Spatial Data and Analysis

I developed a new course last fall title "Spatial Data and Analysis". Because several people have asked for the material, I've finally posted the syllabus and assignments online here. 

Description of the course:

The recent explosion of spatially explicit data and analytical tools, such as "Geographic Information Systems" (GIS) and spatial econometrics, have aided researchers and decision- makers faced with a variety of challenges. This course introduces students to spatial data and its analysis, as well as the modeling of spatially dependent social processes and policy problems. Students will be introduced to the types, sources, and display of spatial data. Through hands-on analysis, students will learn to extract quantitative information from spatial data for applied research and public policy. Students will be introduced to spatial statistics, spatially dependent simulation, and spatial optimization. Students will learn to think creatively about spatial problems through examples drawn from economics, politics, epidemiology, criminology, agriculture, social networks, and the environment. The goal of the course is to equip advanced masters students and doctoral students with tools that will help them be effective analysts and communicators of spatial information in their future research or policy-related work. Because hands-on analysis plays a central role in the class, students will benefit from prior experience with basic computer programming -- although prior experience is not required. Prerequisites: introductory statistics or equivalent.

What is identification?

There are relatively few non-academic internet resources on identification and causal inference in the social sciences, especially of the sort that can be consumed by a nonspecialist. To remedy that slightly I decided to tidy up and post some slides I've used to give talks on causal inference a few times in the past year. They're aimed at senior undergrad or graduate students with at least some background in statistics or econometrics, and can be found here:

Causal Inference, Identification, and Identification Strategies

Feel free to drop me a line and give me feedback, especially if somethings seems unclear / incorrect. Thanks!

Probably the most important class I took at MIT

"Solving complex problems" (aka "12.000" or "Mission") is an innovated class for MIT freshman that was just awarded a Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction.  

The course is a component of the larger Terrascope program (of which I am a proud member of the first cohort) designed to teach leadership and teamwork skills to students as they work on unbearably large and complex problems related to global environmental management (usually) or a coupling between human and environmental systems more broadly. The class is expertly designed and run, played a major role in my own personal development, and would be the one class that I would unconditionally recommend to any incoming MIT freshman.  Furthermore, if any faculty FE-reader is trying to build a program in "sustainable development" at the undergraduate level, I would strongly recommend that they try to develop a similar course.

The course is described by Kip Hodges (my first research supervisor, now at ASU) in a Science article this week (read it here for free):

Students are presented in the first class with a challenge that can be stated simply, but that is deceptively complex and has no straightforward answer. Over the course of the semester, it is their job collectively to “imagineer” a proposed solution, to articulate their solution, and to explain how they arrived at it.

(To be clear about how the class works, on the first day of my first semester at MIT, Kip walked into the room and put up on the board 

"Develop a way to characterize and monitor the well-being of one of the last true frontiers on Earth – the Amazon Basin rainforest – and devise a set of practical strategies to ensure its preservation."

and said "go". I'm not kidding.)

The instructor’s role in this class is primarily to create an environment conducive to self-directed learning. There are no lectures, although the students are exposed in a casual way to a series of case studies that are germane to their problem.... 

In the early years of offering this subject, we passed on to the students a list of people who had been recruited by the instructional staff and had volunteered to participate in such discussions. However, we soon found that such recruiting efforts were unnecessary; many at all levels of the academic community are open to such informal interactions when they are precipitated by students asking questions that begin with a phrase like: “What is your take on ….” These casual conversations are especially valuable because they impart an appreciation for practical integration of acquired knowledge

The course is currently run by Sam Bowring and Ari Epstein and it's material is up on MIT's Open CourseWare.  This year's cohort recently gave their final presentation (watch it here). My cohort's website is still up here (search long enough, and you can even find my freshman photo).

h/t Kip

Topics in Sustainability: Global Fisheries

The undergraduate class I'm co-teaching is getting into the part of the semester where each class is devoted to a major issue in sustainability. Topics we cover range from energy to hydrology to public health; with issues so large and time so limited each class can, at best, provide a very quick overview of the field and the major open problems in it. Given that I have to put together relevant and up-to-date background materials anyway, I figured I might as well put some links to all the materials on the blog for interested FE readers. Following RealClimate's Start Here page, I'm going to break the literature down a bit by target reader demographics so hopefully everyone will be able to find something interesting to chew on. Feel free to comment and give feedback as the topics go up; depending on how much use they get these posts might eventually turn into intermittently-updated pages.

On that note, let's begin with the first topic: Global Fisheries.

Readers with minimal technical background:

• National Geographic's 2010 Oceans issue, especially the article Seafood Crisis (also see, the 2007 NG article The Global Fisheries Crisis)
• A 2010 New York Times Magazine article on collapsing tuna fisheries which covers a lot of the main issues
• The Monterrey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch guides (also available as an iPhone app)
• Ocean 2012's video on overfishing

Readers with some science or technical knowledge:

• Pauly et al. Nature 2002, a mildly technical (and no-paywall) overview 
• Worm et al. Science 2009, nice recent overview article
• Pauly et al. Science 1998, fishing down the trophic chain (and a 2003 Nature article on the same)
• Watling and Norse, Conservation Biology 1998,  bottom trawling as the ocean's analog to clear-cutting
• Duarte et al. Science 2007, domestication of aquatic species (i.e., aquaculture) has progressed much faster than that of terrestrial species
• Swartz et al. PLoS One 2010, spatial expansion of fisheries since 1950

Readers interested in current research topics:

• Sumaila et al. J. of Bioeconomics 2010, overfishing may be driven by government subsidies
• Chassot et al. Ecology Letters 2010, empirical evidence that global marine primary production constrains catches
• Costello et al. Science 2008, catch shares as a global policy instrument 
• Branch et al. Nature 2010, the trouble with mean trophic level as a measure
• Pinsky et al. PNAS 2011, faster-reproducing ocean species collapse more quickly than slow ones under fishing pressure (opposite of the size / harvest pattern for most terrestrial species)
• Sethi et al. PNAS 2010, historical fishery development is driven by (...surprise?) profitability 
• Agnew et al. PLoS One 2009, a global estimate of illegal fishing activity