Exit polling and racial bloc voting: Combining individual-level and R×\timesC ecological data

Despite its shortcomings, cross-level or ecological inference remains a necessary part of some areas of quantitative inference, including in United States voting rights litigation. Ecological inference suffers from a lack of identification that, most agree, is best addressed by incorporating individual-level data into the model. In this paper we test the limits of such an incorporation by attempting it in the context of drawing inferences about racial voting patterns using a combination of an exit poll and precinct-level ecological data; accurate information about racial voting patterns is needed to assess triggers in voting rights laws that can determine the composition of United States legislative bodies. Specifically, we extend and study a hybrid model that addresses two-way tables of arbitrary dimension. We apply the hybrid model to an exit poll we administered in the City of Boston in 2008. Using the resulting data as well as simulation, we compare the performance of a pure ecological estimator, pure survey estimators using various sampling schemes and our hybrid. We conclude that the hybrid estimator offers substantial benefits by enabling substantive inferences about voting patterns not practicably available without its use.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOAS353 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Collective correlations in C12

The strong coupling of the giant resonance to the surface vibrations in C12 results in the splitting of the single one-particle, one-hole, 1- collective state into several components, thus improving the agreement between theory and experiment to a very large extent

Collective correlations in spherical nuclei and the structure of giant resonances

The theory of collective correlations in nuclei is formulated for giant resonances interacting with surface vibrations. The giant dipole states are treated in the particle-hole framework, while the surface vibrations are described by the collective model. Consequently, this treatment of nuclear structure goes beyond both the common particle-hole model (including its various improvements which take ground-state correlations into account) and the pure collective model. The interaction between giant resonances and surface degrees of freedom as known from the dynamic collective theory is formulated in the particle-hole language. Therefore, the theory contains the particle-hole structures and the most important "collective intermediate" structures of giant resonances. Detailed calculations are performed for 12C, 28Si, and 60Ni. A good detailed agreement between theory and experiment is obtained for all these nuclei, although only 60Ni is in the region where one would expect the theory to work well (50< A <110)

Causal Inference in Civil Rights Litigation

Civil rights litigation often concerns the causal effect of some characteristic on decisions made by a governmental or socioeconomic actor. An analyst may be interested, for example, in the effect of victim race on jury imposition of the death penalty, in the effect of applicant gender on a firm’s hiring decisions, or in the effect of candidate ethnicity on election results. For the past thirty years, such analyses have primarily been accomplished via a statistical technique known as regression. But as it has been used in civil rights litigation, regression suffers from several shortcomings: it facilitates biased, result-oriented thinking by expert witnesses; it encourages judges and litigators to believe that all questions are equally answerable; and it gives the wrong answer in situations in which such might be avoided. These difficulties, and several others, all stem from the fact that regression does not begin with a paradigm for defining causal effects and for drawing causal inferences. This Article argues for a wholesale change in thinking in this area, from a focus on regression coefficients to an explicit framework of causation called “potential outcomes.” The potential outcomes paradigm of causal inference, which (for lawyers) may be analogized to but-for causation with a renewed emphasis on time, addresses many of the shortcomings of regression as the latter is currently used in civil rights litigation, and it does so within a framework courts, litigators, and juries can understand. This Article explains regression and the potential outcomes paradigm and discusses the latter’s application in the death penalty, employment discrimination, and redistricting settings

Not All Statistics Are Created Equal

In Statistics Is a Plural Word, a response to my article Causal Inference in Civil Rights Litigation, Dean Steven Willborn and Professor Ramona Paetzold take issue both with my critique of regression as it is currently used in civil rights litigation and with my advocacy of the potential outcomes framework. In this Reply, I argue that Dean Willborn and Professor Paetzold’s response does not address (and thus cannot refute) the central lessons of Causal Inference, despite purporting to agree with those lessons. In particular, after “agree[ing] wholeheartedly” that a definition of a causal effect is necessary for the use of statistics in civil rights, Plural does not offer a definition. In the absence of such a definition, the purpose of statistics in civil rights litigation is unclear. The potential outcomes framework, in contrast, provides the needed definition and clarifies many subsidiary concepts, with salutary consequences following naturally from a start in the right place

