SignalStack · The Research Rundown, archived and made usable

Archive

Every post on varna.substack.com, as Markdown, with a link back to the original

All posts13, newest first Seven monthly editions, June 2024 to July 2026; three September 2026 dailies; one measurement and survey methods brief; two essays. Text as published. Recurring sectionsby edition Where each recurring section appears: Research praxis, Disambiguation corner, Researchers worth following, One dataset to open, and the rest. Latest editionJuly 2026 The electoral rolls, heat mortality the state does not count, the Panagariya poverty claim, delimitation, and how to read a deletion rate.

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Companions

Each recurring section, gathered from every edition

7 notes

Research praxis

How to read a deletion rate, what a poverty line actually is, a finding is not an inference, three kinds of participation.

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10 entries

Disambiguation corner

SIR, NPR and NRC. BPL, SECC, MPI and the poverty line. Gig, informal and platform worker. Allocation and expenditure.

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4 notes

Methods corner

Odds and likelihood, reach and impact, participation as a design property, the Hawthorne effect.

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15 people

Researchers worth following

Everyone the newsletter has recommended, with what it said about their work and where.

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35 items

Papers and reports

Recommended reading, edition by edition, with the editor's note where there was one.

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13 items

Books and long reads

Books, a documentary and long reads, from Ghodsee to Banu Mushtaq to Jan Breman.

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1 so far

Datasets worth opening

The India State of Forest Report 2023, and what to read before using forest cover as a biodiversity outcome.

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11 items

Tools and free resources

Platforms and resources, by edition.

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Every entry links to its edition. Corrections to the newsletter's text are in the errata.

Tools

Four scripts from the methods notes · Python, no dependencies · 23 tests

Deletion ratePython The four checks from July 2026 on any roll figure: share of the roll, expected churn, draft or final, wrongful removals. Poverty linesPython World Bank and Indian committee lines in rupees per person per month at one price year, from the World Bank's PPP and CPI series. Odds and likelihoodPython Odds and probability; odds ratio against relative risk from a 2x2 table; a binomial likelihood on a grid. AuditsPython Two checklists: the four questions for each recommendation in a report, the eight questions for a participatory design. Fill in the JSON, run the check.

Usage in tools/.

Updates

Monthly, by script

A script pulls new posts from Substack and rebuilds the companion pages once a month, and opens a pull request with the result.

The other OpenStacks repositories: InsightStack, MEL tools and survey data loaders; FieldStack, field operations in R; EquityStack, inequality measurement in Python.