Topics
Data-driven analysis on food security, transit equity, and public policy. All research includes methodology documentation and replication materials.
AI Methodology
How we do research: data validation, transit routing, API collection, and AI-integrated workflows with code examples.
Well-Executed But Not Important: Reading Importance From the Published Record
LLM classification of 2,493 health-economics articles. Calibration 35% of publications but 18% of citations; Identification +91% citation premium, Reframing +126%.
Cycling Through Bad Ideas Faster: A Medicaid Branding Worked Example
Three coding rules, a controls ladder, and a behavioral-mechanism test on state Medicaid branding, ending at a bounded null.
How to Calculate 2.7M Transit Routes for Free
Step-by-step guide to r5py, GTFS data, and multimodal accessibility analysis.
Food Security
Food access, SNAP enrollment, grocery store distribution, and the complex relationship between geography and food insecurity in California.
The Food Desert Myth
Zero food deserts by federal definition, yet SNAP participation varies 4.7x across similar communities.
Hidden Mobility Deserts
When nearby stores are unreachable: 13 census tracts with grocery stores under 0.5mi but 30+ minutes by transit.
The Vulnerability Paradox
Why high-vulnerability communities sometimes have better geographic food access than low-vulnerability areas.
Transit Equity
How transit access shapes economic opportunity. Mobility measurement, accessibility indices, and transportation barriers.
Hidden Mobility Deserts
2.7M transit routes reveal 13 census tracts where nearby destinations are unreachable by public transit.
Transit Equity and Race
Analyzing racial disparities in transit access across California communities.
Housing Tenure and Transit
How housing stability affects transit access patterns in urban California.
Education Policy
School funding, special education budgets, and how districts respond to fiscal constraints, stimulus funding, and federal mandates.
How California Protected Special Ed, Then Shifted Cuts
California's 2008 funding floor prevented $1.2B in special ed cuts, but districts shifted cuts to general education.
Stimulus Saved Schools, Then Made Things Worse
How ARRA funding created a fiscal cliff for school districts after the Great Recession.
The Unfunded Mandate
IDEA promised 40% federal funding for special education. Four decades later, it's still at 15%.
Health Policy
Medicaid fraud detection, public-coverage data, and the gap between administrative records and the populations they describe.
The Data Landscape
What 227 million rows of Medicaid claims data can and can't tell us about fraud.
The Label Problem
Why training a fraud classifier is harder than it looks: positive-only labels and selection bias.
The Classifier
SHAP-interpreted XGBoost for Medicaid fraud detection, with positive-unlabeled learning.
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