I'm hoping to start writing posts other than link round-ups soon, but I've been swamped the last few month with fascinating work and travels in the US, Nigeria, Zambia, South Africa, and Lesotho. Not to mention the latest Hunger Games movie is giving me lots of ideas for a follow-up to my original survival analysis! More on that soon. In the meantime:
- A new guide on RCTs by JPAL's Rachel Glennerster and Kudzai Takavarasha, Running Randomized Evaluations: A Practical Guide, is getting strong reviews. See Chris Blattman and especially this detailed take by Markus Goldstein of the WB Development Impact blog. Adding this to my Christmas wish list...
- Speaking of Christmas, want to know where to put your holiday donations? (Or better yet, how to answer the "oh, you do charity stuff, who should I give money to?" holiday question.) GiveWell's 2013 recommendations are a good place to start.
- Ta-Nehisi Coates on bigotry (warning that this contains slurs)
- This is a few years old, but this Smithsonian essay on 'the first Thanksgiving' by Charles Mann's (the guy who wrote 1491 and 1493) is a fascinating bit of social and political history, with some epidemics thrown in as well.
- My favorite data visualization of the week charts the height and weight of every NFL player by position:
