April 20th

Below is a path model I made for a recent submission with Chris Sibley and Danny Osborne (U of Auckland).  We looked at how moral foundations predict religious orientations.  The LaTeX code for the graph is here.  Apologies for any rough edges in the coding, but I'm not a programmer. 

09 April 2013

Been a good month, all up.  Helped Chris Sibley and Will Hoverd put together a paper called "Forecasting Religious Change: A Bayesian Model Predicting Proportional Christian Change in New Zealand," in which we predicted the outcome of the most recent NZ Census for religion, based on past trends.  Also submitted a structural equation modelling paper (with Chris Sibley and Danny Osbourne, see above).  Still working on the emotions paper.  The model for that one is a bit tricky.  It is a Multivariate Generalized Linear Mixed Effects Model with Bayesian Estimation -- say that one five times quickly!  I had wanted to make sure I had it right though. I think it's basically ready.  Just needs its finishing touches. Then on to the next adventure...

 

21 March 2013

This month has gone by quickly.  The Emotions paper is still simmering, along with a few others.  Spending a lot of time learning methods (which has been fun).  

Below is a more complete map of the NZAVS, created using Hadley's ggplot2.


[Hadley, 2009] Hadley, W. (2009). ggplot2: elegant graphics for data analysis. Springer New York, New York.

15 Feb 2013

The past couple of months have been good fun.  I've enjoyed learning Bayesian mixture modelling in R, which I'm currently applying to a paper on emotional dynamics during a ritual.  

The NZAVS research is ticking over, with some interesting papers on religious typologies in New Zealand that should be making it to press soon.  

Mainly, though, I've been trying to focus less on research obsessions to hang out with the family more.  Enjoying time at the playground and zoo with Margot, who is growing up so quickly. 

I'll try to update the recent research page within a few weeks, after finishing some grant applications (the joy...sigh).  I hope to explain some of the cool findings my collaborators and I have been publishing over the recent months, on how rituals affect emotions, on the relationship of poverty and religious identification, on supernatural beliefs in secular people, and on the effects of religious neighbourhoods on non-religious people inhabitants.  Stay tuned.

21 Dec 2012

Just back from a trip to Auckland, where I met with Russell Gray, Quentin Atkinson and Simon Greenhill to discuss our Cultural Phylogenetics project -- a productive and fun meeting. 

Also caught up with Chris Sibley for some discussions about the NZAVS, and a yummy meal with his partner Isabelle.

Chris and I discussed how graphically representing the NZAVS studies will be an important next step as the NZAVS grows.  I love good graphics.  Below is a plot mapping the location of a selection of ~800 NZAVS participants, which I created this evening in R.  Going to be fun working with Chris and other NZAVS colleagues using images -- that is if we all survive the predicted MAYAN apocalypse tomorrow. 

16 Dec 2012
I am teaching myself R (a statistical package with good graphing capabilities).  I plotted this graph of historical massacres in the USA. I combined data from the New York Times with geological coordinates for the towns where the horrible events occurred. Chilling trend.

7.12.12.
Earthquake & Faith paper out in PLOS ONE here + YouTube video for NZAVS participants explaining results here.


November 2012
29.11.12
Working on revisions for an article on value change and religious identity. Danny Osborne and Quentin Atkinson were in town from Monday through Wednesday and stayed at the old family homestead with me.  We had some terrific runs around the Karori Sanctuary.  Danny presented to a politics conference at Victoria. Q was at an obligatory meeting for his Rutherford Fellowship. 


27.11.12

Back from the States. Gave a talk at my friend Michael's lab at Caltech, a systems biology group (!) Discussed the Mauritius field study on ritual pain at Thaipusam. Not their standard talk! Enjoyed seeing Michael and his family. 


18.11.12
I am in Chicago, attending the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion. Yesterday I gave a talk (with Russell Gray and Joseph Watts, University of Auckland) on Three Big Historical Questions that Computational Phylogenetics has answered. Today I'll give a talk (with Chris G. Sibley, UoA) on our research from the NZAVS.  

Bit tired, so heading out for a run to recharge the batteries (if that makes sense). 


October 2012 
26.10.12
Version of the commentary here. 

Flew up to Auckland for the day with Chris Sibley.  

I was able to sit in on Chris's MPlus class, which is covering structural equation modelling, and latent class analysis.  Top flight methods.  Were had a chat after the seminar about how the exponential rise in computing power has broadened the scope for performing much more interesting analysis. 

The main event this week was the successful Ph.D. defence of my student Paul Reddish (co-supervised with Ron Fischer in Psychology).  Paul wrote an excellent dissertation on synchrony and cooperation. He held up well under tough questioning from Marc Wilson and Russell Gray.

Sarah and Margot are off to Melbourne this weekend.  Plan to get caught up on my marking, review work, and three articles I need to wrap up by the end of the year.  


19.10.12
Wrote a commentary to a piece by D.S. Wilson & finished up a revision with Chris Sibley for our PLOS One article on faith after the Christchurch Earthquake. Interesting result, we think, stay tuned. We'll be making a Youtube video early next week, which means... back to Auckland. 

Didn't run the race. 

10.10.12
I am heading up to Auckland on Friday afternoon to meet with Quentin Atkinson and Russell Gray at the University of Auckland's world class Language and Cultural Evolution Group, where we will discuss our project on the cultural evolution of religions. By applying computational phylogenetic methods to languages, this group is settling longstanding debates about the origins and evolution of human cultures.   Check out their recent study in Science mapping the Indo-European expansion: link.  Remarkable! 

I am contemplating running this race with Quentin on Saturday. The body is still a bit sore from last week's national road relays, a 72km event which my team narrowly lost  -- by three seconds (!) Still feeling a bit down about that, so might take a break from competition for a while. 

September 2012
I am back in New Zealand after a fair amount of travel these past few months.

My main research focus is on the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Survey (NZAVS) which Chris Sibley launched a few years back, to study stability and change in attitudes and values across New Zealand over time.  It has been fascinating trying to understand the importance of religion and spirituality in my adoptive country.  Another advantage of working on the NZAVS: I don't need to leave my two year old daughter Margot behind, a big bonus, as she is full of brilliant ideas.  Yesterday she postulated "ice cream;"  the day before, she predicted "pizza." 

August 2012
At the end of August/early September, I met up with a group of researchers from around the world at the University of British Columbia for the first meeting of CERC  -- "Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition, and Culture ."  Photos to come.