EPOP-ing

The name hints towards light alcoholic drinks up to 5% and normally of a non-edible looking colour. If you chose that option your error term would hit the ceiling. (And if you did not understand this comment, give up reading this entry now.)

In a weekend full of numbers and various ways to operationalize concepts so abstract that could not be described with anything less a three volume edition of 200 different academic definitions. And yet, call me weird (cause of course this is what I am) I felt like a fish in its well known waters.

I mean think about it. An academic conference is the best type of holiday one can ever wish. It is in a new place, with all trivial matters left for skilled admin stuff, accommodation and food sorted, and endless amounts of coffee and good quality wine. The people there are more or less familiar to one another. But even if you end up in the wrong corner full of strangers at a coffee break there are endless options for conversation. This structured environment allows even those with the worse social skills to find common ground and engage into meaningful and fruitful conversation. It is a very inclusive event, bridging the gap among generations, genders and all kinds of other categorizations. There is only one thing that you can be discriminated against: Your inability to interpret statistics. And by statistics I do not mean percentages, means and standard deviations. I mean econometric models. If you cannot tell a story just by looking at numbers on the given table, then you are regarded with pity (Poor chap he needs work to do) or disrespect (What do you expect of qualitative analysis? Or - God forbid - theory??)

Each and every one of the delegates can come up with a theoretical model to explain even how many times tony Blair farts during an electoral campaign, and for sure at least a thousand different was to test this model. The Nomad is no different. She runs models for living. And not the models with breasts and long legs, but rather the ones with constant values and beta coefficients.

Socializing in such environment is very rewarding, you never get challenged in personal terms, the only criticism is on your numbers and the ability to make jokes is considered just as a positive extra. Any romance appearing in such conference has definitely a statistical connotation and inevitably a huge standard error. There is only so much stats one can take to his bedroom. Although my personal belief is that two theorists (aka philosophers in disguise) are truly a nightmarish combination, and the end of human breeding, come to that. I wonder though what is a better gene pool. A number cruncher or a theorist?


On my way back from the conference, I feel refreshed, motivated, completely ego-boosted and while the others around me in the train read their books, I explain their political behaviour running a brand new econometric model. If only they knew, ignorant lot…that while they are just being transferred from one place to the other a genius political scientist is using them as unwilling guinea pigs!

PS. The term genius used here has no empirical evidence. It is an opportunity for further research. (Someone switch off the EPOP mode on the Nomad please!)