What’s New?

[CV of Stephen T. Ziliak (2024)]

[right] “Steve Ziliak aka The Haiku Economist,” by Yuko Shimizu (2009)

 

 

 

NEWS YOU CAN USE

 

  • “Economics, Class, and Narrative: The Unacknowledged Success of Negative Income Tax Experiments” (with Edward Teather-Posadas, Anders Fremstad, Bryan Rodriguez, and Alexandra Bernasek), forthcoming (2024)

Blast from the past, the 2002 Winner of the Helen Potter Award for Best Paper in Social Economics, “Pauper Fiction”:

Pauper Fiction in Economic Science _ RSE Ziliak 2002

  • Ziliak’s “Haiku Economics” goes to Paris! Featured in a 2024 book by Actes Sud, Poésie de l’art faber : Quand les poètes racontent et façonnent les mondes économiques, eds. Jérôme Duval-Hamel, Lourdes Arizpe
  • “Statistically Significant Obstacles: Career Courage and Paradigm Shift (2024)

 

Student and the Lanarkshire Milk Experiment (Ziliak, Chance 2024)

 

 

 

 

 

  • “What does a little p value have to do with significance?” Mount Sinai Hospital New York, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Applied Biostatistics and Data Sciences Seminar Series, February 2022 (Organizer: Dr. Emma K.T. Benn)

 

  • Runner-up, “My Headline is Better” Contest, stats+stories, November 2022 (Winner, “Best Lede in 30 Words Contest,” stats+stories, Miami University, October 2019.)

 

pdf: Becoming a JEDI Statistician (Ziliak 2021)

 

 

Deirdrest – Ziliak JCE Schmollers Jahrbuch 2020

See also, “Deirdre N. McCloskey” in Ross Emmett, ed., Elgar Companion to the Chicago School of Economics (drafted 2002, revised 2006):

Deirdre McCloskey bio Stephen Ziliak_Chicago School of Economics_Emmett book

 

  • Stephen T. Ziliak appointed Editor of Schmollers Jahrbuch-Journal of Contextual Economics.  (DuBois and Veblen smiling from above, or from somewhere, he hopes.)

 

  • Meisterklasse on Ziliak studies taught at University of Seigen, Germany, by Dr. Stephan Wolf, Department of Contextual Economics, November 2020-January 2021, with capstone lectures by Ziliak

 

 

 

 

 

  • “How large are your G-values? Try Guinnessometrics,” Chicago Chapter of the American Statistical Association, Annual Banquet & Lecture, East Bank Club, December 2019

 

 

  • On November 6, 2019, Stephen Ziliak gave a lecture on “The Death of Statistical Significance” at the Walter Eucken Institut, Freiburg, Germany, at a conference honoring the contributions of Deirdre N. McCloskey to freedom and humane economics

 

 

Broken Glasses Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

  • Honored to be back on the Stats+Stories podcast, this time talking about Guinnessometrics. But also: The Cult of Statistical Significance, 25 years of doing archival research, welfare casework, teaching Econ with Grapes of Wrath & haiku

 

  • Stephen T. Ziliak’s research on statistical significance, Guinnessometrics, and haiku economics is featured in an interview he did with The Mint Magazine, a product of the London-based PEP (Promoting Economic Pluralism).  The interview, published in June 2019, is called “Significantly Speaking”

 

  • Looking for an alternative to meaningless p-values?  Ziliak’s new article in The American Statistician can help:

“How large are your G-values? Try Gosset’s Guinnessometrics when a little ‘p’ is not enough”  (Ziliak is Associate Editor of this historic special issue of The American Statistician on Statistical Inference in the 21st Century: A World Beyond p < 0.05)

Media press release (April 24, 2019)

  • Searching for a fast and effective way to write, revise, and even grade papers?  With you in mind I’ve invented the “McZ#” method, now published in the Third Edition of Deirdre McCloskey’s Economical Writing (University of Chicago Press, 2019)

Bayesian method-/Making stuff you partly know/ link that which you don’t

Frequentist methods/ Fear the null hypothesis/ and large p-values

“It pays to go Bayes”/ Epistemologically/ obvious in prior

Teaching Graduate Econometrics _ Jnl Econ Education _ McCloskey Ziliak

  • Chicagoans, tourists, and other horse lovers: have you noticed there is no more Poop in the Loop?  Many thanks to Yves Smith and Nakedcapitalism for exposing the problem which led to the clean up.  Biggest congrats of all to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Superintendent of Police Eddie Johnson, for replacing expensive horses with efficient bicycles.

