Odds and ends (Signifying Nothing: how does saying nothing at all become so loud?)

Wednesday, 3 May 2006

Odds and ends

My brief return to Durham to administer some finals and pack for my big trip has been a tad hectic—I’m currently in the calm between finishing up the grading for my southern politics class (who produced almost uniformly excellent final examinations) and having to assess 60 methods exams that I will administer tomorrow and Friday.

I mostly enjoyed my visit to Saint Louis University—the travel was about as painless as air travel can be, and my soon-to-be-colleagues were uniformly pleasant and supportive. I remain somewhat unentralled with the prospect of spending a year under the microscope as an internal candidate for a potential tenure-track position, although perhaps at least I am two years wiser than my previous time doing that and also have quite a bit less invested in the idea of staying, at least at present. Nonetheless I bought some SLU swag: a hat (black), a refrigerator magnet, a window decal, and a lapel pin, as well as suitable gifts for the parental units.

Perhaps slightly more importantly, now I have feedback from two audiences on the strategic voting paper I’ll have the opportunity to work on some revisions before sending it out again. Alas, I’ve gotten no real advice on a venue—it’s already been rejected at APR, and I think even with some revisions (primarily in terms of the battleground/non-battleground dichotomy and possibly the sophistication measure) it isn’t a Top 3 piece, which probably leaves the options looking like Electoral Studies, Political Behaviour, PRQ (although I already have a manuscript there), or maybe QJPS. I hate worrying about these things.

Life otherwise goes on. I got CC’d on a report on the Next Big Thing for the Duke undergraduate political science program—it still seems awfully unstructured to me, but then again, who cares what I think? They are going to require a stats class of students, but it will be a general ed stats class so I’m not at all convinced it will be particularly worthwhile unless followed up or accompanied by a scope-and-methods class in the discipline proper. Really getting how to use stats to analyze substantive questions in politics is a hard thing, and I don’t think stats classes aimed toward a broad range of majors really accomplish much beyond annoying students with what will seem to them like a “useless” math requirement.

Outside the academic realm, I watched Shopgirl after getting back Tuesday and quite enjoyed it. I do agree with critics who say that a different actor from Steve Martin should have done the narration, but it was only a minor issue. Jason Schwartzmann definitely made the Jeremy character work; I think the early encounters between Mirabelle and Jeremy are even more satisfyingly (and hilariously) disastrous on film than they were in book form. Dropping the Vietnam subplot was fine, as was ditching the shift in venue from LA to San Francisco late in the book; neither did that much for the original narrative.

3 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.

1. Scott wrote @ Thu, 4 May 2006, 8:28 am CDT:

You Wrote: “They are going to require a stats class of students, but it will be a general ed stats class so I’m not at all convinced it will be particularly worthwhile unless followed up or accompanied by a scope-and-methods class in the discipline proper. Really getting how to use stats to analyze substantive questions in politics is a hard thing, and I don’t think stats classes aimed toward a broad range of majors really accomplish much beyond annoying students with what will seem to them like a “useless” math requirement.”

I have to say that I agree with the department on this one. We are trying to move in this direction. We have made the poli sci methods class mandatory for our majors (this will kick in for majors who are incoming freshmen ‘06—‘07). BUT we have also been working with the Math dept so they will create a section of Math 141 specifically designed for majors in the social sciences.

Math 141 covers ” Elementary topics in probability and statistics, including descriptive statistics, the binomial and normal distributions, estimation, hypothesis testing, simple linear regression and correlation. ”

The social science section will use applied examples from the social sciences (the folks in mass communications also plan to funnel their students through this section…something about reporters having some clue as to what they are reporting on…).

Students MUST choose among Math 141 and 3 or 4 other courses to fulfill a specific Gen Ed requirement. That is, because of our General Education requirements, the students ALREADY must choose this class, or one similar, for one of the Gen Ed hoops through which they must leap…frankly, too few choose Math 141. We plan to nudge our majors into the social sciences section of Math 141 to fulfill this particular requirement. I actually WOULD like to make it an official poli sci requirement, personally.

Here’s why I think it will help: my methods students come in with ENORMOUS variation in their knowledge of, and exposure to, statistics. I have to spend WAY more time than I would like teaching basic stats. I would prefer to teach more solid research design and APPLIED methodology.

To paraphrase the ramblings of our Governor (who used the following phrases to discuss economic development in our state), this would create the proper “soil conditions” for intellectual and academic “growth.”

2. Chris Lawrence wrote @ Thu, 4 May 2006, 11:29 am CDT:

You missed the clause ”unless followed up or accompanied by a scope-and-methods class in the discipline proper.” If the stats department were going to create (in collaboration with political science and econ faculty) a stats class aimed at econ and political science majors that was going to be followed up with the sort of class you would like to teach in the respective disciplines (i.e. applied econometrics in econ or methods in political science) then it would be worthwhile. I am unconvinced that the level of departmental commitment exists here to ensure such an arrangement would happen.

3. Len Cleavelin wrote @ Thu, 4 May 2006, 12:36 pm CDT:

Even if you don’t stay at SLU longer than the year, you do have to put together a good collection of Billiken themed swag.

I’m probably biased by being a STL native, but I think the Billiken may be the most unique mascot in all of college sports—I’m not aware of any other college using it as a mascot. Vice say (not to pick on your undergrad alma mater—well, not much), the tiger, which seems is used by every other college…

:-)

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