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david holtz

@dholtz.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.1K following 40 posts

professor at columbia. things i’m likely to skeet about (in no particular order): research, the #NBA, music, and #Survivor

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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
The DRO division at CBS is hiring this year! We welcome applicants from a wide range of fields, including OM, econ, stats, CS, engineering, and IS. If you're on the market, apply! If you have any questions about the position, please reach out. apply.interfolio.com/173616
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Hannah Li @hannahli.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
📣 Please repost 📣 We are hiring a staff Research Associate (pre-doc) at Columbia DRO! This is a great opportunity if you want to work on online platforms, urban economics, experiment design, or impacts of AI. Deadline to apply is May 15. For more info: business.columbia.edu/faculty/divi...
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 05/01/2025
one recent learning from wearing an oura ring is that I burn a decent number of calories when giving an academic talk. just one more incentive to get out there and promote your research, i guess
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
nosferatu feels like a supercut of diablo iv cutscenes (non-derogatory), right down to the fact that ralph ineson (the voice of lorath in diablo iv) has a big role in the movie
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
🤔🤔🤔
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
figured out my halloween costume for 2025: jeff proust
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
In the January/February 2025 Harvard Business Review (and online now): a new article that explains the steps that companies should follow to get better at experimentation hbr.org/2025/01/want... From me, Iavor Bojinov, Ramesh Johari, Sven Schmit and Martin Tingley
hbr.org
Want Your Company to Get Better at Experimentation?
For years, online experimentation has fueled the innovations of leading tech companies, enabling them to rapidly test and refine new ideas, optimize product features, personalize user experiences, and...
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Alex Imas @aleximas.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Good short thread qualifying the elite education graph that’s been making the rounds.
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
saw the new documentary about omar rodriguez-lopez and cedric bixler-zavala last night. 1st, the doc is so good. 2nd, it includes footage from this 2000 ATDI performance of one armed scissor on letterman, which i had never seen before. it goes so hard! www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7L-...
youtube.com
At the Drive In - One Armed Scissor (Live at David Letterman)
YouTube video by gusbucker
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
the way i pick up every spam phone call now hoping it's the survivor casting department...so embarrassing...
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
the way the norcal earthquake caused a tsunami warning that then got canceled made me realize how cruel it was to shake your world, cause a wave of emotions, and then call things off. if you give me another shot, we can build a relationship with a strong foundation on solid ground. hope you’re well.
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
If this is an RCT the SUTVA violations are gonna be insane for more on this topic, see: pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/...
pubsonline.informs.org
Reducing Interference Bias in Online Marketplace Experiments Using Cluster Randomization: Evidence from a Pricing Meta-experiment on Airbnb | Management Science
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Dennis Crowley @dens.nyc · 04/12/2024
“this actually involves you in the news” is a good one-liner of that Twitter magic that has felt missing for a bit.
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
🙋‍♂️
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
actually though
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
OK just added everyone on the list. Please help circulate it around! 😊
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
On top of this, probability of winning the challenges changes as a function of how many people are in the field. As N gets smaller, Kyle would’ve been more likely to win. Despite this, I agree with Andy’s back of the envelope calculation and was also surprised it got so much pushback!
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
“academic community from which the university should select my tenure letter writers” bluesky starter pack
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
classic!
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
1) having the guy who played Russ Hanneman record an announcement video on cameo when I accepted my job at Berkeley 2) tweeting about my stay in a London Airbnb that was basically a bathroom with a bed in it (link below): nypost.com/2023/07/11/m...
nypost.com
My shocking Airbnb rental was a bathroom with a bed in it: ‘Airbnpee!’
UC Berkeley Professor David Holtz’s UK vacation went down the toilet after he arrived at his Airbnb accommodation to discover that the bedroom and bathroom were one and the same.
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
it is done!
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
you know, fair point! now if I can just get casting to get back to me…
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
