Mark J. PanaggioAug 1, 202014 min readCoronavirus conspiracies and moral matricesLately I have seen quite a few posts on social media that can be paraphrased as follows: [Insert villain] is destroying our society by...
Mark J. PanaggioJul 29, 202010 min readEcho chambers and political polarizationThis is part 2 of a series on social media and its effects on society. You can find part 1 here. Also, if you enjoy these posts. Please...
Mark J. PanaggioJul 24, 20204 min readThis one chart showing mortality risk will blow your mindYou know how some people like to downplay this whole pandemic situation by pointing out that most of the people who die are old and/or...
Mark J. PanaggioJul 19, 202016 min readCommencement and Confirmation Bias at Hillsdale CollegeI didn’t want to write this post. In this blog, I have tried to steer clear of criticizing particular people and institutions and to...
Mark J. PanaggioJul 18, 20205 min readWhy is the death rate lower and will it stay that way?On July 9th, the Atlantic published an article entitled COVID-19 Cases Are Rising, So Why Are Deaths Flatlining? In this article they...
Mark J. PanaggioJul 15, 20205 min readHow to lie with percentagesStatistics are great. They can tell us tons of useful stuff about what is happening in the world. They can tell us lots of fun facts....
Mark J. PanaggioJul 14, 202010 min readAbout those surges of COVID patients...Back in March when the world shut down, hospitals began bracing themselves for an uncertain future. There were stories of hospitals in...
Mark J. PanaggioJul 10, 20207 min readGoing viral: How (dis)information is like a virusWhat is it that allows an infectious disease to cause an epidemic or even a pandemic? It turns out that you need a transmissible entity...
Mark J. PanaggioJun 23, 20207 min readCOVID-19 Testing and Goodhart's Law “Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would...
Mark J. PanaggioJun 18, 202013 min readRacial inequality and dynamical systemsI was on Facebook the other day, when I saw a shared post that said the following: “No white person alive today ever owned a slave. No...
Mark J. PanaggioJun 13, 202011 min readIs there evidence of discrimination in policing data?In the last post, I discussed the trade-offs between false negatives (guilty people who are treated as innocent) and false positives...
Mark J. PanaggioJun 10, 202013 min readWhat do classification algorithms reveal about whether black lives matter?Classifications problems are hard. There is no way around it. We face them every day. The reality is that mistakes are inevitable and the...
Mark J. PanaggioJun 10, 20206 min readHow can you measure which lives matter?Black lives matter. Blue lives matter. All lives matter. When I first started hearing statements like these I was admittedly a bit...
Mark J. PanaggioJun 8, 20208 min readAre stereotypes grounded in fact?In the last post, I discussed the “mere-exposure” effect and how neutral and positive exposure has been shown to decrease prejudice and...
Mark J. PanaggioJun 8, 20205 min readFamiliarity breeds… acceptance? In the last post, I highlighted the fact that social networks are assortative, meaning that we tend to form connections to people who are...
Mark J. PanaggioJun 5, 20209 min readAssortativity, chimera states and empathyBack in early 2016 when the primaries were in full swing, I was sitting around the lunch table with colleagues, when the conversation...
Mark J. PanaggioJun 4, 20206 min readInflection pointBoth the coronavirus and the issues brought to light by the protests surrounding Floyd's death warrant our attention.
Mark J. PanaggioMay 31, 20205 min readMy normal approach is useless hereIn the last week, I have tried to sit down and write about what is happening in the world repeatedly, but I have been unable to put...
Mark J. PanaggioMay 26, 20204 min readAll models are wrong, but this time the models got it rightToday, the death toll for COVID-19 in the US crossed 100000, a staggering number that makes this virus the third leading cause of death...
Mark J. PanaggioMay 23, 20206 min readYour social network is larger than you thinkIn case anyone was wondering why this blog went from having a few posts per week to nothing for a couple of weeks, my family and I just...
