My research focuses on inequality and technology, broadly conceived. I am particularly interested in the way the internet affects who we associate with and how we see the world. I tend to take a systems-level view of the world. Along with my physics, math, and education experience, this has created an adventurous variety of research topics.
My full publication history can be found on my Google Scholar page or CV.
If you have any trouble accessing any of my papers, please don’t hesitate to email me for a copy. I’ve spent much of my career wanting to read research without access to expensive journals. I get it.
Selected Completed Projects
How the term “white privilege” affects online communication
Online behavior is chaotic – small changes in posts can have big effects on online behavior. And that behavior can have large effects on society itself, such as increased political polarization and vastly different understandings of truth. This study shows that using the phrase “white privilege” can increase political polarization, decrease the quality of online conversations, and undermine the goals of the very people who talk about white privilege. Just using the term makes some whites less supportive of the speaker’s ideas. It also causes many of the supportive whites to avoid the conversation altogether, leaving more extreme people in the conversation. The results are hopeful. They suggest that, if we can find a common language, then we will have more common goals than we think.
The shape of educational inequality
We know that a wide variety of things affect how well an individual student does in school. And different people are affected differently by these forces. When we look at all students in a college, do all of those individual force average out to something universal? Or do some effects matter more at some colleges or groups of students? This study showed that those forces do average out to something universal, and that this leads to an exponential distribution of students’ ability to succeed in every college. The social dynamics that create it lead to universal patterns of student capital. The results suggest that, rather than only looking at specific barriers or milestones, schools should focus on building up student capital in their students.
Income gains from earning an applied bachelor’s degree
One way to increase your income is to attend college. But not all degrees have the same impact on our income. Do applied baccalaureate degrees, typically earned in community colleges, increase earning potentials? In this study, we used causal inference to examine the effect of three AB degrees on student income.
Is learning related to community college outcomes?
Two major goals of students who attend college are (a) learning and (b) earning a degree as a signal to employers and others. But do these goals align? Are students who learn more also more likely to make more progress toward a degree? This study gave the answer: “No, mostly.” people with more procedural math knowledge (memorize the procedure) weren’t more likely to get better grades or graduate. Students with higher conceptual knowledge (understand & explain) tended to get better grades in the more conceptual classes, but also were not more likely to graduate. Graduation doesn’t necessarily mean more learning. It just means being “good at school”. Also, learning procedural math is not enough. Students need to explore the concepts. (This is especially relevant for certain parents. You know who you are.)