My mi presentation at the useR! 2009

I have been to many conferences. Most of them are of Political Science. The common feature of these conferences is that the audience size is always small. If you get 10 audiences in your panel, your must be a big name.

My presentation at the useR! 2009 was an exception. I had the biggest audience ever. I guess that there were at least over 60 people in the room. Had I known this, I should have prepared a better talk to introduce our mi package. I did not control time well. So I have no time to go through real examples. Nonetheless, here is the link to the paper in case you were among one of the 60 people who might want to know more details about our mi package.

To close this entry, as a political scientist, I would like to answer why there were so many people in my panel with three points. Yes, three points, as most political scientists would do when they answer questions:

1. Big names. I am no big name. But the conference program did list Andy and Jennifer's name on it because they are coauthors. So I think people came for their fame. In fact, many people did ask if Andy and Jennifer were in the conference. Yes, this must be the major reason.

2. People want to know more about mi. The existing mi packages are really disappointing. So they would like to know the alternative. If this was the case, please do read our paper. I explain things better there.

3. My panel was the first panel in the first day. We have 450 attenders. And each time slot has 6 panels. So the number was about right. Each panel on the same time must be flooded with the same number of people.

useR! 2009 conference, Rennes, France

Since my last attendance of the useR conference in Vienna, Austria, I have always wanted to go back. However, the high registration fee was always the factor that chills me off.

This year, I am taking advantage of my last year as the student (the registration fee is cheaper) and the sponsorship of my two bosses, Andy and Jennifer, I went to the useR! 2009 conference. This year, the conference was held in Rennes, France. The location is another attraction for me to attend the conference.

I must said this. This is so far the best conference I have ever attended. Here are the reasons:

1. The food was good. But mostly I was talking about the conference dinner. They served very good wines. We had a feast of French food.



2. The presentations were very informative and educational. Personally speaking, I felt that there were two major theme of the conference. One is the advancement and improvement of the R computing speed and power. Parallel computing became a hot issue since the R user have began to notice about the insufficiency of R with this respect. Secondly, Using R as a tool in graphical presentation of the data. Some talks were about the choice of color scheme (HCL is better than RBG) and some were introduction of new R graphic packages (e.g., ggplot2).

3. The attendance rate of the audience was high. I think part of the reason was that we all were stocked in a small town in Rennes. Nothing really more interesting than R was there in the city. But having said this, maybe it is also true that most of the attenders are R geeks. They like R more than anything else.

Overall, the conference was very coherent and very informative. Although we did not have the best hardware (the conference building were surprisingly crude, see the picture below), we had a nice, calmly environment that made us all focus on the discussion of R.

@ Agrocampus Ouest, Rennes, France

This is the last day of the useR conference. In the coffee break time, I am surfing on the web to plan my trip to Paris.

It was 12 years ago since my last visit in France. The feeling is weird. And the keyboard of the computer lab in the Agrocampus Ouest University is also weird. The position of the keys is quite different than those of the US standard one.

So far, this is the best conference I have ever attended. One word for the trip so far? "Comfortable".

台灣政治學會--最佳論文獎

雖然這件事發生已經有一個多月了，記得會後有位學生記者在頒獎典禮的空檔對我進行採訪，以下就是她採訪稿的節錄。

【記者王品文報導】「台灣政治學會年會暨學術研討會」十七、十八日於政治大學展開，主題訂為：「台灣民主的實踐：責任、制度與行為」，邀請台灣大學、成功大學等超過卅所大專院校之學者與會。研討會共有九十六篇論文發表，由紐約市立大學研究生蘇毓淞及政治大學政治所學生黄士豪、謝易宏分別獲得「年度最佳論文獎」與「政治學碩士論文獎」。

...

蘇毓淞以〈Induced Governance by Remittances: the Poor and the Clientelist Party in Mexico〉一文獲「研討會年度最佳論文獎」，文中指出，墨西哥因西元一九八Ｏ年的經濟危機造成政府支持度下滑，貧窮勞工只得出國工作，將收入匯款回國。政府為挽回民心，以「誘引型治理」攏絡選民，蘇毓淞研究後發現，收受匯款越多的家庭，受政府補助的機會也越高。

...

103rd Annual Meeting of APSA in Chicago (I)

Annual meeting of American Political Science Association is the biggest conference in political science. Having attended many conferences, APSA was the missing color of my conference attending rainbow. It just does not accept paper that easily compared to other conferences. The secrete of the admission was to organize a panel. Having this idea in mind, I just have to find 3-4 other panelists to form a panel.

