Data Mining and Social Sciences

Catalog description

A tremendous amount of data is now being generated and collected through digital technology such as mobile phones, websites, and other electronic devices. How can social scientists take advantage of these digital trace data to answer pressing social questions? This winter course introduces students to basic concepts and methods in computational social science. It aims to show students new ways of thinking about data, conducting social analysis, and examining social phenomena through the lens of computational social science. Students will learn techniques such as web scraping, conducting automated text analyses, and incorporating machine learning into their research projects. By the end of the course, students will be able to conduct research using R programming language to analyze big data.