Statistics Archives - Public Seminar

Interviews

Understanding Sovereign Lending

An interview with Quentin Bruneau on his new book, States and the Masters of Capital

March 1, 2023 • by Quentin Bruneau and Zoe Cole

While we can quibble about what sovereignty means as social scientists, the international system is almost exclusively populated by sovereign states—and I wanted to understand how lending to such entities functions....

Statistics as a Form of Knowledge

An excerpt from Quentin Bruneau’s States and the Masters of Capital

March 1, 2023 • by Quentin Bruneau

An excerpt from Quentin Bruneau's States and the Masters of Capital...

Truth, Damned Truth, and Statistics: A Quiet Mathematical Revolution Reshaping our Algorithmically-Mediated World

An interview with Justin Joque

July 20, 2022 • by Lydia Nobbs and Justin Joque

There’s a shift in statistical approaches from one driven by what we traditionally think of as knowledge—knowing ‘the truth’—to a more economic approach. That shows what's always been the case but admits it in a more clear-eyed way: knowledge production is always tied to political economy. In fact, the ways ...