Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

@paulgp.com

17K followers 1.5K following 3.2K posts

Yale SOM professor & Bulls fan. I study consumer finance, and econometrics is a big part of my research identity. He/him/his

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Economics 47%

Mathematics 9%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 7h

Here's the graphic referred to in the article. (The link on the NYT page is easy to miss.)

Graph of data on baseball managers using Chernoff faces

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 7h

Sounds like he nailed it

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 10h

We need to nurture this

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 11h

i read stuff like this and can genuinely angry at guys like jd vance who insist that this country belongs to some narrow vision of the "native born"

Reposted by Kori Schake, Brian Kelly, Robert C. Richards , and 1 more Kori Schake, Brian Kelly, Robert C. Richards, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 11h

i read stuff like this and can genuinely angry at guys like jd vance who insist that this country belongs to some narrow vision of the "native born"

Reposted by Michael A. Clemens, Kathleen J. Mullen, Aaron Sojourner , and 5 more Michael A. Clemens, Kathleen J. Mullen, Aaron Sojourner, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Winston T. Lin, Simon Munzert, Gábor Békés, Jesper Wulff

Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 14h

Some closing thoughts for my students this semester on LLMs and learning #rstats datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-12...

Will you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course in the future?
No.

Why won’t you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course?
These tools are useful for coding (see this for my personal take on this).

However, they’re only useful if you know what you’re doing first. If you skip the learning-the-process-of-writing-code step and just copy/paste output from ChatGPT, you will not learn. You cannot learn. You cannot improve. You will not understand the code.

In that post, it warns that you cannot use it as a beginner:

…to use Databot effectively and safely, you still need the skills of a data scientist: background and domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability.

There is no LLM-based shortcut to those skills. You cannot LLM your way into domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, or coding ability.

The only way to gain domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability is to struggle. To get errors. To google those errors. To look over the documentation. To copy/paste your own code and adapt it for different purposes. To explore messy datasets. To struggle to clean those datasets. To spend an hour looking for a missing comma.

This isn’t a form of programming hazing, like “I had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow and now you must too.” It’s the actual process of learning and growing and developing and improving. You’ve gotta struggle.

This Tumblr post puts it well (it’s about art specifically, but it applies to coding and data analysis too):

Contrary to popular belief the biggest beginner’s roadblock to art isn’t even technical skill it’s frustration tolerance, especially in the age of social media. It hurts and the frustration is endless but you must build the frustration tolerance equivalent to a roach’s capacity to survive a nuclear explosion. That’s how you build on the technical skill. Throw that “won’t even start because I’m afraid it won’t be perfect” shit out the window. Just do it. Just start. Good luck. (The original post has disappeared, but here’s a reblog.)

It’s hard, but struggling is the only way to learn anything.

You might not enjoy code as much as Williams does (or I do), but there’s still value in maintaining codings skills as you improve and learn more. You don’t want your skills to atrophy.

As I discuss here, when I do use LLMs for coding-related tasks, I purposely throw as much friction into the process as possible:

To avoid falling into over-reliance on LLM-assisted code help, I add as much friction into my workflow as possible. I only use GitHub Copilot and Claude in the browser, not through the chat sidebar in Positron or Visual Studio Code. I treat the code it generates like random answers from StackOverflow or blog posts and generally rewrite it completely. I disable the inline LLM-based auto complete in text editors. For routine tasks like generating {roxygen2} documentation scaffolding for functions, I use the {chores} package, which requires a bunch of pointing and clicking to use.

Even though I use Positron, I purposely do not use either Positron Assistant or Databot. I have them disabled.

So in the end, for pedagogical reasons, I don’t foresee me incorporating LLMs into this class. I’m pedagogically opposed to it. I’m facing all sorts of external pressure to do it, but I’m resisting.

You’ve got to learn first.

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 15h

I think dumb is a better modifier here than stupid, but that's subtle

Reposted by Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

Jessica Leight @leightjessica.bsky.social · 15h

Cool new evidence from postwar occupied Japan: exposure to radio programs aired by the US occupying force led to ⬆️ women's political turnout, ⬇️ fertility. By Okuyama published in the JDE

Reposted by Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 17h

Today in small mercies (via r-devel)

• %notin% table newly in base is an idiom for ! (x %in% table) and provided almost entirely for convenience and code readability, from an R-devel suggestion, after many years of private definitions mostly hidden in packages, including in R's tools package.