 

  • What happens when statistics meets haiku & vice versa? Submit your haiku statistica here, at the American Statistical Assocation, “What is Statistics” link. Win a prize you’ll be proud to wear! Here are a couple by Prof Z:

What is statistics?
Making sweet sense of data
mean and variant

Model citizens
spotting signals in the noise:
that is statistics

Deirdre McCloskey bio_ Ziliak Chicago Econ 2010

  • New article by Stephen T. Ziliak, “How large are your G-values: Try Gosset’s Guinnessometrics when a little ‘p’ is not enough,” The American Statistician (Special Issue: “Statistical Inference and Scientific Method in the World Beyond P < 0.05”, 2018)

Co-editor, The American Statistician (Special Issue: “Statistical Inference and Scientific Method in the World Beyond P < 0.05”, 2018)

  • Ziliak’s recent “How large are your G-values?” will be presented at the Chicago R-User Group Hacktoberfest, Tues. 10/16, 5:45-8:45, Haymarket Brewery, 737 W. Randolph St

 

 

  • Forthcoming, Stephen T. Ziliak and Edward Teather-Posadas, “The Making of an Ethical Econometrician” in Wilfred Dolfsma and Ioana Negru, eds., The Ethical Formation of Economists (Routledge, 2019)

 

 

 

  • Published, “William Sealy Gosset”, Feature essay in the New College Record, 2017 (University of Oxford, New College Annual Report, published Spring 2018), edited by Christopher Tyerman

 

 

Book launch!
  • FLASHBACK  Bretton Woods, NH, 2011:  Keynes and Morgenthau have not moved since 1944! Or is that Steve Ziliak and Phil Mirowski?

 

Sweet little book launch w/ “Haiku Economics”

 

 

 

 

  • Haiku contest at the American Statistical Association, with prizes! Ziliak launches it here, with haiku answering the question “What is Statistics?”

https://www.amstat.org/ASA/Contest.aspx

Lovely Day for a Regression!

New College Oxford 2017 Ziliak photoWilliam of Wykeham, New College Oxford, Winchester Ziliak photoGuinnessometrics at New College Oxford 2 (Ziliak 2017)Trinity College Dublin, Lecky, Ziliak photoGuinnessometrics at Oxford New College (Ziliak 2017)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guinness Brewery St. Jame's Gate_Ziliak 2017

  • Stephen T. Ziliak’s essay, “Honest Abe Was a Co-op Dude: How the Donald Can Save America from Capital Despotism,” published in Trumponomics: Causes and Consequences (Real World Economics Review 78, March 2017)

The pdf is here: Ziliak Honest Abe Economics paper_RWER 2017

Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” Abraham Lincoln (1861)
“Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” -Abraham Lincoln (1861)

AIRLEAP 2017 Ziliak

  • At the fourth ICAPE Conference on Pluralism in Economics Stephen Ziliak and Edward Teather-Posadas presented their paper, “Coasebusters: Ethics, Justice, and the Nature of the Firm”, Roosevelt University (Jan 5 2017)

Stephen Ziliak presented “The Oomph Revolution: Law, Statistics, and Policy” at the 2016 Beloit College Upton Forum on The Ideas and Influence of Deirdre N. McCloskey (Nov 4 2016)adamsmith

  • Adam Smith scholar and blogger Gavin Kennedy praises Ziliak’s and Barbour’s take-down of Robert Frank’s The Darwin Economy.  Read Kennedy’s post at Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy (August 16th 2016) and the paper published in Schmollers Jarhbuch, here:

Smith’s Wedge_Ziliak and Barbour_Schmollers Jahrbuch

What is a “Conjoint Professor“?