It was last year (2006), when I was in Professor Woodward's workshop for proposal writing for dissertation, I noticed that there are 2 other students who had similar topics as I did. So I began to organize the panel on Migrants/Diasporas and Domestic Politics. The panel was rejected in the first place but was mysteriously accepted in the early June.

Chicago Again!
Although I, as the student, should devote ourselves and get most out of a conference attending, I always like to think of conference attending as a trip to a city. Unfortunately, this year, all the conferences I attended this year were all in Chicago. The APSA meeting this year is also in Chicago. Three times to Chicago. What a chance! When I got off the plane this time at the O'Hare airport, I had a feeling that I was home! Not away from home! The subway to the city was still very slow (1 hour ride). The city government posted an ad on the train promised that by the end of 2008, the train will speed up t0 55 miles/hour. It ran amazingly slow with 25 miles/hour now.

Hyatt Regency Hotel
The conference was so big that it uses two hotels as its conference sites. One is Hyatt Regency and the other one is Sheraton Chicago Hotel . These two hotels are located close to each other by a river and a lake. The view was magnificent. But no subway was near these two hotels. I met a faculty from Boston University who was also looking for a way to reach the hotels. We ended up taking a cab to the hotel from a the Clark street station which I latter noticed it was just 10 min walk. I stayed in Haytt this time which I must say was the best hotel I have even stayed with in the US. The lobby, the window view, and the room was all .....good. I just was not excited because I was in Chicago again. I was happy to learn that I can get a free "continental breakfast" while my stay in Hyatt. But it turned out that it was a misinformation the clerk gave to me when I checked in. I ended up spening 18 dollars for a "continental breakfast." If you understand what continental breakfast mean, you will understand how upset I was.

Chicago, not a dining-friendly place
I had this feeling every time I visit here. The reason I think Chicago is not a dinning-friendly place is that you can barely find a easy, small restaurant to dine in. It is either fast-food or luxurious restaurants. Where are those cozzy dine places? But maybe my observation is biased because where I live is designed to serve those 4-stars hotel customers.

MPSA in Chicago 2007

This year, I presented a paper in 65th MPSA conference. The title of the paper is "Who Receives Aid and Why?" I got many constructive comments about how to make my story more telling, how to improve my data analysis, and the problem of existing aid data (no data for Soviet and China aid). I was mostly stunned by the comment, saying that I should justify myself in the paper why I choose to use fancy multilevel modeling technique over simple alternatives.

In fact, I have a whole page in the paper, arguing why (Bayesian) multilevel modeling (BML) is better than other alternatives (OLS with PCSE's, FE, RE, etc). The paper by Shor et al (2007) in Political Analysis has shown the superiority of BML with the Monte Carlo experiments.

Besides theoretically arguments, I have a Figure (see below) where I plot aid trends by regions across countries from 1960--2002. The light lines indicate individual country aid trend and the dark lines represent the world average aid trend. The plot clearly shows that there are variation across regions, between countries and by years. So in the paper, I propose to use BML to model the aid allocation.

Today, I asked Andy's about his views on this issue. I got most out of his answers was his first quick and simple response: ``OLS is a special case of multilevel modeling where the group level variation is zero." For me, this is a straight forward way of looking at the issue of why BML not OLS. ``Multilevel modeling is an easier thing to do!" Although I don't know if others would believe this, but it is the case when you think about doing all kind of data transformations, creating dummies to correct the potential problem in the Time-Series Cross-sectional data.

Assuming my discussant read my paper carefully, she must have got the idea of why I used BML from the discussion in the page and the figure. So I am thinking maybe what she wanted was a hard evidence, showing that the BML's result is better. And this is in fact very common, at least for paper published in polisci journal, that authors always have a base model (OLS) in a table where all other advanced model are presented on the right of the OLS one.

I guess what I tries to convey in this entry is: if you believe your model is better (or correct), why bother going back to a simple model? Even if the results may be similar, we still get something out of the advanced modeling as we're definitely taking care of more aspects of the data. Maybe the norm of the discipline made us to do all this redundant procedure. But advanced modeling certainly does not necessarily mean more difficult to do.

