We’ve been invited to start a blog at Science Blogs. This seemed like a good idea, a way to reach a new set of readers. At the same time, I didn’t want to abandon the Mother Blog right here. Recently we’ve been overflowing with entries, so we decided to start a new blog at Science Blogs and just link back and forth between this blog and that one. Those of you with RSS can just get both feeds. (The Monkey Cage, 538, and New Majority are less of an issue since I can just crosspost.)
Anyway, we have two things to decide. First, what should the new blog be called; second, what sorts of things should we be posting there. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for your help.
P.S. Yes, I know it would be logical to just move the entire blog over to the Science Blogs platform. But I just can’t bring myself to do that. Science Blogs is a bunch of bloggers, which is fine, but I’d like my own blog to be centered on my research and teaching, which is here.
Trying to go more "mainstream" with a science related blog calls for a thinly veiled reference to pop culture that both entices and reveals something about the blog. For such a situation, I always turn to Star Wars and offer two suggestions and not produce the hundreds that could be made:
"Bayes Shot First"
and
"Statistics will keep them in line"
The former could prove to be a quite geeky "about" page for the blog where you can frame the Bayesian/Frequentist discussion as a reference to the Han/Greedo debate. However, given your affinity (or distaste) for Star Wars, mileage may vary.
The latter is more general and may suggest a general blog of using statistics correctly across the media, academia, and other spheres of discussion.
I think you should keep the old blog. Posting on other blogs is fine, but I think that your message will get lost at Science Blogs. Just my thought!
I suggest keeping the statistical modeling, causal inference, visualization and computation stuff here where people are used to finding it, and posting the more social sciency stuff over there if you must (it is science blogs after all).
If I were your "brand consultant" from one of the big consulting companies, i'm sure I would advise you not to make this move as you already have a large recognizable leadership role right here, whereas at science blogs you'd be one of a huge bunch of other blogs which adds a lot of noise and distraction to the signal.
One thing that's somewhat unique about your blog is that you respond to questions from the audience. Most bloggers respond to global or local news events, becoming a sort of filtered topical newspaper. here, you're more like the Dear Abby of statistics. I wouldn't recommend changing that.
I do not know what the name should be, but I do have an idea for content.
The new blog should take the general interest posts from SMCISS. To give a specific example, here is a list of the most recent entry titles. I have put an asterisk next to those that would go on the new blog:
—– begin —–
Variations on the histogram
*The immigrant paradox: foreign-born Latinos have lower rates of psychiatric disorders
Winston Churchill on statistical modeling
*Scozzafava is a Conservative Republican (by New York State standards)
Numeracy, frequency, and Bayesian reasoning
Some practical questions about prior distributions
My talk in Lyon on Monday
Le casse-tête des petits effets
*Possible models for Freakonomics 3
Sign of the times
*An Encyclopedia of Probability
*Freakonomics update
*My review of Freakonomics 2
*Voting differences between the rich and poor, in different subgroups of the population
Bayesian analysis of case-control studies
*No data, Part 3
Afghanistan election problems?
———– end —————
"Mister P" is to dorky I suppose?
"Lies, damn lies, and…"?
I'd assume that you'll have to decide what you'll be blogging about. What I think would be great and missing is something between 538 and the more technical stuff on this blog.
I don't know if there really is a "market" out there, but for me, while I don't need an explanation of what a regression (or an ordered logit regression, for that matter) is, I don't understand things like:
But I would like to! So what I think would be great would be some writing on cutting edge statistics in low-tech (I don't think it should be no-tech) language – partly in order to get a better sense of what's "out there" and what I would actually like to learn in a "hi-tech" kind of way.
But that's just my two cents.
Some statistic/probability enlightenment for laymen? I'd love to see that. Even though I'm trying to educate myself further much of what I read is still over my head. It is so important to get a grasp of these fields. Just take the current misinformation campaigns about swine flu and vaccination. Not only would it be important to learn more about it but also hear the opinion of actual professionals and scientists regarding current topics that rely on it.
Names:
Bayesian Horrorshow
Random Causes
Lying with Statistics
Absolute Uncertainty
Causal Randomness
Probably Improbable
Certain Probability
Certainty Bordering on Probability
What are the odds!
you're choosing the name before you're choosing the content? kind of makes it hard to make concrete suggestions.
do you sit around and think of cool names for bands or something?
my most worthless suggestion is "polite myopia".
my second most worthless suggestion is "outliars."
my third most worthless suggestion is "eek!onomics: pseudofacts that should scare you out of your wits"
my fourth most worthless suggestion is "throwing social science down a well"
awesome! something with "bayesian" would be apropos it seems? e.g., "basically bayesian."
i kept two blogs going too. the SB audience is different, so it's easy to fit which posts go where.
What about:
From common errors to standard errors.
Or
The puzzle of small effects.
Just saying.
Holy Priors!
woo hoo! I think I was the first to suggest your blog to Drug Monkey when he was looking for social science blogs to invite to Science Blogs. Therefore, you should name the blog after me!!!
What about "Bend it like Gelman", although this may be lost on non-soccer-fans/non-Chadha-fans/non-Keira-Knightley-fans… Subtitle could fit as well: "Who wants to cook Aloo Gobi when you can bend a bell [curve] like Gelman?"
what about "statistically speaking" or " Rule Statistica"?
I like the horribly corny title of "Statistical Moments", but that might be more appropriate for a subtitle.
Push the statistical counseling and high level modeling analysis over there and leave the political science related information here on the mother blog.
Stathacks?
Freakatistics.
Super-Duper-Freakanomics.
The Shrinkage Factor
subtitle: An effect of pooling.
Oh, excellent! I've been thinking for some time they lack someone with real statistical knowledge (MarkCC does his best, but he's a mathematician, poor fellow).
ScienceBlogs has a slightly different audience to here, so you can easily manage the two blogs by keeping the more academic stuff here. I hope you can branch out into covering "bad stats": last year I tried to persuade David S. that he should do something under his "public understanding of risk" label, but he had other plans to fill his time. There's space for a major contribution.
I should warn you – the fights over there can get quite, um, heated. My wife has blogged there since it started, so I get to hear the inside news.
A few random names: "like a bikini", "how not to lie", "to Bayes or not to Bayes", "Bayes on what", "prior knowledge", "a better approximation".
The name should be googleable, and some of my suggestions appear as article names.
Too Logit to Quit.
heehee