  • Stephen Ziliak aka “The Haiku Economist” was a judge of the 12th annual Haiku Fest competition, Harold Washington Library, Chicago, April 30th 2016.  Video by CAN-TV begins at 1:02:03
  • At the Colorado State University Department of Economics, Ziliak advised PhD students and gave a talk on”Guinnessometrics,” April 4th 2016

Here is his Discussion paper published in The American Statistician (March 7th 2016).  Click on “Supplemental”). Or get it here:

Ziliak Discussion of ASA Statement_The American Statistician-1

Comment (and haiku) at FiveThirtyEight

Feature article in Scientific American (Germany): “Statistik: Eine signifikante Geschichte“, by Christian Honey (March 7th 2016)

         Stephen Ziliak The Haiku Economist

 Comments at EmployStats, Samuel Barbour’s Blog

Ziliak Queen's University Belfast

Stephen Ziliak Crossing Stephen's Green, DublinZiliak Trinity College Dublin

 

 

 

 

Smith’s Wedge_Ziliak and Barbour_Schmollers Jahrbuch

 Reprint at Center for Genetics and Society (UC Berkeley)

Lovely Day for a Regression!
Lovely Day for a Regression!

               Link at Mark Thoma’s Economist’s View

Comment at Chris Blattman

  • Stephen Ziliak has been elected to the Board of the Directors of AIRLEAP–the Association for Integrity and Responsible Leadership in Economics and Associated Professions, Washington DC (December 1st 2015)
Oatmeal Stout clock Newcastle Australia near Hamilton Station.
Oatmeal Stout clock in Newcastle, Australia across the street from Hamilton Station. It’s L after S!
  • At the annual meetings of the Southern Economic Association (New Orleans, November 2015) Ziliak presented two papers based on the two chapters he published in the Oxford Handbook on Professional Economic Ethics (Oxford U Press, 2016, Eds. G. DeMartino and D. McCloskey).

Economics Rap Video Release Party Ziliak 2015

AntiCap, “Fear the Economics Textbook” (by David Ruccio, May 6th 2015)

Naked Keynesianism, “Fear the Economics Textbook: The Response to the Keynes/Hayek Video” (May 6th 2015)

Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy, “Interesting Debate on Smith and Hayek” (May 8th 2015)

National Review, “A Professor Who Misunderstands What Economics Is About” (May 9th 2015)

Rethinking Economics, “Where Moral Sentiments Replace Supply and Demand: The RU Ready4Justice Collective’s Economics Rap Video” (by Paul Gilbert, University of Sussex, UK July 14th 2015)

Thom Hartmann Program, “Fear the Economics Textbook/A Rap Video” (June 2nd 2015)

cropped-Haiku-economist-Stephen-T-Ziliak-Oomph.jpg

World Congress on Angiogenesis 2015, Stuart Street Playhouse, Boston with Dr. William Li and Mr. Garvin Evans, Panel on Guinnessometrics, Outliers, Health, and Medicine

Read more at Mark Thoma’s Economist’s View (Nov 10th 2014), David Ruccio’s Anticap (“Abraham Lincoln and the road to despotism“, Nov 14th 2014), Ruccio reprinted with comments in the  Real-World Economics Review , and Tim Harford’s Twitter

“Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” Abraham Lincoln

 

1969 Chart of U.S. Presidents (from Lincoln's House, Springfield) 004
Honest Abe was a co-op dude

 

 

Guinness Brewery, St James s Gate Dublin Ziliak photo

  • What is renganomics?  Read Stephen T. Ziliak’s “The Spontaneous Order of Words: Economics Experiments in Haiku and Renga,” published in Vol. 5, No. 3 of the International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education (2014)                                                                                                                                                       The article introduces a new game and teaching tool, called renganomics, and includes economic haiku and renga by six Roosevelt students                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Renganomics Paper – ZILIAK IJPEE 2014

