitter/X and am now on BlueSky as philip-schrodt (same identifier as my GitHub account). And actually posting and commenting there: until someone figures out … Continue reading →

Posted in Methodology, Programming | Tagged event data, human coding, LLM, PLOVER, POLECAT | Leave a comment

Two followups, ISA edition

Posted on March 15, 2023 by schrodt735

So those of you who follow this blog closely—yes, both of you…—have doubtlessly noticed the not-in-the-least subtle subtext of an earlier entry that something’s coming, and it’s gonna be big, really big, and I can’t wait to say more about … Continue reading →

Posted in Methodology | Tagged event data, forecasting, NGEC, PLOVER, POLECAT | 2 Comments

Seven thoughts on neural network transformers

Posted on July 28, 2022 by schrodt735

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.Arthur C. Clarke. (1962)[1] So, been a while, eh: last entry was … Continue reading →

Posted in Methodology, Politics, Programming | 1 Comment

Seven reflections on work—mostly programming—in 2020

Posted on January 13, 2020 by schrodt735

Reading time: Uh, I dunno: how fast do you read? [0] Well, it’s been a while since any entries here, eh? Spent much of the spring of 2019 trying to get a couple projects going that didn’t work out, then … Continue reading →

Posted in Methodology, Programming | 1 Comment

Seven current challenges in event data

Posted on March 13, 2019 by schrodt735

This is the promised follow-up to last week’s opus, “Stuff I Tell People About Event Data“, herein referenced as SITPAED. It is motivated by four concerns: As I have noted on multiple occasions, the odd thing about event data is … Continue reading →

Posted in Methodology, Programming | 1 Comment

Stuff I tell people about event data

Posted on March 5, 2019 by schrodt735

Every few weeks—it’s a low-frequency event with a Poisson distribution, and thus exponentially distributed inter-arrival times—someone contacts me (typically from government, an NGO or a graduate student) who has discovered event data and wants to use it for some project. … Continue reading →

Posted in Methodology | 2 Comments

Instability Forecasting Models: Seven Ethical Considerations

Posted on February 20, 2019 by schrodt735

So, welcome, y’all, to the latest bloggy edition on an issue probably relevant to, at best, a couple hundred people, though once again it has been pointed out to me that it is likely to be read by quite a … Continue reading →

Posted in Methodology, Politics | 5 Comments

Happy 60th Birthday, DARPA: you’re doomed

Posted on September 6, 2018 by schrodt735

Today marks the mid-point of a massive self-congratulatory 60th anniversary celebration by DARPA [1]. So, DARPA, happy birthday! And many happy returns!! YEA!!! That’s a joke, right? Why yes, how did you guess? A 60th anniversary, of course, is very … Continue reading →

Posted in Higher Education, Methodology | 1 Comment

What if a few grad programs were run for the benefit of the graduate students?

Posted on July 16, 2018 by schrodt735

I’ve got a note in my calendar around the beginning of August—I was presumably in a really bad mood at [at least] some point over the past year—to retweet a link to my blog post discussing my fondness for math … Continue reading →

Posted in Higher Education, Methodology | Leave a comment

Witnessing a paradigm shift?

Posted on June 18, 2018 by schrodt735

The philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn is famous—beyond an apparent penchant for throwing ashtrays [1]—for his vastly over-generalized concept of “paradigm shifts” in scientific understanding, where a set of ideas once thought unreasonable becomes the norm, exchanging this status with … Continue reading →

Posted in Methodology | 1 Comment