Comments on: Crooked Timber’s Field of Positions

By: Cross-Tabbing a Blog

Cross-Tabbing a Blog — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 19:46:14 +0000

[...] Cross-Tabbing a Blog ( 1 ) The folks at Crooked Timber blog have posted an interesting "correspondence analysis" of their posts’ authors and categories. it’s kind of a graphical map of whose in your intellectual neighborhood (at least as far as categories go). It might not be helpful in an environment like PBJ, where many authors are posting assignments. Still, it’s another way to draw social value from a mere information system… ( 2 ) ( 3 ) [...]

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:40:14 +0000

The chart os almost illegible on my browser. How are the four quarters defined, especially the Empty Quarter?

By: Matt Brubeck

Matt Brubeck — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 01:20:04 +0000

‘This will be filed under the category “navel gazing”, I hope.’

It’s filed under “blogging,” which should be close enough. ;)

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 14:36:10 +0000

My pattern-recognition genes are kicking in to suggest that the group would be rounded out by an anti-Quiggin

Right. Someone in the top right quadrant would be maximally different from you. Right now Brian and John H come closest to this role.

By: Ben Hyde

Ben Hyde — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:44:33 +0000

Kieran’s planning something and clearly his natural ally is Ted. As they consolidate power they will be wanting to eliminate, marginalize or possibly meerly deamonize Harry. In the comming elections we can expect a temporary increase in family-life postings from these two.

The political science version of this[1] toy can b e used to craft bills. Each bill cuts a line thru this space. Voters are predicted to vote yes or no depending which side of the line they appear. That, in turn, tells you who your natural allies are. In iterative rounds of voting parties form. Which leads to realizing that charts of this kind can explain why you get such strange bed fellows inside of a party. They also tell you who to drive out/in, and where to create the polarization or where to work your message to solidify your base.

It’s always fun to try and name/describe the X and Y axis on these things. Could we have the catagories enumerated in order with scores for the two axis?

[1] http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/archives/2003/01/rightleft-wing

By: lakelobos

lakelobos — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 10:52:56 +0000

A table will be more informative than the plot.

By: rc

rc — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 09:40:13 +0000

Can you post the contingency table?

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 07:48:08 +0000

Does the fact that the top-right quadrant is nearly empty have any significance, or could you change this by shifting the axes?

My pattern-recognition genes are kicking in to suggest that the group would be rounded out by an anti-Quiggin

By: a

Sat, 23 Apr 2005 07:04:57 +0000

This will be filed under the category “navel gazing”, I hope.

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 03:19:52 +0000

I redid the analysis with slightly clumpier categories. A problem with the data is that it might be picking up, in part, the tendency of authors to choose more or less fine-grained categories for themselves: some might bother to do this, while others might not. E.g., a lot of the stuff I class as “Sociology” could have been more finely classified. So it may be that Chris’s status as a renaissance man may just reflect a higher propensity to file his posts accurately.

But then I would say that, being relatively homogenous.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 02:36:38 +0000

Cute! I really need to get back into quantitative stuff.