astronomy

Solomon Messing

Solomon Messing is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Solomon Messing rather than just read about it. In short: Solomon Messing is a researcher and data scientist known for his work on how algorithms and social information embedded in new technologies affect the way people understand the political world. He was the founding Director of Pew Research Center's Data Labs, research scientist at Facebook and Twitter, chief scientist at Acronym, and is now Research Associate Professor at New York University.

Key takeaways

Solomon Messing belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Solomon Messing to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Solomon Messing from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Solomon Messing is a researcher and data scientist known for his work on how algorithms and social information embedded in new technologies affect the way people understand the political world. He was the founding Director of Pew Research Center's Data Labs, research scientist at Facebook and Twitter, chief scientist at Acronym, and is now Research Associate Professor at New York University. Messing's work quantifying media polarization and filter bubbles was published in Science and has been influential in the field of political communication and sparked media commentary on the role of networks and algorithms in the media ecosystem. His work on how people understand election forecasting was the subject of public debate about the role of election forecasting in the democratic process and was cited by FiveThirtyEight's Politics Podcast as a reason for changing the forecast from percent change of winning to odds. He also led the technical effort at Facebook to release perhaps the largest ever social media data set for research, which relied on a controversial technology, differential privacy, to protect data from malicious actors. Messing earned his PhD in 2013 as well as a master's degree in Statistics from Stanford University.

Most cited peer-reviewed journal articles Bakshy E, Messing S, Adamic LA. Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science. 2015 Jun 5;348(6239):1130-2. cited 2441 times in Google Scholar Messing S, Westwood SJ. Selective exposure in the age of social media: Endorsements trump partisan source affiliation when selecting news online. Communication Research. 2014 Dec;41(8):1042-63. cited 925 times in Google Scholar Grimmer J, Messing S, Westwood SJ. How words and money cultivate a personal vote: The effect of legislator credit claiming on constituent credit allocation' American Political Science Review. 2012 Nov;106(4):703-19.cited 311 times in Google Scholar Bond R, Messing S. Quantifying social media’s political space: Estimating ideology from publicly revealed preferences on Facebook. American Political Science Review. 2015 Feb;109(1):62-78. cited 182 times in Google Scholar

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Solomon Messing

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Solomon Messing claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Solomon Messing before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Solomon Messing ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Solomon Messing

In research: Solomon Messing appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Solomon Messing in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Solomon Messing is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Data scientists, Living people, Stanford University alumni, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Solomon Messing outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Solomon Messing in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Solomon Messing means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Solomon Messing out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Solomon Messing in simple terms?

Why does Solomon Messing matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Solomon Messing?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Solomon Messing.