We should be rightfully amazed language models like ChatGPT. We should incorporate it into the classroom.
I have been ridiculously fortunate with leaders, mentors and colleagues. Here is some advice I've accumulated along the way.
Maligning algorithms misses the entire reason why they are utilized in the first place
Introduction When I was a grad student in Nashville, my office just happened to be in the student health center. The shortest path between my apartment and my office was walking through lobby of the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. I made this walk nearly every day and routinely saw young kids with all manner of ailments.
Then, later in the day, I would inevitably be in some meeting about something that was comparatively unimportant.
I have enjoyed NPR’s Planet Money podcast for many years. They always have an interesting perspective on matters foreign and domestic; macro and micro; trivial and critical. It’s also a space that doesn’t shy away from wonky, data-filled policy debates.
A recent episode, The Modal American, talked listeners through a full analytic pipeline including the research question, an explanation of the methodology and the results.
Planet Money’s specific research question was whether they could aggregate IPUMS data (Go Gophers!