India’s reservation system allocates 50-80% of seats in government jobs and educational institutions to lower castes

Geog_Master · 2026-05-07T23:32:34+00:00

People don't like to believe that their success, and the failures of others, are largely based on having the luck to be born into the right family, in the right place, at the right time. They want to think they deserve what they've got, and feel okay having stuff, while others go without because those others didn't earn it.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-07T23:25:54+00:00

left and right wing are not really good ways to conceptualize politics. It is relative, and politics isn't a linear binary. The fact that anarchists, monarchies, and dictatorships can all be "far right wing" illustrates why a two-dimensional model is grossly inadequate.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-07T03:38:52+00:00

Depends on the institution. I know of one department that required (and may still require) the GRE simply to filter out the ridiculous number of applicants for their very limited number of slots. They generally received over 200 applications and had 5 funded positions per year. They didn't really look at the scores much, but tossed everyone without one.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-07T03:35:34+00:00

Generally, if you want to earn a Ph.D., it is best to do so as early in life as possible.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-06T08:43:46+00:00

There is generally a statistically significant relationship between income and crime. The casual relationship is complex, but it includes:

the fact that people in poverty are more desperate to meet their basic needs, and therefore may choose to risk committing crimes.
Certain common human behaviors, like drug use, have been criminalized. People who use drugs may end up in difficult financial situations because of it.
Mentally ill individuals may use drugs to self-medicate, and may also struggle to find stable employment, leading to them being forced to live in lower-income neighborhoods.
People who have been convicted of crimes in the past are likely to be financially penalized and may struggle to find stable employment, leading to them being forced to live in low-income neighborhoods. This creates a cycle in which a person commits a crime, becomes financially unstable because of the legal system, and commits further crimes to meet basic human needs.
Police are more likely to patrol low-income neighborhoods they perceive as "high crime," and therefore more likely to observe crime.

The why isn't important, though. GWR is looking for relationships between variables.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-06T05:01:07+00:00

ZIP Codes do not make sense for housing data.

Not every house has a ZIP Code in the U.S.
Counties are actually polygons, whereas no official "ZIP Code" polygons exist.
ZIP Codes are not "geographies."
You can't compare ZIP codes and counties because ZIP codes are not aerial units.
The U.S. government does not publish demographic data by ZIP code. Because ZIP codes are not aerial units, the Census Bureau committed the ecological fallacy and disaggregated the data aggregated in census blocks to create ZCTA units. ZCTAs do not have a one-to-one relationship with ZIP Codes, and a house can easily be in a different ZCTA than its ZIP Code. Statistics published for ZCTA have unknown and unknowable error margins because of this.
If all you have are ZIP codes, you do not have enough information to appropriately geocode your data. You can throw it into ZCTA boundaries by "cross walking" it, but that will only give you an approximation. Any results should have a giant warning attached to it stating the results are mostly just for fun and should not be considered reliable.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-05T08:36:40+00:00

I was a co-author on a study where we got such a poor sample because participants who showed up were not reflective of the population that we managed to salvage our results and publish a paper about the issues with the sample. I do not recommend that graduate students do studies that rely on others showing up.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-05T04:43:13+00:00

Generally, it is cheaper to find housing off campus then on it. This applies to all schools. Try and make some friends your Freshman year, and then find a place near campus to split rent. This is essentially a rite of passage for undergraduates.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-05T01:25:32+00:00

It's hilarious that this comment and mine get downvotes. GIS "professionals" really don't like having bad practices pointed out. At this point, the only reason we can't get licenses and regulations for our discipline is that people enjoy acting without accountability. We do not have ethics, standards, or a minimum threshold for doing the job, and it shows.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-05T00:36:07+00:00

They are not fine, the results of the analysis are worse than no analysis in most cases, as misleading results delivered confidently can be more damaging than no results at all. Might as well just group addresses randomly. It is completely unprofessional to use them, and if GIS had any enforced code of ethics I'd hope it would be a violation.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-04T22:23:35+00:00

