• 9 years - 63 posts - Latest - RSS
• OP: 8 Goods vs 27 No Goods
• Thread: 384 Goods vs 265 No Goods

1. Jacquette
   

   I gave you a good because you are right. A less generous way of putting it: unlike Mebane, Gary sucks at math.

   Haven:
   Cherilyn:
   Interesting. Too bad.
   Haven:
   Cherilyn:
   Just curious: is that the only course that King teaches?
   yes
   Not sure why that is too bad. Gary is a big picture kind of guy. He also is good at explaining things in an abstract and easy to understand way. His current class does all of that. But I'm not sure you would want to learn the nitty gritty math details from him, nor would be really be interested in teaching something like that. So his current class is perfect for him and he has basically perfected it.

   9 years ago # QUOTE 5 YEA 2 NAY!

2. Cy
   

   Cherilyn:
   Interesting. Too bad.
   Haven:
   Cherilyn:
   Just curious: is that the only course that King teaches?
   yes
   Not sure why that is too bad. Gary is a big picture kind of guy. He also is good at explaining things in an abstract and easy to understand way. His current class does all of that. But I'm not sure you would want to learn the nitty gritty math details from him, nor would be really be interested in teaching something like that. So his current class is perfect for him and he has basically perfected it.

   Ya, have you seen his Gov 2001 syllabus? It goes through an astonishing number of topics very very quickly. The previous course, Gov 2000, basically does a quick tour through probability theory and math stats before spending some time with linear models.

   From the syllabi, it looks like the first year methods sequence at Harvard is designed to expose people to a lot of s**t, and then let later courses fill in the pieces. Seems like a pretty good way to get to be a working political scientist pretty quickly.

   9 years ago # QUOTE 3 YEA 3 NAY!

3. Jacquette
   

   Later courses never fill in the pieces. This discipline is awesome.

   Cy:
   Cherilyn:
   Interesting. Too bad.
   Haven:
   Cherilyn:
   Just curious: is that the only course that King teaches?
   yes
   Not sure why that is too bad. Gary is a big picture kind of guy. He also is good at explaining things in an abstract and easy to understand way. His current class does all of that. But I'm not sure you would want to learn the nitty gritty math details from him, nor would be really be interested in teaching something like that. So his current class is perfect for him and he has basically perfected it.
   Ya, have you seen his Gov 2001 syllabus? It goes through an astonishing number of topics very very quickly. The previous course, Gov 2000, basically does a quick tour through probability theory and math stats before spending some time with linear models.
   From the syllabi, it looks like the first year methods sequence at Harvard is designed to expose people to a lot of s**t, and then let later courses fill in the pieces. Seems like a pretty good way to get to be a working political scientist pretty quickly.

   9 years ago # QUOTE 2 YEA 1 NAY!

4. Cy
   

   ^ ya, I imaging there aren't many of them going on to take a class just on glm's.

   9 years ago # QUOTE 1 YEA 0 NAY!

5. Haven
   

   Yes it is true that later classes do not fill in the blanks. So given that most grad students in political science will only take 1 year of methods, the choice is really between

   1. cramming in a broad overview of all the most current problems and methods in methodology as related to statistics and political science (e.g. missing data, causal inference, text analysis)

   or

   2. exposing students to a fewer set of topics but going in depth with a lot of math

   The first year sequence at Harvard chooses option 1. and allows those who want to to go fill in the blanks in the stats department. Perhaps other people feel that option 2 is better and would rather have a bunch of political scientists derive all the properties of the exponential family for a semester? *shrug*

   9 years ago # QUOTE 1 YEA 2 NAY!

6. Cy
   

   Haven:
   Yes it is true that later classes do not fill in the blanks. So given that most grad students in political science will only take 1 year of methods, the choice is really between
   1. cramming in a broad overview of all the most current problems and methods in methodology as related to statistics and political science (e.g. missing data, causal inference, text analysis)
   or
   2. exposing students to a fewer set of topics but going in depth with a lot of math
   The first year sequence at Harvard chooses option 1. and allows those who want to to go fill in the blanks in the stats department. Perhaps other people feel that option 2 is better and would rather have a bunch of political scientists derive all the properties of the exponential family for a semester? *shrug*

   FWIW, Stanford does something closer to 2, though they have a bit of an advantage because students usually take 3 classes, so they can cover material more quickly:
   q1: math stats and probability
   q2: glm's
   q3: causal inference

   9 years ago # QUOTE 2 YEA 0 NAY!

