The polity project’s country code for Israel is … Continue reading “Random fun fact of the day” »

You couldn’t make up this extract from a student’s essay a friend just sent me: Continue reading “Capitalism, Hobbes, students, and the state: three out of four ain’t bad” »

This has been all over the PolSci blogosphere, but it’s too good not to share it again. Been there, done that.

The other day, a (rather clever) student told me that she has no real need for all these stats classes, because she will be a journalist. I told her that the world would be a better place if all journalists underwent compulsory numeracy classes. Here is the proof from my favourite newspaper. How long does it take you to spot the glitch?

Young people in the East Midlands were the most down-to-earth of those surveyed, expecting an annual salary of £33,468 by the time they reached their mid-thirties. However, even this figure is still around £4,000 higher than the average.

Continue reading “Journos: Back to stats 101!” »

This is a true gem of interdisciplinary research: A recent article in the British Medical Journal demonstrates that the crisis may have toppled major banks and halved the value of your assets, but did not stop these silly little buggers from happily swallowing coins at a constant rate.

Without doubt, late December is exactly the right time for reflection and (re-)assessment. Looking back on the last months, I had too many conference dinners, not nearly enough conference beers/chats, and definitively too many conference papers to read. Amongst these, the prize for the most original political science graph (along with the price for the most pointless use of too-cute images) goes to the unnamed creator of the pastiche on the right, which I have not made up and which probably just goes to show that concepts of the good are relative. Or something along these lines. As an aside, I am sure that somewhere in the world there is a culture for which The Fluffy Bunny is evil incarnate.

Competing Concepts of the Good

With the upcoming EP elections, I felt obliged to check out the profiler sites my colleagues have put on the internet. I started with Germany’s wahl-o-mat that has been around for a number of years. After evaluating 30 statements, the program decided that I should vote for the German Liberals, which was not such a big surprise. The Bavarian Christian Democrats and the New Left Party were the biggest distance away from my ideal point, not least because my preferences seem to be more pro-European than these parties.

Why I should vote for the LibDems (maybe)

Continue reading “Which party should I vote for in the European Elections?” »

I kid you not: yesterday the Daily Mail, not normally a promoter of civic education, published a Venn diagram outlining the overlap between the three main parties’ proposals for dealing with the parliamentary expenses mess. As diagrams go, this was not exactly brilliant. A lot of colour and space were wasted to illustrate the fact that while each party has its own preferences, they could possibly agree on a set of four or five measures. And no, because the font size was large and time was short, they did not pay any attention to proposals supported by say the Conservatives and the Liberals which are opposed by labour.

Continue reading “Expenses, the Mail, and a diagram” »

As a light-hearted follow-up to my post on the growth of the database state in the UK, here is a link to boing-boings

Well done, junior!

Continue reading “Remixes of the paranoid suspect your neighbours posters” »

Some answers given by students in written exams are so brilliant that you couldn’t make it up: Continue reading “Highlights from a European Politics Class Test” »