The Quantitative Empirics of Redistricting Litigation: Knowledge, Threats to Knowledge, and the Need for Less Districting

The Civil Rights Movement had a variety of transformative effects on the way federal courts hear and decide cases; among them was the introduction of quantitative analysis as a staple of certain types of high-profile adjudication, particularly in redistricting cases. The first judicial foray into regulating the drawing of electoral districts-the one person, one vote line of cases-was premised on an equality norm expressed in explicitly numerical terms. In these cases, the Supreme Court settled on numerical guidelines requiring only simple arithmetic to implement. Since then, however, the federal judiciary has engaged with increasingly complicated quantitative measurements and statistical techniques, first in the racial vote dilution cases, then in the overuse of race cases, then in the partisan gerrymandering cases

Re-Solidifying Racial Bloc Voting: Empirics and Legal Doctrine in the Melting Pot

Racial bloc voting is the central concept in judicial regulation of redistricting. For the past several decades, the definition and proof of this concept have depended on two premises: that polities can be conceptualized in biracial terms and that nearly perfect information on voting patterns can be inexpensively obtained from simple statistical methods. In fact, however, neither premise has been true for some time, as the nation has become multiracial and allegations have increased that Caucasians vote less monolithically than before, with both assertions imposing severe stress on the simple statistical methods previously used to assess voting patterns. In this article, I analyze these challenges to traditional understandings and attempt to answer the following question: how can we litigate racial bloc voting well in the current era? I provide recommendations, including greater reliance on more sophisticated statistical methods, an increase in the use of sample surveys, and a renewed receptivity to nonquantitative evidence on voting patterns, while clarifying that each of these recommendations carries substantial costs. I then discuss the conceptual and normative implications of my recommendations on the empirics

Colorectal Cancer Screening Behaviors among American Indians in the Midwest

Colorectal cancer is the second most diagnosed cancer among American Indians and is also the second leading cause of cancer death. We used a community-based participatory approach to conduct a mixed methods study to examine colorectal cancer screening behaviors. Here we report on the screening behaviors of our focus group participants (n=153). There were significant gender differences in the colorectal cancer screening rates for FOBT and colonoscopy. Although over 80% of participants reported having health insurance, only 35% of males over 50 years old and 57% of females reported ever having a colonoscopy. More research is needed to identify the causes of gender differences in colorectal cancer screening rates among American Indians. The results of the current study provide new information on the prevalence of colorectal cancer screening among American Indians living in the Midwestern (Kansas and Missouri) portion of the country

The Evolution of Unbundling in Litigation Matters: Three Case Studies and a Literature Review

Perhaps the most famous “bundle ” in United States law is the meta-phor used to conceptualize property rights. Law students learn that one way to understand property is as a bundle of rights: the right to possess, the right to exclude, the right to sell, the right to destroy, the right to de-vise, etc. 1 One reason to conceptualize anything in terms of a bundle is to consider what happens if someone or something—the state, a third par-ty—unties the binding or pulls out one of the sticks. In property, this thought exercise helps students understand many of the doctrines taught in the canonical first year course, including easements, adverse posses-sion, and the rule against perpetuities. Forrest “Woody ” Mosten, whom some called the “Father of Un-bundling ” in the practice of law,2 no doubt had all this in mind when, in the 1990s, he began traveling the nation with a bundle of popsicle sticks tied together with a ribbon. To each stick, Mosten attached a label that represented some aspect of legal practice, such as researching the law or negotiating with opposing parties. 3 During his presentation, Mosten would untie the ribbon and wave around the now-separated popsicle sticks to emphasize his point that unbundling in the practice of law was possible and desirable. 4 Mosten’s road show comprised part of a trend towards the recognition, legitimization, and promotion of limited legal assistance 5 in litigation matters. The trend began in California 6 and since has spread to almost every state in the nation, 7 with most of the actio