Haiku economist Stephen T Ziliak Oomph

“Words – the symbolic language used to communicate – are portrayed by social scientists as at the same time powerful and powerless in affecting social change. The question is, however, not whether words are powerful – it is not clear if these theories can be reconciled – but when they are powerful and towards what consequence. This panel symposium facilitates a multi-diciplinary dialogue on the topic, by bringing four eminent scholars from sociology, psychology, economics and communication studies to reflect on their fields’ insights and engage in dialogue.”

Ziliak McCloskey Lady Justice v Cult of Statistical Signifcance_ Ethics 2014

"This statistical significance always works and always doesn't work." - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Matrixx v. Siracusano Oral Arguments, January 2011.
“This statistical significance always works and always doesn’t work.” – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Matrixx v. Siracusano Oral Arguments, January 2011

“Precision is Nice, but Oomph is the Bomb” (Ziliak and McCloskey 2008, p. 23)

Presenting Dr. Deconinck (and his limerick writing Jury), KU Leuven, Belgium 2014: Frank Verboven, Erik Schokkaert, Koen Deconinck, Jo Swinnen, Julian Alston, and Stephen T. Ziliak
Presenting Dr. Deconinck (and his limerick writing Jury), KU Leuven, Belgium 2014: Frank Verboven, Erik Schokkaert, Koen Deconinck, Jo Swinnen, Julian Alston, Stephen T. Ziliak

 

Read more at Robin Bates’s Better Living Through Beowulf (“Haikus Make Econ Less Dismal“, May 28th 2014), Mark Thoma’s  Economist’s View  (“Renganomics“), David Ruccio’s AntiCap (“Poem of the Day“, May 14th & 17th, 2014), and Tim Harford aka The Undercover Economist (May 14th, 2014).

          Read more: “Roosevelt Economists Challenge Use of Randomized Tests“

Cult of Statistical Significance Ziliak

 

Steve Ziliak, after giving his "Guinnessometrics" lecture at the centenary celebration of "Student's" t-test, July 2008
Steve Ziliak, after giving his “Guinnessometrics” lecture at the centenary celebration of “Student’s” t-test, July 2008

 

 Learn more here about The Review of Behavioral Economics

Gosset Student drawings of kurtosis

 

St. James's Gate after the Gosset plaque-hanging ceremony, July 2008
Randomized trials are not the gold standard of statistics. The reason is in your Guinness! Photo by S. T. Ziliak

 

  • Blast from the Past (San Diego, Jan. 4, 2004):  I recently came across a copy of my 2004 plenary address to the American Economic Association, “Size Matters: The Standard Error of Regressions in the American Economic Review” (based on the article by Stephen T. Ziliak and Deirdre N. McCloskey).  Here are the Powerpoint slides:                                                                                                                                                                                       Size Matters Ziliak and McCloskey 2004 AEA Plenary on Statistical Significance                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Chair: Kenneth J. Arrow; Respondent: Deirdre N. McCloskey; Organizer: Morris Altman, Association for Social Economics and Editor, Journal of Socio-Economics (Special issue on Z-M’s research on statistical significance, v. 33, 2004) .  Discussants & Commentators: Morris Altman, Graham Elliott, Sir Clive Granger, Fiona Fidler, Gerd Gigerenzer, Joel Horowitz, Edward Leamer, Peter Lunt, Nathan Berg, Mark Burgman, Geoff Cumming, Anthony O’Brien, Bruce Thompson, Neil Thomason, Erik Thorbecke, Jeffrey Wooldridge, and Arnold Zellner.                                                                                                                                                                                                          An estimated 325-350 economists, journalists, and others attended the “significant” session – including five Nobel laureates and many of the leading econometricians and statisticians of the 20th century.  Lovely day for a regression!  Read more at  The Economist , Journal of Economic Methodology, and Z-M’s reply to discussants and commentators.                                                                                                                                                                                 A few of my favorite quotes from that day: “You and Deirdre are right – keep going!” – Arnold Zellner (University of Chicago); “What should we do with random error?” – Joel Horowitz (Northwestern); “Amazing talk; were you nervous?” – Steve Cullenberg (UC-Riverside); “Excellent job, Mr. Ziliak.” – Ken Arrow (Stanford).
  • I, Stephen T. Ziliak, will be on reddit’s “Ask Me Anything”  Thursday, March 28 2013, starting at 6:00 PM Eastern Time.  Ask me anything here. 

