Polarization of public trust in scientists between 1978 and 2018

Abstract The U.S. public’s trust in scientists reached a new high in 2019 despite the collision of science and politics witnessed by the country. This study examines the cross-decade shift in public trust in scientists by analyzing General Social Survey data (1978–2018) using interpretable machine learning algorithms. The results suggest a polarization of public trust as political ideology made an increasingly important contribution to predicting trust over time. Compared with previous decades, many conservatives started to lose trust in scientists completely between 2008 and 2018. Although the marginal importance of political ideology in contributing to trust was greater than that of party identification, it was secondary to that of education and race in 2018. We discuss the practical implications and lessons learned from using machine learning algorithms to examine public opinion trends.

Download Full-text

Are Religious People More Compassionate and Does This Matter Politically?

Politics and Religion ◽

10.1017/s1755048312000612 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

pp. 618-645 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

David D. Blouin ◽

Robert V. Robinson ◽

Brian Starks

Keyword(s):

Political Ideology ◽

Party Identification ◽

General Social Survey ◽

Religious Right ◽

Government Assistance ◽

Social Survey ◽

Religious Traditions ◽

The Poor ◽

Carry Over ◽

Service Attendance

AbstractAnalyzing a unique module of the General Social Survey, we test hypotheses that three religion dimensions — affiliation with specific religious traditions (belonging), service attendance (behaving), and religious orthodoxy (believing) are associated with compassionate feelings, and that these feelings carry over into support for government efforts to help the poor, blacks, and the sick. The religiously orthodox report more compassionate feelings toward others than do modernists and, partly because of this, are more supportive of government intervention to help the poor. Yet attending religious services frequently does not increase compassionate feelings and makes people less supportive of government efforts to help the poor. There are no differences among religious traditions in compassionate feelings, and the only difference on economic policy preferences is for Black Protestants to support government assistance to blacks. Compassionate feelings have comparable effects to political ideology and party identification on support for government assistance to the disadvantaged and misfortunate. We conclude that people of faith, variously defined, do not constitute a monolithic “Religious Right” and are potentially open to policy appeals from both political parties.

Download Full-text

Supplemental Material for One Model to Rule Them All? Using Machine Learning Algorithms to Determine the Number of Factors in Exploratory Factor Analysis

Psychological Methods ◽

10.1037/met0000262.supp ◽

2020 ◽

Keyword(s):

Machine Learning ◽

Factor Analysis ◽

Exploratory Factor Analysis ◽

Learning Algorithms ◽

Machine Learning Algorithms ◽

Number Of Factors

Download Full-text

Forecasting US movies box office performances in Turkey using machine learning algorithms

Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems ◽

10.3233/jifs-189120 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 39 (5) ◽

pp. 6579-6590

Author(s):

Sandy Çağlıyor ◽

Başar Öztayşi ◽

Selime Sezgin

Keyword(s):

Machine Learning ◽

Global Economy ◽

Learning Algorithms ◽

Forecast Model ◽

Machine Learning Algorithms ◽

Gradient Boosting ◽

High Stakes ◽

Box Office ◽

Industry Forecast ◽

The Impact

The motion picture industry is one of the largest industries worldwide and has significant importance in the global economy. Considering the high stakes and high risks in the industry, forecast models and decision support systems are gaining importance. Several attempts have been made to estimate the theatrical performance of a movie before or at the early stages of its release. Nevertheless, these models are mostly used for predicting domestic performances and the industry still struggles to predict box office performances in overseas markets. In this study, the aim is to design a forecast model using different machine learning algorithms to estimate the theatrical success of US movies in Turkey. From various sources, a dataset of 1559 movies is constructed. Firstly, independent variables are grouped as pre-release, distributor type, and international distribution based on their characteristic. The number of attendances is discretized into three classes. Four popular machine learning algorithms, artificial neural networks, decision tree regression and gradient boosting tree and random forest are employed, and the impact of each group is observed by compared by the performance models. Then the number of target classes is increased into five and eight and results are compared with the previously developed models in the literature.

Download Full-text

Intelligent system of English composition scoring model based on improved machine learning algorithm

Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems ◽

10.3233/jifs-189235 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-11

Author(s):

Jie Liu ◽

Lin Lin ◽

Xiufang Liang

Keyword(s):

Machine Learning ◽

Evaluation System ◽

Intelligent System ◽

Learning Algorithm ◽

Learning Algorithms ◽

Machine Learning Algorithms ◽

Assessment System ◽

English Composition ◽

Region Extraction ◽

Constraint Model

The online English teaching system has certain requirements for the intelligent scoring system, and the most difficult stage of intelligent scoring in the English test is to score the English composition through the intelligent model. In order to improve the intelligence of English composition scoring, based on machine learning algorithms, this study combines intelligent image recognition technology to improve machine learning algorithms, and proposes an improved MSER-based character candidate region extraction algorithm and a convolutional neural network-based pseudo-character region filtering algorithm. In addition, in order to verify whether the algorithm model proposed in this paper meets the requirements of the group text, that is, to verify the feasibility of the algorithm, the performance of the model proposed in this study is analyzed through design experiments. Moreover, the basic conditions for composition scoring are input into the model as a constraint model. The research results show that the algorithm proposed in this paper has a certain practical effect, and it can be applied to the English assessment system and the online assessment system of the homework evaluation system algorithm system.

Download Full-text

The Unlearnable Checkerboard Pattern

Communications of the Blyth Institute ◽

10.33014/issn.2640-5652.1.2.holloway.1 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 78-80

Author(s):

Eric Holloway

Keyword(s):

Machine Learning ◽

Learning Algorithms ◽

Machine Learning Algorithms ◽

Checkerboard Pattern ◽

Simple Task

Detecting some patterns is a simple task for humans, but nearly impossible for current machine learning algorithms. Here, the "checkerboard" pattern is examined, where human prediction nears 100% and machine prediction drops significantly below 50%.

Download Full-text