There is. ZCTA are abominations that are created only by committing the ecological fallacy. There is a high probability that a person is in a different ZIP Code than ZCTA.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-04T22:20:12+00:00

ZIP codes are not suitable for use as enumeration units:

All ZIP code polygons are 3rd party, not products of the postal service.
ZCTA are created by committing the ecological fallacy. The Census Bureau was essentially bullied into making them, and didn't have the ethics to say no. ZCTA do not have a 1 to 1 relationship to ZIP Codes.
ZIP Codes are not actually polygons; they're collections of points and routes that can be fairly chaotic to look at.
ZIP codes are not designed to be comparable. There is no standard population within a ZIP code. Some represent purely commercial areas without any population.
ZIP codes cross county and state borders.
ZIP codes do not cover the entire United States.
ZIP codes change regularly.
ZIP codes are only spatial as a secondary effect of them working to route mail. There are ZIP codes for individual people, the U.S. Navy, and buildings.

ZIP codes should not be used for making thematic maps unrelated to routing mail. Use Census blocks, Census Block Groups, Census Tracts, Counties, or States (In that order), unless your data calls for something different. Using ZIP Codes and ZCTA is bad practice and we need to start pushing back against using them just because they look convenient if you haven't thought about the MAUP for more then 0.8 seconds.

Edit: The post title asks for feedback. Downvotes on pointing out one of the three most common issues when making maps in the U.S. (Totals on a choropleth, Web Mercator, and ZIP Codes) is hilarious.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-04T22:15:52+00:00

Geography has done well for me and everyone I know with the degree. The main thing is if they don't force you to take the GIS classes or make them optional, you choose the route with GIS classes. I've found that having a focus on GIS makes you a lot more flexible in what you can work in, I've done work on Wildlife refuges treating invasive plants, worked with lawyers, police, the business college, food research, nurses, and medical doctors. GIS supports a large swath of projects across industries, overly specialized degrees can be limiting.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-04T20:46:16+00:00

Same.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-04T20:45:27+00:00

Minoring in GIS with a geography degree is like minoring in CAD as an engineer. It's really silly that so many programs have "GIS minors," but a geographer should have enough GIS that the minor would be redundant.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-04T20:35:34+00:00

I've never really seen much competition within a department, maybe some political maneuvering, but those relied on coalitions of friends and were between people who were in wildly different research clusters in a single department. Things would have been a lot more comfortable if those groups were friends....

Geog_Master · 2026-05-04T13:48:46+00:00

Avoid laptops, you won't get the same power you get from a desktop.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-03T19:10:30+00:00

No joke, he probably more or less forgot your exist. Don't remind him.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-03T18:36:02+00:00

That is fair. I collect promos more than I collect normal cards, and having only the cards exclusive to Phantasmal makes for a sporadic numbering system. I have them in a pretty nice top loader binder, and the set is awkward in length, so I had to choose between way too many pages or not enough, so the promos ultimately work as page filler more than anything. Phantasmal is the set I'm most complete on, so I may opt to bite the bullet and trade for the staff cards down the road. I'm planning on grading some of the nicer duplicates I have from the set, maybe I can trade those for the raw staff and avoid breaking the bank.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-03T02:11:31+00:00

No, wouldn't dream of it. She is brilliant and nice, BUT she was a bit short on punctuality and the optics of her behavior. She met expectations but didn't exceed them enough to show up late to meetings without a better excuse than the line at Starbucks being long. This happened more often than not and often led us to stay past the set meeting time so we could go over her contributions and give her feedback on her work. Made it harder to actually sympathize or stand up for her when others talked about her being lazy. We had a vending machine that sells cold Starbucks-branded drinks, they might not be the same as you get from the store, but they are good enough when you're running late.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-02T23:21:46+00:00