    Ask me anything on reddit, Thurs. March 28 2013, 6 PM ET. - Steve Ziliak
    Ask me anything on reddit, Thurs. March 28 2013, 6 PM ET.
    – Steve Ziliak

Here is Tom Mayer’s original article which started the four article-long exchange between him and Ziliak and McCloskey: “Ziliak and McCloskey’s Criticisms of Significance Tests: An Assessment”

Join the conversation at the mathematician Olle Häggström’s Häggström hävdar blog.

Of related interest, see also: Ziliak’s and McCloskey’s reply to Arnold Zellner, Clive Granger, Ed Leamer, Jeffrey Wooldridge, Joel Horowitz and other critics: “Significance Redux“, Journal of Socio-Economics (2004)

  • I, Stephen T. Ziliak, will be on reddit, “Ask Me Anything”/Ask Social Science: Thursday, February 28th, 2013, starting at 6:00 PM Eastern Time.  Ask me anything, but especially anything about the cult of statistical significance; Guinnessometrics; haiku economics; welfare; justice; and rhetoric: here.

Reddit Ask me Anything/Ask Social Science, Feb. 28, 2013 5 PM CT to ?

             Reddit Ask me Anything/Ask Social Science, Feb. 28, 2013 5 PM CT to ?
  • Ziliak’s and McCloskey’s work on significance testing is discussed in a charming Platonic dialogue by the philosopher Deborah Mayo, in her blog Error Statistics (January 2013)
  • Here are two interviews with Stephen T. Ziliak talking about “haiku economics” – the art form and teaching tool he pioneered in  2001, while teaching economics at the Georgia Institute of Technology: here and here.
  • Ziliak is Visiting Professor at École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers ParisTech, Paris, France; Graduate Programs in Risk and Management Sciences, Bioengineering, and English, November 2011 and November 2012.  While in Paris, Professor Ziliak taught four graduate-level courses on Theories of Justice in Economics & Philosophy; Rhetoric & Writing in the Social Sciences; The Cult of Statistical Significance; and Guinnessometrics Against the Gold Standard: On Randomization, Significance, and the Search for Validity.

  • Ziliak-McCloskey research featured at the Big Think blog: “The Statistical Significance Scandal,” Dec. 11, 2012.
  • Correlation or causation? Ziliak’s and McCloskey’s The Cult of Statistical Significance is featured in a Slate magazine article by Daniel Engber (Oct. 2, 2012).  Read the discussion by Shaun Manning, at the University of Michigan Press (October 5, 2012).
  • Debate about statistical significance, featuring Stephen T. Ziliak and Deirdre N. McCloskey, was published in the September 2012 issue of Econ Journal Watch: “Statistical Significance in the New Tom and the Old Tom: A Reply to Thomas Mayer”

Here is Mayer’s original article, “Ziliak and McCloskey’s Criticisms of Significance Tests: An Assessment”

  • Article by Stephen T. Ziliak forthcoming in the December issue of Significance magazine (Royal Statistical Society): “Visualizing Uncertainty: Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Regressions?”