ISA in Chicago Part II: Deep Dish Pizza

大雪狂飛的芝加哥，硬是把我們困在旅館裡，幸好我有Hilton金卡，有全天候的lounge可以在那吃吃喝喝，我們也利用這個機會問到了芝加哥必吃的Deep Dish Pizza餐廳地點。

好容易等到了晚餐時間，門外仍是大雪狂飛，位在Sears Tower旁的Giordano ，雖然只在旅館步行可至的距離，天氣這樣，卻只好讓小黃賺了我們一筆。

Dish Pizza都是餐廳隨到隨做，所以都要等三十分鐘左右，我們點了双拼，就是下圖菜單第三項，然後耐心等待！





三十分鐘後，我們看到了傳說中的Deep Dish Pizza，果如字面上容的一般，一個如深盤子似的Pizza，深盤中加了大量的起司，更增加了它的嚼勁！

味道如何呢？對一個早上倒過胃的我，仿彿在咬一個鹹味的口香糖。

ISA in Chicago Part I: Hog!

記得有位學姐說過，「忘了有申請過的會議，往往會給你錄取的驚喜！」果然，在幾個月前收到了 International Studies Association (ISA) 的錄取通知，不過卻沒有前幾次那麼興奮了，除了對參加會議有點麻木不仁外，對於開會地點又是芝加哥，總是提不起勁來。「開會就是渡假！」但是一個去過的地方，而且四月份又要再去的城市，似乎有點「多餘」！唯一替這次行程潤色的，是Zoe剛好來訪，順道帶她去看看設計師競爭下產生的城市。

風城芝加哥

美國的冬天，應該是說2006-7全球的冬天來得特別晚。清晨從紐約出發的我們，正慶幸著躲過一天大雨的日子，卻不知道芝加哥正被暴風雪侵襲。飛機極為不穩的降落，讓我又將早上的熱巧克力全部嘔了出來，拖著虛弱的身體，走在還算豪華的 O'Hare機場，天真的我們，仍然不曉得暴風雪正在等著我們，由於上次來的經驗，我決定坐地鐵到市區就好，買了張地鐵票，單程二元。



當地鐵從機場底出來後，我才知道，原來芝加哥在下大雪，仍有時差的Zoe睡死了，我則研究著要在那個站下車，才可以減少與大雪的接觸，但所謂計畫趕不上變化，人算不如天算，出了地鐵站的我們才發現，風大雪大，帶的小傘根本沒用，風雪大的根本無法辨認方向，當下我們就躲進一家速食店，重整旗鼓一下，研究一下步該怎麼走。我心底是犯滴沽，不是出來地鐵站就可以看到了嗎？

眼看風雪沒有停的跡象，我們決定先到Hotel在說，招手攔了輛小黃，上車向運將說：

"Hilton Chicago please!"

"It is around this corner!"

"...................."

原來我沒錯，但是寸步難行的氣候下，我們還是付了五美元到這個around the corner! Okay! 終於到了Hilton Chicago!

*************
機上的芝加哥短片曾問到芝加哥之所以為風城是因 :
A 湖邊吹來的風很大
B 政客很愛膨風
C 忘了

答案是B，但是這次的經歷，讓我思考答案是A+B的可能性，後來經過紐約房東的說明，芝加哥的風很有名，人稱hog，像野豬亂奔一般的猛烈。

MPSA in Chicago, IL

第一次到Chicago就下榻MPSA的指定的Hilton Palmer House Hotel。抵達當時，少不了的去周圍看看，第一印象就是覺得這個城市的建築很有水準，市容很美，當下開始懷疑是不是紐約住久了，那裡都比這個雜亂的蘋果城市美。


原來這就是Round Table

這次發表文章對我來說，最大的變數就是不知道Round Table的發表型式，勘查場地的結果，只看到Informal Round Table，就是類似辦桌的圓桌，難道Formal Round Table是更大的圓桌嗎？

進到我的發表會場，完全沒有一張圓桌，會場則是一般Panel的三倍大，而且還有專屬衛浴，嘖，怪嚇人的。

結果時間一到，竟然只有我與另外一位發表人，沒有討論者，正在納悶的時候，進來了一位聽眾，而且令人意外的是，他竟然是哥大上課的同學，當下三人討論說，到外面的cafe討論算了，說歸說，我們還是著著實實地演了一場發表會。

好小的城市，好遠的距離

跟友人相約來一場城市觀光，目標Chinatown，為什麼呢？因為Chicago雖美，但是食物實在是沒有多少選擇，都是美式食物居多，所以我們打算利用發表完所剩半天的時間，去Chinatown覓食。

