Two Blogs In The Bush Is Worth One In The Hand

February 1, 2009 5:02 PM

Should I Start Another Blog? (...on statistics.)

I am a PhD student doing quantitative research (statistics) on environmental policy. Here are a few pieces of relevant information:

1. My daily life revolves around two things, 1) the substantive topic that my research interest is in (environmental policy) and 2) the quantitative methods used to study it (statistics).

2. I will be looking for a job outside academia when I am done with my dissertation in a few years.

3. Right now I run a popular blog on environmental policy, and it is great. I meet tons of people interested in what I do from outside academia and have had some great non-academic publishing opportunities. The key benefit to the blog has been to meet NON-ACADEMICS (policy folks).

4. I am still learning statistics and want to get good at it. The best way I can think of to learn statistics (over the long term) is to start a blog on the quantitative analysis of environmental policy. That is, a blog more about the statistics research methods used than the actual policy stuff.

5. I have a major of concern about doing so: I am not an expert in statistics, and will likely never be. I am just not that mathematical. So, I am hesitant to blog about statistics because it very likely might just show my ignorance about the topic.

6. I have thought about incorporating statistics posts into my current blog, but I think most of my readers do not care about tutorials on using this or that fancy statistical model in a software program.

The Questions:

Should I start a new blog?
Should I incorporate "statistics" posts into my current blog?

posted by Spurious to work & money (12 comments total)

Why not ask your readers? The problem with starting a new blog is getting an audience for it. Mostly likely your initial audience would be your existing one, and they may not think there's any reason to have two sites to visit instead of one.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:07 PM on February 1

5. I have a major of concern about doing so: I am not an expert in statistics, and will likely never be. I am just not that mathematical. So, I am hesitant to blog about statistics because it very likely might just show my ignorance about the topic.

I am not an expert either, but I have interest in reading blogs about statistics so long as they aren't, for the major part, heavy on the nitty-gritty mathematical side.

I would definitely read your blog. I imagine there are a lot of other not-so-mathematical types with an interest in statistics/research methods. I say do it.
posted by ttyn at 5:08 PM on February 1

What about starting a (weekly, monthly) series of guest posts on research methods and statistics? As long as it wasn't super-technical, it would probably be of at least some interest to your current readers, and might even draw more in. Policy wonks, or at least good ones, like to know where their data is coming from, too!

Also, it would be a really good excuse to approach peers or professors who are excellent statisticians and simultaneously learn from them and butter them up a bit.
posted by charmcityblues at 5:11 PM on February 1

Have you considered putting a link to your blog in your profile? [side issue, sort of, but now I'm curious AND it might help others answer your question if they could see the actual blog.]
posted by amtho at 5:19 PM on February 1

I'm not an expert in dog training, PHP or web programming (well, Ok, I probably am in PHP / web programming...), or gardening, but I have a blog on each that I use to track my individual progress and to keep myself learning and researching the topics on a regular basis. I guess that's the big question: would you start the blog to track your learning and research, or would you start the blog in order to gain an audience? It takes YEARS to build an audience in a particular topic online, unless you have something amazing that gets linked to all over the place.

My PHP blog is in that category. I've been a computer guy and sysadmin for years, but my work is pretty broad in scope -- PHP developer of various stripes, DBA on multiple RDBMSes, and linux sysadmin. I started the blog as a notepad / documentation method to keep track of things that I only did as part of a machine's setup (like install the baseboard monitoring software) or did once a year (like set up a new vhost) and kept the instructions in the blog. Apparently people found this helpful...

IMO, A blog isn't something kept by experts; it's a notepad kept by students to log their learning as an aid to their education. Attracting an audience should be the last reason that anyone writes a blog. It should be useful to you as part of your learning experience and documenting where you stared and where you ended up.
posted by SpecialK at 5:57 PM on February 1

I would love to read that blog, if that's any help.
posted by thatbrunette at 6:26 PM on February 1

Why not make stats a category in your current blog? It takes the pressure off you to immediately produce a lot of content, and lets you keep the benefits of your current blog - i.e. an audience, some traction in the search rankings, that sort of thing.

The key part of your question for me is that your secondary interest in stats is in relationship to your primary interest of environmental policy. So it makes sense for them to be on the same blog. You can always port your stats posts to another blog later if you want to.
posted by txvtchick at 6:28 PM on February 1

You might get some insight into your question by taking a look at some of the interviews and the story of fivethirtyeight.com. Nate Silver, the guy behind 538, started out as a baseball analyst, had an interest in polling and voting statistics, and then developed 538 as an outlet for that. He received a fair amount of press in the last election cycle. Some google-fu on him and his site might give you some ideas.
posted by webhund at 7:05 PM on February 1

Writing about stuff you're semi-ignorant about and letting people see your process of learning stuff about it is a GREAT basis for blogging. Just include tons of caveats of the sort you've included in this thread, and use the blog as a way to get feedback and new ideas.

A typical post could be: "I don't really know much about statistics, but here's something I've been thinking about. [Main content of post.] Please leave a comment if I've overlooked or misunderstood anything."
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:54 PM on February 1

That sounds like it would be interesting.
posted by grouse at 8:22 PM on February 1

FWIW, I would live to look at your blog, even if you are not a statistics expert. I think the important thing about teaching is not necessarily to be an expert but to be able to explain what you know. For example, Ted Sorenson was not an expert politician, but he was very good at explaining politics to people who also were not experts.
posted by vilcxjo_BLANKA at 8:27 PM on February 1

I would read your blog, even if you are not an expert! As long as you are upfront about your qualifications, and invite possible corrections and comments from more expert readers, you should be fine. As others have mentioned earlier, this will be a great learning aid for both you and your readers.
posted by tickingclock at 2:28 AM on February 2