David B. SparksDepartment of Political ScienceDuke UniversityPerkins Library, Box 90204Durham, NC 27708

Phone: (919) 724-4443Office: Old Chem 408AEmail: d.sparks@duke.eduHomepage: http://dsparks.wordpress.com

Education

Ph.D. Political Science, Duke University, (Projected) 2012.

Committee: John Aldrich (chair), Scott de Marchi, David Rohde, and Michael Ward.

Dissertation: “Heterogeneity, Ideology, and Polarization.” I advance a model in which ideology arisesas a function of heterogeneity in the distribution of ascriptive identities, and develop a mapping ofideology in public opinion. I also introduce a measure of polarization that applies to any numberof groups in any number of dimensions, and explain the source of ideological polarization in theelectorate.

B.A. Political Science and Economics, Summa Cum Laude, Vanderbilt University, 2006

Research

Conference Presentations

“The Visual Display of Quantitative Political Information.” 2011. Poster presented at the Annual Meetingof the American Political Science Association.

“Reciprocal Weighted Average Estimates of Congressional Partisanship and Polarization over Time.” 2011.Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.

“Dimensionality in Congress: Alternative Sources of Low-Dimensionality in Scaled Roll-Call Analyses.”With John Aldrich and Jacob Montgomery. 2011. Poster presented at the Society for Political Method-ology Summer Meeting.

“Ideological Extremity and the Primary Sources of Polarization.” With Aaron King and Frank Orlando.2011. Presented at New Faces in Political Methodology IV.

“Ideological Extremity and Primary Success: A Social Network Approach.” With Aaron King and FrankOrlando. 2011. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.

“Drawing (Inferences) Outside the Lines: Dimensionality in Congress.” With John Aldrich and JacobMontgomery. 2010. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.

“Regionalization via Network-Constrained Clustering.” 2010. Poster presented at the Political NetworksConference.

“Partisan Structure in Online Social Networks.” 2010. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the MidwestPolitical Science Association.

“Party Control and Political Agendas.” 2010. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest PoliticalScience Association.

“Political Figures in a social and cultural context: Dimensionality of candidate evaluations.” With JohnAldrich. 2010. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association.

“The Obama Effect: Racial Attitudes and Their Effects on Candidate Appraisals.” With Candis Watts.2009. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association.

David B. Sparks 2

Invited Talks

“A Thousand Words: The Visualization of Large-N, Multidimensional Data.” Sep 2010. Presented at theNational Institute of Standards and Technology, Washington, DC.

“Racial Attitudes and Their Effects on Candidate Evaluations.” With Candis S. Watts. Nov 2009. Pre-sented at the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences, Duke Univer-sity.

Teaching

Duke University

Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, Summer 2010 and 2011, Statistical Analysis TA.

Introduction to Political Inquiry, Spring 2011, TA for Chris Gelpi.

American Political Parties, Fall 2010, Instructor.

Prisoner’s Dilemma and Distributive Justice, Spring 2010, TA for Geoffrey Brennan.

Conflict, Collusion and Cooperation, Fall 2009, TA for Emerson Niou.

Prisoner’s Dilemma and Distributive Justice, Spring 2010, TA for Michael Munger.

Professional Activities

Member, American Political Science Association.

Member, Midwestern Political Science Association.

Member, Southern Political Science Association.

Member, Society for Political Methodology.

Reviewer for Political Behavior, Public Choice, American Politics Research, IEEE Computer Graphicsand Applications.

Honors, Awards, & Fellowships

pariss Fellow, Duke University, 2011-2012.

Summer Social Webshop invitee, University of Maryland, College Park, 2011.

Summer Research Fellowship, Duke University, 2011.

pariss Certificate, Duke University, 2009.

James B. Duke Fellowship, Duke University, 2006.

pipc Fellow, Duke University, 2006.

Honors in Political Science, Vanderbilt University, 2006.

Honors in the College of Arts & Science, Vanderbilt University, 2006.

φβκ, Vanderbilt University, 2006.

Miscellaneous

Relevant experiene: Statistical Consultant to the Boston Celtics basketball team.

Last updated: September 7, 2011