Nasser's Blog

Coming soon: The Massachusetts Prosecutor Data Project! More than six million criminal charges from ten of the state's eleven District Attorneys, requested under the public records law, are being made comparable for the first time.Sign up at prosecutordat

We've all heard the cliché: a new year means a fresh start. Weirdly? I enjoy setting intentions for the year. Our worlds are vast, and we each explore different life experiences at different times. Often, we compare those experiences with others - my grad

It is election day, and Pennsylvania's 19 Electoral College votes could determine who becomes president. The state has swung back and forth - Donald Trump won it in 2016 by 44,292 votes, then Joe Biden took it in 2020 by 80,555. In a state where such smal

Flying into Windhoek, Namibia, you're greeted with a window view of sweeping sand dunes as far as you can see, hardly a cloud in sight. The experience doesn't stop there-you're also met with turbulent winds that made for one of the most stressful landings

When you grow up about as far as you can from the middle of the Pacific, you're socialized to understand it as a place of potential leisure, rather than someone's home. I fell in love with the Big Island of Hawai'i, but I continue to curse myself for how

Polling is an unalienable part of our political process in the United States. In national elections, like for Congress or President, we look to polls and our pollsters for guidance on how populations of people otherwise inaccessible to us feel about the c

Feeling inspired by Bobby Constantino's 2018 analysis of donations to candidates running for Suffolk County District Attorney, I've been feeling compelled for some time to similarly analyze the contributions made by individuals to the candidates running f

On August 12th, 2021, the U.S. Census Bureau released detailed data about the population of the United States. This data is released in two formats. The data that has already been released is what's called a "legacy format," which means it will be made av