Open source, Open data.
You will find here my work of the past decade or so. From about 2017 to the present, I have been working with North Carolina's elementary school data, and also the state's voter registration data. There are also some older odds and ends I hope you will find interesting. I am a data scientist by way of physics and pharmaceuticals, but not a statistician. I do descriptive statistics, not model building.
The data from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, NCDPI, is primarily in the extensive "disaggregated data" files (if any of you are from the Triangle, you probably know the Irregardless Cafe - my hypothesis is that "disaggregated" was coined over a well-oiled luncheon there). I have included links to these and other data files in the reports in the NCDPI section.
My interest lies primarily in the demonstrably unuseful extension of standardized tests to the ranking of schools, and obstacles to opportunity equity for minority students. I have also looked closely at the Chapel Hill-Carrboro elementary schools, and I present observations concerning the deficits in opportunity equity to be found there.
For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
John F. Kennedy, Yale University Commencement (June 11, 1962)
Whoever seeks the salvation of their own soul and the salvation of other souls does not seek it through politics, which has entirely different tasks: tasks that can only be solved by violence.
Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation, 1919
Here is a brief essay on Carl Schmitt, German jurist who was the legal theoretician and spokesman for the Nazi government. Read it and be aware of every little concession to autocracy that lead, one step at a time, to dictatorship.
Here is a quick reprise of Max Weber's Politics as a Vocation.
David Hopp
Durham North Carolina
cassiodorus at hotmail dot com
updated 21Nov2025 13:48