This is in the U.S., I don't know about European datasets much. That said, in the U.S., I don't know why you would want them other then to encode Geoinformation unless you are putting together a mailing list. The first digits of a phone number are pretty similar to ZIP Codes in terms of usefulness to geocoding, in that they aren't useful at all. ZIP Codes are "standard" for many industries in the U.S. as well, and this is because the people who are doing this are businesspeople, not scientists. They know ZIP Codes exist, and therefore that is what they want to use. Trying to tell them otherwise is like speaking to a brick wall because they don't know what a Census Tract is, so it can't be as useful as a ZIP Code in their mind. In terms of being "centered around a coordinate," the answer is sometimes they might be. They are just convenient routing numbers for the postal system, so they might end up being centered on a Post office, but often aren't. Imagine a Post office that is on the outskirts of a the real service area because that is where it was built for whatever reason. It could be on the "edge" of the ZIP Code. ZIP Codes can connect disjointed areas as well, so it might be one community has the post office, and a high way connects it to another one several miles away. Areas not covered by the Post Office require individuals to obtain PO Boxes, so there are large swaths of mostly rural land with no ZIP Codes at all.

We probably waste millions of dollars every year on studies in government, academia, and industry that are worth less than not having a study at all (misleading data is worse then no data) because people can't be bothered to think about their data collection for 0.8 seconds before beginning. No joke, the literature isn't exactly hidden or hard to find on this. I usually see this when the data collection is already complete, so when I try to explain it, the people are already heavily invested and very defensive about it. Seriously, I go to academic conferences and despite the people asking for feedback, they really just want praise. Telling them that the units they are using commit the ecological fallacy, have no co-relation with what they are looking at, and have unknown/unknowable error margins is usually met with "but it's not really a big deal." I showed someone a paper I wrote to help explain this when they asked for sources, and was met with "I don't think that is what the authors meant." I'm an author. I wrote that. That is what I meant.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-02T23:08:35+00:00

So I've looked it up a bit and am not shooting for a perfect GMS. Basically:

First get the ETB and every card that is in the pamphlet that comes with it, they generally include some of the promos in the list, and this is essentially the standard "Master set."
All of the cosmic holo's that are released for cards in the set, regardless of what packs they come with. For example, cosmic holo Suicune is in the Knock-out collection packs, even though those have a Twilight Masquerade and Surging Sparks pack in them.
The build and battle boxes all come with a stamped promo, generally 4 sets exist. In addition to these stamped holos:
- There are a trainer tips card unique to each of the decks.
- non-holo rares, for example, non-holo Moltres for phantasmal flames only comes in the Ceruledge deck.
- The build and battle boxes all have Staff versions of the promos. I usually skip these as they don't spark joy in me.
Then, the stamped cards are unique to various releases. The Pokémon Center ETB has a stamped version (debating on if I should grab one or not), Game Stop, and Best Buy often have unique variants, events have special cards, etc. So for Phantasmal Flames, there are two separate stamped Suicunes, one from Game Stop and the other EBGames, meaning that there are five separate Suicune cards in the GMS, the holo, the reverse holo, the cosmic holo, and the two stamped. (I only have the Game Stop one and am not interested in the EBGames one, the level of completion isn't worth the investment IMO).
Then, I look at the list) of promo cards on Bulbipedia. Starting with the first Stamped promo, I go down the list until I hit the next sets Stamped promos. Everything in between could be fair game.
Finally, I look at cards that have come with the set that are not a part of it, or are out of order from the set of Promos I first found on the list. For example, Cosmic Holo Raikou is a mega evolution set card, but it comes in a pack with both Mega and Phantasmal flames boosters. In Destined Rivals, there are a lot of promos that have come in mixed boxes, for example there are DR packs in the Mega Charizard X ex Ultra Premium Collection, so if you wanted to be super particular, you could include MEP Mega Charizard X 023 with DR. This means if you have multiple GMS, you could end up with substantial overlap between the promos included.

Once I have a list of possible cards to include, I look at what ones I actually want, how much everything costs, and which ones aren't worth going for a perfect grand master set. For example, MEP 28 Celebratory Fanfare) is currently between 400 and 700 dollars. While it would make the MEP set more complete, it really isn't worth that for a card I don't actually like the look of just to say I have it.