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 18h

The best

Reposted by Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

Danila Serra @danilaserra-eco.bsky.social · 18h

As my sabbatical visit to BU ends, I say goodbye to all the wonderful Boston-based people who have welcome me.

Ending the semester with a classic:
#selfiewithsue
@dynarski.bsky.social

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 20h

It’s built in speakers actually — I went with the most entry level version I could find

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 21h

You’re missing out

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 21h

I have no idea who they are

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 22h

My current purchases are about as parent millennial as it gets

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 22h

😂 I considered it!

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 1d

This is what I get for not taking @stevewang251.bsky.social ‘s class.

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 1d

Definitely, but the amount of pretty remarkable tools that can be developed using smaller models gives me hope that some aspects can be achieved.

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 1d

Wow I did not know about Chernoff faces

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernof...

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 1d

Resonant Manifesto for AI tech - Private, Dedicated, Plural, Adaptable, Prosocial #linkoftheday
resonantcomputing.org

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 1d

New purchase

Reposted by Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 1d

I'm reading a paper that compares BERTopic and LDA for tweets and includes:
1. a 2020 citation for LDA, not a single mention of Blei 😐
2. de-duplication BEFORE removing usernames 😟
3. stemming, lemmatizing, etc. ONLY for LDA 😨
4. gensim 😱

It has 1k citations! 🤯

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 1d

If I advertise your spot, then you'll just take my predoc hire!!! ;-)

Reposted by Michael Barnett, Megan L. Ranney, John Mullahy , and 6 more Michael Barnett, Megan L. Ranney, John Mullahy, Erika Franklin Fowler, Aaron Sojourner, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, John A. Graves, Ankur Pandya, Jason L. Schwartz

Jacob Wallace @jacobwswallace.bsky.social · 1d

🚨 Predoc Opportunity at Yale! 🚨

Care about research that changes policy?

My research team works within state government to advance evidence and learning for a smarter safety net!

And our predocs have excellent PhD placements. Apply here!

#EconSky #EconTwitter #Predoc #ResearchJobs #HealthPolicy

Economics of the Safety Net

tobin.yale.edu

Reposted by Dan Goldhaber, Caroline Krafft, Paul Nightingale

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 1d

I've now updated this with a few updates:

1. I've added the JFE, JF, and RFS
2. I've added QJE and (most of) JPE
3. I've fixed some bugs
4. I added a way to adjust for length of papers over time
5. I've added citation counts (per OpenAlex)

paulgp.com/econlit-pipe...

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 2d

Aren’t you sad you aren’t an economist. Just think, this guy could be an editor at the Journal of Politic(Al Economy)

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 2d

Both! At our New Year’s party, I had pre made Boulevardiers (easy to make in batches and prechill) and then I did a blueberry reduction for non alcoholic drinks. I was willing to make other drinks but most folks were happy with that + champagne

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 2d

If you’re making alcoholic drinks, can be a good idea to make one premade batch of drinks so you’re not constantly making drinks for the guests and get to actually host

Reposted by Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

CJ Fogler @cjzero.bsky.social · 2d

poked my head outside

Reposted by Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

Colin Camerer @cfcamerer.bsky.social · 2d

“The judges that sit on the Pantone Color of the Year (PCOTY) Committee are rigorously selected and groomed from birth for the task. They have more rods and cones than the average Joe”

🧠😂

Katherine Catmull @kcatmull.bsky.social · 3d

this piece by @jpbrammer.bsky.social on the 2026 Pantone color of the year is so hilarious and also slightly depressing that it makes me sad 90% of my followers (an estimate: hi folks) are bots because I want to tell the world. Here is a link + tiny clip: johnpaulbrammer.substack.com/p/cloud-danc...

Reposted by Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

Bill Amend @billamend.bsky.social · 2d

This week's comic: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star foxtrot.com/2025/12/07/t...

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

FoxTrot by Bill Amend | December 7, 2025

foxtrot.com

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