The Sociology Statistics Reading Group is an approximately bi-weekly group to discuss interesting statistical methods papers drawn from a wide range of literatures. Each meeting we choose a paper which all members of the group read. A single discussant then walks through the material and we have a broader group discussion. Please note that the presentations below often draw figures from the original papers and sometimes from presentations graciously provided by the paper authors.
For some exemplars of presentations see the Causal Forests presentation by Ian Lundberg, Fairness in Machine Learning presentation by Rebecca Johnson or the Double Machine Learning by Chris Felton (handout version).
Year 4: 2021-2022
(Coordinator: Lai Wei)
October 14, 2021: Conformal Inference and Applications in Synthetic Controls
Lei, Jing, Max G'Sell, Alessandro Rinaldo, Ryan J. Tibshirani, and Larry Wasserman (2018). Distribution-Free Predictive Inference for Regression. Journal of the American Statistical Association. 113:523, 1094-1111.
Chernozhukov, Victor, Kaspar Wuthrich, and Yinchu Zhu. (2021). An Exact and Robust Conformal Inference Method for Counterfactual and Synthetic Controls.
Presenter: Chris Felton
September 30, 2021: External Validity
Egami, Naoki and Erin Hartman (2021) Elements of External Validity: Framework, Design, and Analysis.
Presenter: Angela Li
September 9, 2021: Status Exchange
Xie, Yu, and Hao Dong (2021). A New Methodological Framework for Studying Status Exchange in Marriage. American Journal of Sociology 126, no. 5 (2021): 1179-1219.
Presenter: Ziyao Tian (Presentation)
Year 3: 2018-2019
(Coordinators: Rebecca Johnson & Simone Zhang)
May 1, 2019: Word Embeddings and Fairness
Garg et al. (2018) Word embeddings quantify 100 years of gender and ethnic stereotypes Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Presenter: Ziyao Tian (Presentation)
April 24, 2019: Measuring Paradigmaticness with Text
Evans, Gomez and McFarland (2016) Measuring Paradigmaticness of Disciplines Using Text Sociological Science.
Presenter: Alex Kindel (Presentation)
March 13, 2019: Working with Body Camera Data
Voigt et al (2017) Language from policy body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Presenter: Simone Zhang (Presentation)
February 20, 2019: Versions of Treatment (consistency in causal inference)
Hernán (2016) Does water kill? A call for less casual causal inferences. Annals of Epidemiology.
Presenter: Ian Lundberg (Presentation)
November 29, 2018: Machine Learning and Causal Inference
Chernozhukov et al (2018) Double/debiased machine learning for treatment and structural parameters. Econometrics Journal.
Presenter: Chris Felton (Presentation)
November 8, 2018: Sequence Analysis
Aisenbrey and Fasang (2010) New life for old ideas: The" second wave" of sequence analysis bringing the" course" back into the life course Sociological Methods & Research.
Presenter: Daniela Urbina Julio (Presentation)
October 25, 2018: Fairness in Machine Learning
Corbett-Davies and Goel "The Measure and Mismeasure of Fairness: A Critical Review of Fair Machine Learning"
Lakkaraju et al `The Selective Labels Problem: Evaluating Algorithmic Predictions in the Presence of Unobservables' in KDD 2017
Presenter: Rebecca Johnson (Presentation)
October 4, 2018: Computer Vision and Deep Convolutional Neural Networks
LeCun, Bengio and Hinton "Deep Learning" Nature. 2015.
Optional: Fei Fei Li's TED Talk on Computer Vision
Optional: Goodfellow, Bengio and Courville Deep Learning Convolutional Networks Chapter
Presenter: Han Zhang (Presentation)
Year 2: 2017-2018
(Coordinator: Ian Lundberg)
May 3, 2018: Gradient Boosting
Efron and Hastie Computer Age Statistical Inference. 17.2-17.4
Presenter: Jeremy Cohen (Presentation)
April 19, 2018: Stochastic Actor Oriented Models
Block et al (2018) Social Networks. Change we can believe in: Comparing longitidunal network models on consistency, interpretability and predictive power.
Presenter: Daniel Karell (Presentation)
March 29, 2018: Machine Learning and Personalized Policy
Bansak et al (2018) Science Improving refugee integration through data-driven algorithmic assignment
Presenter: Hannah Postel (Presentation)
March 8, 2018: Scale-Free Networks
Barabási (2015) Network Science Chapter 4: The Scale-Free Property
Broido and Clauset (2018) "Scale-free networks are rare"
Presenter: Cambria Naslund (Presentation)
March 1, 2018: LASSO and Causal Inference
Belloni, Chernozhukov and Hansen (2014) "High-Dimensional Methods and Inference on Structural and Treatment Effects." Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman (2009) Elements of Statistical Learning Selections from Chapter 3 on the LASSO.
Presenter: Daniela Urbina Julio (Presentation)
February 8, 2018: Mixture of Regressions
Imai and Tingley (2012) "A Statistical Method for Empirical Testing of Competing Theories." American Journal of Political Science.
Presenter: Ryan Parsons
December 14, 2017: High-Dimensional Interactions
Egami and Imai (2017) "Causal Interaction in Factorial Experiments: Application to Conjoint Analysis."
