How NOT to Bias Your Heterogeneous Treatment Effect Results

I can't stand it when people write about how what's typically done in the literature is wrong without providing a solution. Well, this is not one of those times.

Often we want to know how the effect of a treatment differs depending on people's outcome in the absence of the treatment. For example, do smaller class sizes help improve tests scores of the kids who typically score well or those that don't do so well?

The way you may think to answer such a question might lead to biased results, but don't worry, there's a way to fix it. Read here for a summary and here for the actual paper.

How to Get a PhD in Five Years

It's called "Out in Five"

Divine Genius Does Not Exist

This is a message for students struggling with their semester papers this spring break. 

Here is the gist of it:  

"Taken together, the stories reveal a pattern for how humans make new things, one that is both encouraging and challenging. The encouraging part is that everyone can create, and we can show that  fairly conclusively. The challenging part is that there  is no magic moment of creation. Creators spend almost all their  time  creating,  persevering despite doubt, failure, ridicule, and rejection until they succeed in making something  new and useful. There are no tricks, shortcuts, or get-creative-quick schemes. The process is ordinary, even if the outcome is not.

Creating is not magic but work."