reluctant criminologists

blog posts

Slide advertising talk about assuming in public

Assuming in public

general
rstats
causality
mediation
Free talk about DAGs and colliders! It’s mostly accurate. Hey, you get what you pay for.
Mar 6, 2025
2 min

Mixed signals in life and measurement

Mixed signals: Use ratios and percentile scores carefully (and sparingly)

general
rstats
causality
measurement
Thoughts from my review of a recently published study about arrest rate signals.
Sep 9, 2024
54 min

Mediation makes my head hurt

RRR: Mediation makes my head hurt!

general
rstats
causality
mediation
Our first Reluctantly Rapid Response (RRR) post addresses a confusing mediation issue.
May 13, 2024
7 min

Two lemmings confused by exposure-mediator interactions (with help from DALL-E)

Moderator Madness, Part 3

general
rstats
causality
moderation
mediation
Exposure-mediator interaction? No problem! Disentangle indirect and interaction effects with CMAverse in R
Feb 26, 2024
75 min

Lemmings puzzled by 4-way total effect decomposition (with help from DALL-E)

Moderator Madness, Part 2

general
rstats
causality
moderation
mediation
Is your mediator also a moderator? Learn how counterfactuals and potential outcomes can help decompose a total effect into four distinct components.
Feb 23, 2024
36 min

You thought [The Shining](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/) was scary? Have you looked under your data for near duplicates?

Near Duplicates in Survey Data Series

general
rstats
survey research
duplication
fraud
Do you know how to detect exact or near duplicate rows in your data? Read on to learn more!
Oct 10, 2023
2 min

Two lemmings confused by nonlinear interactions (with help from DALL-E)

Moderator Madness, Part 1

general
rstats
moderation
Properly model, plot, and interpret your nonlinear interactions.
Jul 18, 2023
48 min

Colliders: The rancor in your regression (by DALL-E)

Are you afraid of colliders?

general
rstats
causality
Learn to fear colliders, the rancor in your regression model. Then, learn to face those fears and overcome colliders with a DAG, the elegant weapon of a Jedi scientist.
Jun 6, 2023
65 min

Empty Easter egg, or countervailing causation?

Causation without Correlation?

general
rstats
causality
mediation
You’ve heard the phrase ‘correlation does not imply causation.’ But does causation imply correlation?
Apr 10, 2023
39 min

Dr. Charles R. Tittle

Dr. Charles R. Tittle’s intellectual contributions

general
This post is dedicated to the intellectual contributions of our late mentor, Dr. Charles R. Tittle.
Mar 12, 2023
31 min

Melting heart of statistics in Salvadore Dali's surrealist style, by DALL-E

Check out some of our favorite sites

general
rstats
causality
bayesian
We have learned so much from blogs, bookdowns, and videos openly shared by others. Here, we compiled a list of some of our favorite resources.
Mar 11, 2023
8 min

Reluctant criminologists logo

Welcome to the reluctant criminologists

general
You found our repository for sharing course material and ideas. Congrats! Or condolences. Anyway, in this first post, we discuss our motives and aims for this site.
Mar 10, 2023
8 min
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