The Duck of Minerva

Bill Petti

Petti is Associate Director of Insights and Analytics at Alexion . Previously, he served as Lead Data Scientist in the Decision Sciences group at Maritz Motivation and a Global Data Strategist and Subject Matter Expert for Gallup.

Recent Posts

New Year, New Writing Gig

by Bill Petti | 3 January, 2011 |

Just wanted to let everyone know that starting January 4th I will be writing a weekly baseball column (sometimes twice weekly if I am feeling especially opinionated) at Beyond the Box Score.Beyond the Box Score is a fantastic site, examining baseball from an analytical perspective.  The authors definitely embrace sabermetrics, but they don't beat readers over the head with complex statistics.  As with most things that I do, the subject of my columns will vary quite a bit. Generally speaking I'll likely focus on team performance, player valuation, and lots of exploratory questions about the...

read more

PoliSci-unrelated post of the day: Visualizing Major League Baseball, 2001-2010

by Bill Petti | 21 December, 2010 |

This post originally appeared at Beyond the Box Score.  If you are a baseball analysis fan and don't already read BTBS I highly recommend it.2010 marks the end of the "ought" decade for Major League Baseball.  I thought I would take the opportunity to analyze the last 10 years by visualizing team data.  I used Tableau Public to create the visualization and pulled team data from ESPN.com (on-field statistics) and USA Today (team payroll).The data is visualized through three dashboards.  The first visualizes the relationship between run differential (RunDiff) and OPS differential (OPSDiff) as...

read more

Structural explanations are not always sexy or gratifying, but they typically explain a lot

by Bill Petti | 4 November, 2010 |

In the days after the US midterm elections cable news outlets, radio programs, political pundits, newspapers, and activists on both sides of the ideological spectrum have exerted a great deal of blood and sweat to explain the nationwide drubbing of the Democrats. Democrats are predictably covering their behinds—conceding voter anger, but cautioning that the country has not lurched to the right in just two years. Republicans are claiming validation of their position and a greater ideological alignment with the American people. Activists and enthusiasts of all stripes are weaving narratives...

read more

Book Review: Codes of the Underworld

by Bill Petti | 2 November, 2010 |

I recently finished Diego Gambetta's Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate.  For those looking for a more academic take on signaling (particularly from a sociological point of view) it's a great find.  As I previously mentioned, Gambetta uses the extreme case of cooperation amongst criminals to tease out more general dynamics of trust, signaling, and communication.  The Mafia can be considered a “hard-case” for theories of signaling trust; given the extreme incentives for criminals to lie and the lack of credibility they wield given the very fact that they are criminals, how is...

read more

U.S. Midterm Election Prediction Fest 2010

by Bill Petti | 1 November, 2010 |

At Gallup, we are officially predicting--regardless of turnout level--at least 40 seats for Republicans.  Based on the numbers and our historical model, Republicans should land about 60+ House seats, easily gaining the majority.Personally, I'll say 65 just to be (arbitrarily) specific.  I'll also predict that Republicans pick up 7 seats in the Senate, 3 short of a majority in that body.What do you think? Feel free to leave your own predictions in the comments section.

read more

Social Science: Apparently Too ‘Sciencey’ for the Iranian Government…

by Bill Petti | 26 October, 2010 |

...so says a senior Education Ministry official:"Expansion of 12 disciplines in the social sciences like law, women's studies, human rights, management, sociology, philosophy....psychology and political sciences will be reviewed," Abolfazl Hassani was quoted as saying in the Arman newspaper."These sciences' contents are based on Western culture. The review will be the intention of making them compatible with Islamic teachings."The Ayatollah added:"Many disciplines in the humanities are based on principles founded on materialism disbelieving the divine Islamic teachings," Khamenei said in a...

read more

IR makes it to TED

by Bill Petti | 26 October, 2010 |

Joseph Nye gives a TED talk:To my knowledge, this is only the third political scientist and IR specialist to give a TED talk (Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Samantha Power being the other two).  Hopefully we'll see more as I think the TED series is a great way for polisci and IR scholars to make their knowledge relevant and understandable outside of the discipline.

read more

In Praise of Falsification

by Bill Petti | 26 October, 2010 |

For those that have not read it yet, The Atlantic recently featured an article profiling Dr. John Ioannidis who has made a career out of falsifying many of the findings of medical research that guides clinical practice.  Ioannidis' research should cause us all to appreciate the various bias we may bring to our own work:[C]an any medical-research studies be trusted?That question has been central to Ioannidis’s career. He’s what’s known as a meta-researcher, and he’s become one of the world’s foremost experts on the credibility of medical research. He and his team have shown, again and again,...

read more

Friday Signaling Roundup

by Bill Petti | 22 October, 2010 |

Here are a few quick signaling items for your perusal.  I will try to do a similar roundup each Friday if I've stumbled on enough items throughout the week.  Enjoy!How to Signal That You Are Marrying for Love? It's tougher than you might think.  Some suggest using a pre-nuptial agreement to signal one's love and affection instead of their love of money.  If one is truly marrying for love and not money they should have no problem signing a pre-nup if they are the less-wealthy of the pair.  However, the pre-nup may act as a signal from the wealthier of the two parties that they have reason to...

read more