This feels a little dated now (it’s from last Tuesday), but Daniel Davies has an excellent and long-ish post about data mining. (Permalinks are outdated, you’ll have to scroll down to .)

It’s impossible to do it justice in a short summary, so I’ll just note one point that might be especially relevant to this audience. (I think philosophers should all care about the finer points of econometrics, but I expect few readers agree.) It turns out philosophers of science get paid some attention by econometricians. Davies links to Hsiang-Ke Chao’s paper Professor Hendry’s Econometric Methodology Reconsidered: Congruence and Structural Empiricism, which argues that “the LSE methodology [a particular approach to econometric modelling]… is compatible with the “structural empiricism” of van Fraassen.” Who knew that people who get paid serious money to model the economy actually read philosophers, let alone care whether their approaches are consistent with pronouncements of said philosophers? Who knew?

I think I’ve just found another topic for my philosophy of economics seminar next Spring…