I'm pleased to announce that my article, "Two ways of being at peace with our fate and nature in the Zhuangzi" has been accepted for publication in Philosophy East and West later this year. The abstract is below followed by a link to the author's preprint. Please note that pagination in the published version will... Continue Reading →
Giving a talk at Lingnan University
Excited to give a talk at Lingnan University next week about early Confucianism and metaethics. The ideas for this paper have been in the works for a very long time but I've only recently been able to articulate them in a way I find satisfying. Very interested in the response! The poster and abstract can be found... Continue Reading →
Trends in PhilJobs ads: Fixed-term vs. long-term philosophy job ads
What are some of the trends for jobs in philosophy over the past decade? I pulled some 6000 job advertisements from PhilJobs to find out.
Giving a talk at Stockton University
I'll be giving a talk on April 12th at Stockton University titled "Truth and Chinese Philosophy," which I am currently co-authoring with Jamin Asay (Purdue University). An abstract of the paper follows: A longstanding debate within comparative philosophy concerns what role (if any) the notion of truth plays in ancient Chinese philosophy. In this paper... Continue Reading →
PGR Overall Weighted Mean and Standard Deviations
Previously, I calculated the range of overall mean scores of PGR-ranked institutions from 2006-2021. This gave readers a sense of which institutions' scores changed the most over time. However, that analysis was limited in at least two key respects: First, the range is just one measurement of spread of a department's score's spread, and it... Continue Reading →
How to Calculate Weighted Mean and Weighted Standard Deviation with Python
The other day, I had to calculate the weighted mean, standard deviation, and variance of a dataset using Python and I struggled to find reliable guidance that explained how the calculation worked. Here, I'll explain how I performed the calculations using the math and statistics libraries. Why use weighed values? Many of us assign different... Continue Reading →
New Analysis: Participation in my Critical Reasoning classes
I taught two sections of Critical Reasoning per semester at Yonsei University UIC for the past three semesters. Due to the pandemic, the first of the three was fully online. The second was a blended format, with lectures delivered online and discussion held in-person. The third was fully in-person. Each discussion meetings had as its... Continue Reading →
The PGR’s Biggest Fluctuations in Mean Scores
The following is a brief analysis of the Institutions whose mean scores swung the most since the 2006 PGR. Which Institutions saw the largest change in its overall mean score since 2006? Yale University (2021 overall rank 6) had a spread of 1-point over a cumulative increase in its mean score since 2006, which is... Continue Reading →
Introducing the PGR Database Project
Upon making some progress with my Visualizing the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) project using Excel and Tableau, I've decided to create a relational database of all the publicly-available PGR data and document the process on a new page: The PGR Database Project. The goal of both projects is to increase accessibility and utility of the... Continue Reading →
New Visualizations: Institution Scores by Philosophical Area
One useful comparison the PGR data allows us to make is between an Institution's scores within a certain Area of philosophy and its Overall score. However, the data is a bit cumbersome to navigate in table form, and so help improve the raw data's utility, I've added more visualizations for each major Area and a... Continue Reading →
Analyses by Frank Saunders Jr 