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Andrew Hacker

Andrew Hacker teaches political science and mathematics at Queens College. His new book, The Math Myth and Other STEM ­Delusions, will appear next March.
 (July 2015)

IN THE REVIEW

The Frenzy About High-Tech Talent

President Obama with teenage inventor Joe Hudy of Arizona during a demonstration of Hudy’s Extreme Marshmallow Cannon at the White House Science Fair, February 2012

Falling Behind?: Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent

by Michael S. Teitelbaum

Occupational Outlook Handbook: 2014–2015

by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics
The fervor over STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) goes beyond promoting a quartet of academic subjects. Rather, it’s about the kind of nation and people we are to be.

Who Knows the American Mind?

Open Door Mission, Rochester, New York, 2012; photograph by Alex Webb from Memory City, his new book with Rebecca Norris Webb, published by Radius

The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown

by Paul Taylor

Social Trends in American Life: Findings from the General Social Survey since 1972

edited by Peter V. Marsden
Paul Taylor of the Pew Research Center argues that surveys of public opinion are both necessary for democracy and based on equality. His The Next America opens: Opinion surveys allow the public to speak for itself. Each person has an equal chance to be heard. Each opinion is given an …

2014: Another Democratic Debacle?

President Barack Obama having lunch with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Oval Office Private Dining Room, May 2012

Double Down: Game Change 2012

by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann

The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election

by John Sides and Lynn Vavreck
Here’s our current political situation: • A Democratic president has twice won the popular vote, both times by comfortable margins. • In the Senate, Democrats (with two independents) hold 55 percent of the seats, receiving nearly that share of the votes in their most recent races. • Republican now have …

How He Got It Right

Statistician Nate Silver, who correctly predicted the winner of all fifty states and the District of Columbia in the 2012 presidential election

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t

by Nate Silver

The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable

by James Owen Weatherall
Nate Silver called every state correctly in the last presidential race, and was wrong about only one in 2008. In 2012 he predicted Obama’s total of the popular vote within one tenth of a percent of the actual figure. His powers of prediction seemed uncanny. In his early and sustained prediction of an Obama victory, he was ahead of most polling organizations and my fellow political scientists. But buyers of his book, The Signal and the Noise, now a deserved best seller, may be in for something of a surprise.