7. Haven
   

   but at the end of the day, Stanford grads are no more or less trained than Harvard grads. For the average political scientist, there's basically a limit to how much you can train them in methods and how much they will actually remember (which is very little). So you can derive all the estimators you want in front of them, at the end of the day they'll only remember how to interpret an OLS coefficient and how many stars to put. For the more advanced or methodsy folks, they will go to stats departments for more training anyway.

   9 years ago # QUOTE 5 YEA 2 NAY!

8. Eloise
   

   Why some of us think this is a troll? Many econ folks apply to polisci phd, and usually people get into better polisci programs than econ programs.

   6 years ago # QUOTE 4 YEA 2 NAY!

9. Maximillian
   

   On basically every count, a mid-ranked econ PhD does better than a CHYMPS poli sci PhD.

   Chance of getting a TT job somewhere: 100% for mid-ranked Econ, 30% for CHYMPS poli sci.

   Worst case starting salary in academic job: 100k for mid-ranked Econ PhD, 45k for CHYMPS Pol Sci PhD.

   Best case starting salary in academic job: 200k for mid-ranked Econ PhD (at middling B-School), 120k for CHYMPS Pol Sci PhD at another CHYMPS (if job market star).

   Non-academic starting salary: 120k (federal) to 250k (I-banking) for mid-ranked Econ PhD, 35k (non-profit) to 120k (federal govt, intl. organization, or data science) for CHYMPS Pol Sci PhD.

   Years of missed income & retirement due to PhD: Econ 4-5, Pol Sci 6-7 (more if postdoc).

   This could go on and on about your value on the marriage market, social status, mental health etc. The point is, if you are an economist and you still care about poli sci research, use your generous funding to attend as many poli sci conferences as you like.

   6 years ago # QUOTE 4 YEA 12 NAY!

10. Eloise
    

    How would you value the danger of attrition in econ phd programs?

    6 years ago # QUOTE 3 YEA 2 NAY!

11. Josh
    

    If you don't understand politics to begin with, using economic methodologies to study politics will only confuse you more. And if you're not fascinated by politics to begin with, your papers will be boring to both you and your readers.

    If you are an economist, go to econ grad school and let the CHYMPS fall where they may.

    6 years ago # QUOTE 1 YEA 3 NAY!

12. Sky
    

    On basically every count, a mid-ranked econ PhD does better than a CHYMPS poli sci PhD.
    Chance of getting a TT job somewhere: 100% for mid-ranked Econ, 30% for CHYMPS poli sci.

    You are severely deluded about about MRM econ placement. Unless you count community colleges as "somewhere", I suppose.

    6 years ago # QUOTE 9 YEA 1 NAY!

13. Terance
    

    I second this. Speaking from direct experience you have no idea what you're talking about on MRM econ placement. And a placement-based argument can often be made for Polisci CHYMPS over MRM econ (particularly when one takes expected intra-cohort rank into account). But MRM econ is definitely the safer bet for making a respectable salary at some decent (potentially non-academic) job.

    On basically every count, a mid-ranked econ PhD does better than a CHYMPS poli sci PhD.
    Chance of getting a TT job somewhere: 100% for mid-ranked Econ, 30% for CHYMPS poli sci.

    You are severely deluded about about MRM econ placement. Unless you count community colleges as "somewhere", I suppose.

    6 years ago # QUOTE 5 YEA 2 NAY!

14. Anselm
    

    Why not do both?

    6 years ago # QUOTE 1 YEA 3 NAY!

15. Dorthy
    

    decent econ.

    6 years ago # QUOTE 2 YEA 0 NAY!

16. Veronique
    

    Total troll. Nobody with the ability to get into an Econ PhD program would ever apply to Political Science.

    6 years ago # QUOTE 0 YEA 6 NAY!

17. Reminder
    

    definitely decent econ. poli sci is a dysfunctional discipline.

    2 years ago # QUOTE 2 YEA 0 NAY!

18. Algernon
    

    Econ is also dysfunctional.

    2 years ago # QUOTE 1 YEA 1 NAY!

19. Rod
    

    Why choose one when you can go to both? Answer is obviously Harris/GSB/HKS.

    2 years ago # QUOTE 0 YEA 0 NAY!

20. Lee
    

    Remember, economists have physics envy and political scientists have econ envy.

    This.

    2 years ago # QUOTE 0 YEA 0 NAY!

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