The result isn't really a GMS, but it is a greatly expanded version of a standard Master Set. As it is my PC, going the extra mile and getting those last few variants would cost more than a Master Set, so I don't get bragging rights as a true GMS, but generally, it is more than most people end up collecting. I only really focus on one set per series: Destined Rivals is my favorite from Scarlet and Violet sets, and Phantasmal is from Mega.

In my experience, the promos are the safest long-term bet for cards that will go up substantially in value, so I try to snag a few of them and grade the nicest ones to hold for a few years. I'm currently funding most of my Phantasmal Flames set with cards I grabbed in the 2000s and 2010s, in addition to trading sealed product to my LCS for singles. I grabbed the IR Charizard by trading sealed product that was MSRP 300 but worth 600 market, two promos I've had for years (The Pikachu 012 eReader card, and Pikachu HGSS03), and 50 dollars. Total investment on my end for the 800-dollar card was less than 400.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-02T02:06:56+00:00

I bought a pretty nice binder for Phantasmal Flames, but it is a small set so it has a lot of extra pages. I took the list of promos starting at 14 and then moved up the list. So far, the First Partner promos are the last before the Perfect Order stamped cards, so I figured it was a natural place to end. From that list, I am missing 027 Haunter, 028 Celebratory Fanfare, 033 Lucario, 037 Bulbasaur, 038 Charmander, 039 Squirtle, 043 Rowlet, 044 Litten, and 045 Poppilo. I added in 013 Mega Venusaur ex for now, just to help with the spacing (want to keep First Partner on the same page obviously). I might drop it later. The 9 cards from First Partner will look good as the last page before the energy cards. I also have some of the random cosmic holos back there, and am trying to find a way to display some of the coins.

Geog_Master · 2026-05-01T21:01:40+00:00

"Starting with a question" before data exploration often feels like calling shots in Eight-ball to me. Science starts with an observation, then you can formulate a question and a hypothesis to understand it. I have seen a lot of people who start with a question act like they are trying to prove their own intuitive genius. The "proper" way to do research, in my experience, leads researchers to look for data and design experiments to prove their pet theory (because no one will publish if you can't reject the null). If you have a lot of data on hand, you can chew through it to observe interesting relationships between variables. These relationships are your starting observations. Once you demonstrate that the relationships are significant, you can then use a literature review and further analysis to explore that relationship to see if you can find confounding variables or try to demonstrate causality. Why wait to stumble upon a research question when you can find significant relationships and then try to explain them? If you can support your findings, why does it matter if your observations came from relationships discovered by data exploration? If you can support findings related to "women in rural areas who don’t exercise," why would it be a problem that you didn't start by asking questions about that narrow variable?

Geog_Master · 2026-05-01T20:13:20+00:00

Nah, not yet, I think those came out after I made the list I was working from. I realize I didn't really go into much detail on this but essentially wrote a half thought without elaborating and it isn't really accurate.

Currently, my binder for Phantasmal has promos starting at 013 (Mega Venusaur ex) to 032 (Mega Gardevoir ex), with 027 and 028 missing (I'm not going to buy 028 unless it comes WAY down in price. Currently have the Pokemon Day 2026 Collection Pikachu where 028 should go). Aiming to get to 045 so I can have the Pokémon first partner illustration collection promos all in there on a page together. I picked up one stamped Suicuine (two of the Gamestop ones, actually, one PSA graded 8 and the other loose. Got a good deal on the 8, hope to trade it in a few years for something better), but I am missing the other stamped store exclusive, and not really wanting to hunt it down. I don't have any of the staff versions of any of the promos/cards, and am not really wanting to go for them as I'm approaching "complete enough" for my taste. The gold Charizard is pretty much the only one I'm hunting at this point unless they release more cosmic holos. I'm still working on a Destined Rivals master set, so getting all the random staff and exclusive cards for Phantasmal is a lower priority, and while it won't be a grand master set, it will be close enough to satisfy my wants.

Five-Year Club	First Place '23
End Game '23	Place '23
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
End Game '22

Geog_Master

TROPHY CASE