看看地圖，Chinatown距會場Wabash Station只有三站，我們當下決定步行前往。沒想到這就是悲劇的開始，一開始我們南北搞錯，走了二個多小時的冤枉路，雖然深度的體驗了芝加哥，卻讓我們又累又疲，終於在我們回頭又走了二個小時的路後，我們放棄了，Chinatown沒找到，還是回頭吃了美式食物。

豌豆地標

現在進入Chicago最顯目的，莫過於在Millieum Park中的豌豆了，一個由不鏽剛打造豌豆形狀的地標，讓遊客站在前面，就可以將周圍的高樓大廈映入眼簾，建築＋數學＋美術之美，莫過於此。





草原風建築？日本風？

Frank Lloyd Wright從日本學習回來之後，開創了所謂草原風的建築，在他的居住的Oak Park社區，所有房子完全是他設計的，不過說實在的，仔細瞧了瞧他的設計，還真是有日本味，唯一令人不悅的事，他顯然賺了不少，參觀他的房子要$12元，他設計的東西又標價特貴，一張不起眼的椅子竟然要$400多美金，真是#％#$@#




One Day Fun Pass

旅遊心得：請多利用$5元的One Day Fun Pass，有效期廿四小時，千萬不要步行，Chicago是不大，但也夠你走了。


PS. 感謝同行的沈學姐提供以上照片!

PPSA in Harrisburg, PA

3月31日、4月1日，我參加了人生第一場的學術會議Pennsylvania Political Science Conference (PPSA)，地點在賓州州政府所在Harrisburg.


動身前的小插曲

通常，紐約到費城只消二小時BUS的車程，來回票只需20元，這也是當初我選擇
PPSA的原因，如果你到Yahoo Map上查Harrisburg, PA你會發現，它就在Philadaphia東北方的小城鎮，30分鐘的車程，所以交通上對於紐約的學生來說，極為方便，但是我完全錯了!!!

這個Harrisburg正是大名鼎鼎美國內戰聖地，PA的首府，距賓州是二小時的車程，距紐約是四小時，所以出發前二天，我失眠了，因為我預定要在31日中午發表第一篇文章，所以那就表示我必須在天一亮就從紐約動身，唯幸天佑我也，Amtrak竟然有停靠Harrisburg。


站在忠孝東路問忠孝東路怎麼走


雖然在火車上睡了快四個鐘頭，但是一出Harrisburg車站的我，決定對自己好一點，搭個的士吧（事實上我實在對於會議地點以及我下榻Hilton飯店在那一點概念都嘸），看到一位長髮大鬍子的美國問將向我招手，我就大方的走過去了。


"Hi, I'd like to go to the State Capitol!"


這句話換來得是那位問將的冷漠，我心想，也許太近了人家不載吧，所以我又問：


"Um, I'd also like to go to the Hiton Hotel!"


問將可能是受不了我了，他只好當起解說員，他說：


"See, the Capitol is over there! Hilton is over there!"


這........我趕緊離開現場，朝著there and there去，事實上，我只知道there and there，但是到底是wherer and where 啊！


好假的城市



話說我前往尋找我的there and there，運氣不錯，我找到了第一個there，然後就看到下一個there的路標，然後又迷路了，幸好附近就是Vistors' Infromation Center，所以我也很幸運的找到我的飯店。


在這找路得途，我好好的欣賞了這個城市，感覺是好假，因為太乾淨了，好假，因為太白了，好假，因為太正式了。


第一個好假可能是因為我來自紐約所造成的錯誤印象，第二個好假還是因為我來自多民族的紐約
所有的false impression，第三個好假，則是因為我內心的不安所追造成的，因為我抗拒著穿西裝，所以眼見人人都穿西裝的同時，我就覺得這個城市好假。


在離開的早上我看到了一個黑人，他開著清潔車打掃街道，我又找到了一個不存在我經驗的好假，他竟然為了一片小紙屑，將車前前後後，左左右右的開了一遍，就為了將小紙屑吸入車中。在紐約，你只看到清潔車呼嘯而過，街道是乾淨了，人行道則是作用力與反作用力所遺留下的髒亂，車子吹起街上的垃圾，垃圾掉在人行道上。


安靜的聽眾


我發表的二篇文章是充滿數字、統計的，這樣的文章，對於傳統的PPSA來說，是異端，連帶著，我的聽眾都是靜默的，也好，第一次的學術發表，沒有人打擊我的信心，信心建力與暖身的目的都達到了，期待的是下一場在芝加哥的MWPSA。