Second Chance for New Student Orientation

An additional new student orientation will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 4, at 1:30pm at the Ritazza's in the library. All are welcome! Questions contact Andy at abaxter1 [at] uncc.edu.

New Student Orientation

New student orientation is scheduled for Wed. Aug. 29 and Thurs. Aug. 30 at 1:30pm in the Ritazza's in the library. Returning students feel free to join. Sessions are redundant. Questions, contact Andy at baxterassoc[at]gmail[dot]com.

Good Source of Training for SAS, SPSS, STATA

A relatively nearby, inexpensive, and high-quality source of training on some of the statistical software commonly used in our program is at the Odum Institute at UNC Chapel Hill. See this link:
http://www.odum.unc.edu/odum/jsp/content_node.jsp?nodeid=21
Scroll to the end to see the software course offerings.

-Andy

Additional Prelim Meetings

Thursday, May 24

10am: Dr. Kropf - Research Design

1pm: Dr. B - Quant

As of this posting, both will be in the Colvard graduate student lounge.

Current Prelim Meeting Schedule with Professors

Monday, May 14:
11 to noon - Schwarz
1pm to 2pm - Russo ***Econ conference room, 242 Friday Bldg.***

Tuesday, May 15:
11 to noon - Manuel
1pm to 2pm - Dr. B

July - Wang

All meetings in the Colvard Graduate Student Lounge directly down from the PPOL suite unless otherwise noted!

Still waiting to hear on everyone else. David says he will set a meeting with us when he has finalized everything.

I will post updates here and on the chalkboard in the Grad Lounge.

August 2007 Preliminary Exams

Hi everyone! As per my e-mail to those taking the prelims in August, this will be the place we can place the final schedule for professor meetings, joint study sessions, questions to the group, etc.

As of today, 4-20-2007, I have e-mailed all the professors requesting meetings with each of them for us during either the week of May 14th-18th or May 21st-25th.

David has said he would meet with us as soon as the new format is determined.

Wooooo-hooooo! I am looking forward to a summer of studying economics, stats, research design/methods, program evaluation and THEORY! Yeeeha.

See each of you soon. Cheers to all! Wendy

NYT article: Income Gap is Widening

New data (2005 tax records) show that Americans in the top 1% receive the largest share of national income since 1928. The top 10% received 48.5 % of all reported income.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/29tax.html?em&ex=1175400000&en=5a2d017aeb4df8cf&ei=5087%0A

ps....sorry no Gini coefficient discussion involved :)

Great Article Comparing STATA, SASS, and SPSS

Follow this link to a good breakdown of the relative strengths and weaknesses of SASS, STATA, and SPSS. Easy to read and very helpful.

http://www.ats.ucla.edu/STAT/technicalreports/Number1/ucla_ATSstat_tr1_1.0.pdf

Letter to President Bush regarding redeployment:

http://www.speaker.gov/pdf/pres1507.pdf

What do Socialists say.....Human Nature

We are filled with such a capitalistic viewpoint in some of our classes I thought this would be an interesting topic. Similar discussion has been known to cause quite caustic altercations between the best of friends amongst us when mixed with too much wine.

http://www.isreview.org/issues/47/wdss-humnature.shtml

International Dinner Night

This is something a few of us have discussed for a while now and hopefully can get started this coming semester.

Since we have such a variety of international students in our program, we thought it would be a good idea to get together one evening a month to enjoy authentic food from each country. Each month a different country would be featured and the student(s) from that country would lead the cooking. We also plan to have wine/beer/or drink and, of course, music (chosen by the chef(s)) from the country. Here are the people who expressed interest in cooking:

-Lilly/Huiping – China
-Olga/Sasha – Russia
-Silva – Nepal
-Martha – Colombia
-Stephanie P. - Ecuador
-Wendy - A yummy all-American vegan meal - I will find something that you
have never had before!

If there is anyone else interested in sharing a specific country's cuisine let me know!

We all plan to pitch in money to cover the ingredients of the meal. At the moment we plan on doing this one Sunday a month at my apartment. Even if you are not going to cook, everyone is welcome to come eat, drink and be merry!

As soon as the dates are determined I will post them here. Wendy

A New Year for the PPOL Blog!!

OK everyone, one of my New Year's resolutions is to post to our blog and help out Andy who has been posting alone with quiet determination (Thank you Mr. President). And while Andy's posts have been awesome, something is not quite working here. I am going to suggest that we keep the more academic slant which Andy has strived for over the last year and a half as the primary focus but incorporate our more social and political sides.

Over the next few days I will try to do just that with new postings and new headings (if Andy doesn't kick me off first).

Hope everyone is having a wonderful break! (It snowed in Asheville!!)

Good luck to all taking preliminaries the first week in January!

Cheers and Peace, Wendy

PublicServiceCareers.org - Careers / Resumes / Jobs

PublicServiceCareers.org - Careers / Resumes / Jobs

Great new job listing service for policy jobs.

Pretty Cool New Open Source Bibliographic Management Tool

Zotero - The Next-Generation Research Tool

IPUMS Winter Workshop

Minnesota Population Center: "IPUMS Winter Workshop

January 10-12, 2007
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities



The IPUMS Winter Workshop is a 3-day event designed to train social scientists to use the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. The databases covered will include IPUMS-USA, IPUMS-International, IPUMS-CPS, and the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS). Together, these databases cover 150 years of U.S. and international census data.

"