Data and Blogging

Ah Friday, a great day to do final edits on my and Julie's paper for Midwest - also a good time for a quick blog post with a somewhat misleading title as the two subjects refer to two seperate links.

First, via Freakonomics, is a competition for the Fraser Institute to have them collect data.  You write up the brief that suggests what they collect and, if you are in the top 6 suggestions, they pay you.  Time to go through my bin of thoughts that usually begins with "If we had data for..." and ends with "we could then test that theory!"

Also, I recently added Cali Ellis' Pax Bellona to my daily reading list.  Cali's introductory post provides a link to another Professor's blog (in Computer Information Technology) that gives advice to his potential graduate students advisees.  Suggestion number one is:

You must get, have, maintain a blog with at least weekly posts and preferably more. I could care less   about Web 2.0 but I do care about your writing and more importantly your thinking. Besides we have some neat projects we can do that way. (Emphasis original)

While much of the rest of the advice is field and advisor specific, I do appreciate seeing that thought echoed and verify the utility of blogging for professional developmental reasons.  Part of the introductory post for the Monkey Cage over a year ago offered a similar thought (see reason #3). 

So, if anything, I need to post more.