Presenter: Belén Unzueta
November 9, 2017: Sensitivity Analysis
Ding and Vanderweele (2016) "Sensitivity Analysis Without Assumptions." Epidemiology.
Presenter: Chris Felton (Presentation)
October 26, 2017: Exponential Random Graph Models
Robins, Pattison, Kalish and Lusher (2007) "An introduction to exponential random graph (p*) models for social networks." Social Networks.
Presenter: Janet Xu (Presentation)
October 12, 2017: Causal Forests: A Tutorial in High-Dimensional Causal Inference
Athey and Imbens (2016) "Recursive paritioning for heterogenous causal effects" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Presenter: Ian Lundberg (Presentation)
September 28, 2017: Problems with p-values
Simmons, Nelson and Simonsohn (2011) "False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant." Psychological Science.
Greenland et al. (2016) "Statistical tests, P values, confidence intervals, and power: a guide to misinterpretations" European Journal of Epidemiology.
Presenter: Xinyi Duan
September 14, 2017: Predictive Social Science
Collins (1984) "Statistics versus Words" Sociological Theory.
Hofman, Sharma and Watts (2017) "Prediction and explanation in social systems" Science.
Cranmer and Desmarais (2017) "What can we learn from predictive modeling?" Political Analysis.
Presenter: Alex Kindel (Presentation)
Year 1: 2016-2017
(Coordinator: Clark Bernier)
May 4, 2017: Weights in Survey Experiments
Franco, Malhotra, Simonovits, Zigerell (2017) "Developing Standards for Post-Stratification Weighting in Population-Based Survey Experiments" Journal of Experimental Political Science.
Miratrix, Sekhon, Theororidis and Campos (2017) "Worth Weighting? How to Think About and Use Sample Weights in Survey Experiments"
Presenter: Janet Xu (Presentation)
April 19, 2017: Mixed Factor Analysis
Quinn (2004) "Bayesian factor Analysis for Mixed Ordinal and Continuous Responses" Political Analysis.
Presenter Ryan Parsons
March 30, 2017: Fixed Effects
Imai and Kim (2016) "When Should We Use Linear Fixed Effects Regression Models for Causal Inference With Longitudinal Data?"
Presenter Jeremy Cohen (Presentation)
March 16, 2017: Ecological inference
King, Rosen and Tanner (2004) "Information in Ecological Inference: An Introduction" in Ecological Inference: New Methodological Strategies.
Imai and Khanna (2016) "Improving Ecological Inference by Predicting Individual Ethnicity from Voter Registration Records" Political Analysis.
(Optional) King, Rosen, Tanner and Wagner "Ordinary Economic Voting Behavior in the Extraordinary Election of Adolf Hitler" The Journal of Economic History.
Presenter Simone Zhang (Presentation)
*Special thanks to Gary King for sharing slides used in this section.
March 2, 2017: Conjoint Analysis
Hainmueller, Hopkins and Yamamoto (2014) "Causal Inference in Conjoint Analysis: Understanding Multi-Dimensional Choices Via Stated Preference Experiments" Political Analysis.
Presenter Xinyi Duan
February 16, 2017: Mixed Membership Stochastic Blockmodels
Airoldi, Blei, Fienberg and Xing (2008) "Mixed Membership Stochastic Blockmodels" Journal of Machine Learning Research.
Presenter: Herissa Lamothe (Presentation)
December 1, 2016: Cross-Validation
Ward, Greenhill and Bakke (2010) "The perils of policy by p-value: Predicting civil conflicts" Journal of Peace Research.
Selections on Cross Validation from Andrew Ng and Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman (2009).
Presenter: Alex Kindel (Presentation)
November 10, 2016: Front-door Adjustment Strategies
Glynn and Kashin (2014) "Front-door Versus Back-door Adjustment with Unmeasured Confounding: Bias Formulas for Front-door and Hybrid Adjustments"
Presenter: Ethan Fosse (Presentation)
October 27, 2016: Sensitivity Analysis
Blackwell (2014) "A Selection Bias Approach to Sensitivity Analysis for Causal Effects" American Journal of Political Science.
and
Morgan and Winship (2015) "Chapter 12: Distributional Assumptions, Set Identification, and Sensitivity Analysis" in Counterfactuals and Causal Inference: Methods and Principles for Social Research, Second Edition.
Presenter: Rebecca Johnson (Presentation)
October 13, 2016: Mediation
Imai, Keele, Tingley, Yamamoto (2011) "Unpacking the black box of causality: Learning about causal mechanisms from experimental and observational studies" American Political Science Review.
and
Acharya, Blackwell and Sen (2016) "Explaining Causal Findings Without Bias: Detecting and Assessing Direct Effects" American Political Science Review.
Presenter: Ian Lundberg
*Special thanks to Dustin Tingley and Matt Blackwell for providing us with slides for this session.
September 29, 2016: Interactions
Hainmueller, Mummolo, Xu (2016) "How Much Should We Trust Estimates from Multiplicative Interaction Models? Simple Tools to Improve Empirical Practice"
Presenter: Jason Windawi (Presentation)
*Special Thanks to Yiqing Xu for supplying slides on which much of the presentation is based.
September 22, 2016: Colliders
Elwert and Winship (2014) "Endogenous selection bias: The problem of conditioning on a collider variable" Annual Review of Sociology
Presenter: Han Zhang (Presentation)