  • Ziliak article on “Visualizing Uncertainty” was published in the July 2012 issue of the International Journal of Forecasting. When forecasting economic variables, are scatter plots better than standard regression output, such as R-squared and t-stats? Read more at: “Visualizing Economic Uncertainty: On the Soyer-Hogarth Experiment,” Economist’s View (July 11, 2012).
  • Visiting Professor, Kadir Has University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Istanbul, Turkey, April 2012.
  • New article on behavioral econometrics by Stephen T. Ziliak: “Visualizing Uncertainty: Comment on Soyer’s and Hogarth’s ‘The Illusion of Predictability: How Regression Statistics Mislead Experts’,” International Journal of Forecasting (July 2012).  Special issue on Soyer-Hogarth Experiment, with S. Ziliak, J. Scott Armstrong, D. Goldstein, K. Ord, N. N. Taleb, R. Hogarth, and E. Soyer. Read the SSRN working paper version, here: Visualizing Uncertainty_Ziliak comment on Soyer Hogarth_IJF 2012
  • “Haiku Economics“, by Stephen T. Ziliak, was cited by Poetry as one of the  “most-read articles” of 2011.
  • Ziliak’s article – on the relation between haiku poetry, feelings, politics, and economics – appears in Poetry’s January 2011 “The View From Here” column.  According to the Associate Editor of Poetry, “Haiku Economics” is probably the most-read article in that column’s history.  Previous contributors to “The View From Here” column include philosopher Richard Rorty, author Christopher Hitchens, comedienne Lynda Barry, singer-songwriter Neko Case, and John Wooden – the poet and legendary UCLA basketball coach. Read more

* “Recommended economics writing” by The Economist (July 20th, 2011) and “Statisticians in the News”, by the American Statistical Association

* On randomized trials in medicine, see also: Stephen T. Ziliak’s The Validus Medicus and a New Gold Standard, The Lancet, Volume 376, Issue 9738, Pages 324 – 325, 31 July 2010

  • Video on Ethics in Economics, Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), History of Economics Playground by “The Kids”, Mount Washington Hotel, Bretton Woods, NH; recorded: April 8-11, 2011; published: October, 2011.

The article is: Stephen T. Ziliak, “Matrixx v. Siracusano and Student v. Fisher: Statistical Significance on Trial,” Significance 8 (3, 2011), published by the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association, pp.131-134.

  • Lecture, “If I Have to Experiment, Should I Randomize? How a Profit-Seeking Brewer Rejected Random Designs of Experiments, Preferring the Perfectly Balanced ABBA,” 2nd Conference on Beeronomics: The Economics of Beer and Brewing, Technische Universität München,  Munich & Freising, Germany, Sept. 21-24, 2011.
  • Haiku Economics, Poetry lecture and reading in Regina Buccola’s “Introduction to Poetry Writing” course, Roosevelt University, Oct. 3, 2011.
  • Chair, “Best Article in the History of Economics,” History of Economics Society, 2011-2012.  Nomination information is here.

IN THE NEWS

Read about Gosset and Guinness, in The Washington Post.

In light of the November 2011 Harvard-student walk out, protesting the bias of Greg Mankiw’s introduction to economics course, INET interviewed Stephen T. Ziliak asking about his  The Grapes of Wrath course (Econ 102 syllabus) Fall 2009 which he has taught since 1996 as an antidote to conventional economics education.

Read more at Better Living Through Beowulf, “Steinbeck Makes Microeconomics Real,” by Robin Bates (English, St. Mary’s College Maryland);  AntiCap, “We are not Mankiw,” by David Ruccio (Economics, University of Notre Dame); Economist’s View, “A Bluesy Road-Novel with a Lot of Economic Theory and Analysis,” by Mark Thoma.

Review of Ziliak’s and McCloskey’s best-selling book at The University of Michigan Press, The Cult of Statistical Significance, in the November 2011 issue of Significance magazine (Royal Statistical Society and American Statistical Association).  Reviewed by Terry Weight.

See also: Stephen T. Ziliak’s entry on “Rhetoric”, published in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Gale, 2007), William Darity, Jr., Editor:  Rhetoric of Social Sciences Ziliak entry IESS 2007