Data and the Social World

Digital data and computational tools have transformed social science research. In this course we will learn about the tradition and logics of computational social science and learn how to apply it to their own sociological questions. Half of each class will be spent discussing published research: evaluating the methodological approach to the research question, reviewing the ethics or limitations of the data, and assessing the communication of results. The other half will be devoted to hands-on lab sessions, where students will learn the foundations of data science through computational research and the R statistical software language. These labs will cover the basics of reproducible workflows, and data collection, analysis, and visualization. (This course is not open to students who have already completed STAT 0118 or STAT 0201.)