omg I thought I had already added you! fixing ASAP. 🤦‍♂️ (also I am a huge fan, thanks for all you do! hoping you will one day be doing a podcast about why I lost).
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
thanks for putting this together! here to self nominate. 😳
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
just added - please share the pack around! :)
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
OK, one of my favorite things about X/twitter was the survivor community, so I’ve done the public service of putting together a #Survivor starter pack. Still very much a WIP - please reply with accounts I should add!
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
noooo we need to get the survivor discussion going over here!
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
👋
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
Seems like a nice interface to interact with LLM APIs in R
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Daryl Fairweather ⛅ @fairweatherphd.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Proud to share my first NBER working paper. 17.5 million Redfin users were randomly assigned to see or not see flood risk on home listing; the treated users went on to make offers on less risky homes. First casual evidence that homebuyers are adapting to climate change www.nber.org/papers/w33119
nber.org
Expecting Climate Change: A Nationwide Field Experiment in the Housing Market
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
🙋‍♂️
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
I had a great time doing this interview recently with Gretchen Huizinga and Sid Suri for the Microsoft Research podcast. We talk about Sid's and my now years-long collaboration/bromance, as well as our recent work on prompt engineering. Please give it a listen! www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...
microsoft.com
Collaborators: Prompt engineering with Siddharth Suri and David Holtz - Microsoft Research
In “Collaborators,” Siddharth Suri and David Holtz give a brief history of prompt engineering, discuss the debate behind their recent collaboration, and share what they found from studying how people’...
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 21/12/2023
This is, of course, work-in-progress, so thoughts, comments, and feedback of all sorts are much appreciated! 🙏
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 21/12/2023
Many more interesting nuggets and examples in the paper, which again was led by the fantastic Nick Otis. He is going to be on the job market soon and is fantastic, so consider hiring him into your department! Here's a link to his website: nicholasotis.com 9/
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 21/12/2023
Overall, this suggests that for gen AI to add value to workers in more open-ended contexts (for instance, entrepreneurs), we also need to expand access to complementary resources and skills 8/
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 21/12/2023
Our results are not inconsistent with other studies; in fact, if low performers select into asking for assistance with more difficult tasks, you could get results that look like ours, even if low performers benefit more from AI on any given task. 7/
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 21/12/2023
Exploratory analysis of the interaction logs with the AI mentor suggest this heterogeneity stems from the *types* of things low performers ask about: more challenging tasks that may not be well-suited to AI (or human) assistance. 6/
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 21/12/2023
The direction of our treatment effect heterogeneity is another difference between our work and existing research, which has found that generative AI *reduces* differences in productivity 5/
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 21/12/2023
This null effect masks considerable and important heterogeneity: initially low-performing entrepreneurs saw a 10% performance decline, whereas high performers experienced a 20% performance boost from AI use! 4/
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 21/12/2023
In contrast to excellent recent work by folks like Noy and Zhang, Brynjolfsson Li and Raymond, and Dell'Acqua et al., which all find positive impacts of generative AI on well-defined tasks, we find no effect of generative AI, despite considerable usage. BUT... 3/
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 21/12/2023
We ran a 5-month long RCT in Kenya with 640 Kenyan entrepreneurs, over 4,000 measures of firm performance, and thousands of interactions w/ a generative AI mentor that we built using GPT-4. Participants interacted w/ the mentor through WhatsApp. Example interaction shown here. 2/
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 21/12/2023
Announcing a new working paper measuring the causal impact of generative AI on business performance in emerging markets! osf.io/preprints/os... This is joint work w/ Nick Otis (who led the project), Rowan Clarke, Solene Delecourt, and Rem Koning. More on our results below down👇 1/
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 09/07/2023
Super interesting twitter thread re: GPT’s ability to add very large numbers:
twitter.com
Tweet by @colin_fraser
“I asked GPT 3 and 4 to add random 7 digit numbers 12,000 times each (150 distinct pairs of addends × 8 possible values for Number of Carries × 10 responses each). The prompt was just "{a}+{b}=", ...
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david holtz @dholtz.bsky.social · 28/06/2023
Very excited by this recent paper by Naoki Egami and coauthors, which looks at how social scientists can conduct unbiased statistical inference when using LLM-generated annotations in their analyses: arxiv.org/pdf/2306.04746…
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