Quote of the Day - social science

“We live in an era of social science, and have become accustomed to understanding the social world in terms of 'forces,' 'pressures', 'processes', and 'developments'. It is easy to forget that those 'forces' are statistical summaries of the deeds of millions of men and women who act on their beliefs in pursuit of their desires. The habit of submerging the individual into abstractions can lead not only to bad science (it’s not as if the 'social forces' obeyed Newton’s laws) but to dehumanization" (Steven Pinker)

The day I became a Doctor

I'm very glad  and relieved  to share the news that I became a doctor last week! It might take some time for the university to publish my PhD thesis, so I've decided to make the preprint of the thesis available for download here. I've also created a GitHub repository to share the R code used in the data wrangling, mapping and analysis in the thesis.

My examiners were Nihan Akyelken and Bert van Wee. They were super kind but very challenging, nonetheless. In the end, the PhD viva lasted for 2.5 hours and I was super nervous the whole time. I really enjoyed the viva, though, and I was so surprised when they said I had passed with no corrections that I almost jumped out of my chair. I got this result largely because of my incredibly  demanding  tireless supervisors Tim Schwanen and David Banister, to whom I'm extremely grateful.  All in all, I'm feeling incredibly happy and thankful for the whole journey and the support I received along the away from my family, friends and supervisors. It’s been a truly wonderful and humbling experience.

ps. I still have two papers of the thesis currently under review, but finishing the PhD means that now I'll have much more time to  procrastinate  work on new projects and some others that were put on hold.

photos by my lovely wife, Fabiana - also known as my third supervisor :)

Biographical note: back to the library

Working from the Oxford Bodleian Library and the Radcliffe Camera these days. Getting ready to my PhD defence and the seminar at UCL next week. The blog has been less active these days but I hope to post some good news in the coming days.

Home again

When you read the comments of reviewer 2

here we go...

Presenting a seminar at UCL on Sept 17th: Distributive Justice and Transportation Equity: Inequality in accessibility in Rio

Hi all. I will be in the UK over the next couple of weeks. My PhD defence is on Sept 18th  but I'm too nervous to talk about it these days . Wish me luck !

For those around London, I'll be presenting part of my doctoral research at UCL on Sept 17th (details below). This is part of a new seminar series on Transport and Social Equity jointly organized by the UCL research networks on socially just transport and planning. Thanks Beatriz Mella and Robin Hickman for the kind invitation.

[click on the image to enlarge it]

Assorted Links

1. Tokyo has a great public transport system....all things considered
   
   
2. report: Migration Data using Social Media: a European Perspective by Zagheni et al
   
   
3. imagineRio, a searchable atlas that illustrates the social and urban evolution of Rio de Janeiro over the entire history of the city
   
   
4. self recommending: Machine Learning beyond Curve Fitting: An Intro to Causal Inference and do-Calculus, by Ferenc Huszár
   
   
5. Brazil’s National Museum have been lost to fire
   
   
6. The late Waldo Tobler's legendary, seminal, (but unpublished) PhD thesis from 1961 is actually downloadable online. HT Michiel  Meeteren
   
   
7. When should you show percentage changes on a log or linear scale? Great post by Lisa Rost. I should re-read this post every now and then.
   
   
8. Google has launched a search tool for datasets. This is only a beta version but the idea could be really useful in the next years
   
   
9. Calculating driving isochrones considering traffic levels in QGIS (Python script here), by David. If you are more like an ArcGIS person, Riccardo has you covered. BTW, David and Ricardo run the great blog Digital Geography which is also on Twitter.

traffic enhanced isochrones during a in Birmingham

credit: davidribbon

and some isochrones of Chicago

credit: Riccardo

Open position at TSU/Oxford for Research Associate in Urban Mobility

This post is just a quick reminder that the Transport Studies Unit (TSU) at Oxford University is recruiting a senior researcher to work on the PEAK Urban project. Ten days left to apply. Job Details here.

This is a really exciting project working with Tim Schwanen (Twitter) in an extremely supportive environment with great colleagues in an excellent research center. I would jump at this opportunity if I could.