Research Triangle Park, NC

June 17 – June 28, 2019 | RTI International (RTI)

Schedule & Materials

Monday June 17, 2019 - Introduction and Ethics
  • 8:30 - 9:00 Check-in

  • 9:00 - 9:15 Welcome/Logistics

  • 9:15 - 9:30 Introductions

  • 9:30 - 10:00 Introduction to computational social science (Princeton livestream) Slides

  • 10:00 - 10:30 Why SICSS? (Princeton livestream) Slides

  • 10:30 - 10:45 Coffee Break

  • 10:45 - 11:30 Ethics: Principles-based approach (Princeton livestream) Slides

  • 11:30 - 12:15 Four areas of difficulty: informed consent, informational risk, privacy, and making decisions in the face of uncertainty (Princeton livestream) Slides

  • 12:15 - 12:30 Introduction to the group exercise (Princeton livestream) Slides

  • 12:30 - 1:30 Lunch at Horizon as a group

  • 1:30 - 3:45 Group exercise Case study 1 Case study 2

  • 3:45 - 4:00 Break

  • 4:00 - 5:30 Guest speaker: Alondra Nelson (Princeton livestream)

Tuesday June 18, 2019 - Collecting Digital Trace Data
  • 9:00 - 9:15 Logistics

  • 9:15 - 9:30 What is digital trace data? Slides

  • 9:30 - 9:45 Strengths and weakness of digital trace data Slides, Annotated Code

  • 9:45 - 10:15 Screen-Scraping Slides, Annotated Code

  • 10:15 - 10:30 Coffee Break

  • 10:30 - 11:00 Application Programming Interfaces Slides, Annotated Code

  • 11:00 - 12:30 Building Apps and Bots for Social Science Research Slides, Annotated Code

  • 12:30 - 1:30 Lunch

  • 1:30 - 3:45 Group Exercise

  • 3:45 - 4:00 Break

  • 4:00 - 5:30 Guest speaker: Beth Noveck (Princeton livestream)

Wednesday June 19, 2019 - Automated Text Analysis
Thursday June 20, 2019 - Surveys in the Digital Age
  • 9:00 - 9:15 Logistics (Not open to public/No livestream)

  • 9:15 - 9:35 Survey research in the digital age Slides

  • 9:35 - 9:55 Probability and non-probability sampling Slides

  • 9:55 - 10:15 Computer-administered interviews and wiki surveys Slides

  • 10:15 - 10:35 Combining surveys and big data Slides

  • 10:35 - 10:45 Coffee break

  • 10:45 - 11:15 Group exercise introduction Slides

  • 11:15 - 12:30 Begin group exercise Exercise, Optional datasets: Survey data, post-stratification data (Not open to public/No livestream)

  • 12:30 - 1:30 Lunch

  • 1:30 - 3:15 Continue group exercise (Not open to public/No livestream)

  • 3:15 - 3:45 Discuss activity and open-source data Slides

  • 3:45 - 4:00 Break

  • 4:00 - 5:30 Guest speaker: Justin Grimmer

  • 6:00 - 7:30 Dinner & Discussion (Not open to public/No livestream)

Friday June 21, 2019 - Mass Collaboration
  • 9:00 - 9:15 Logistics (Not open to public/No livestream)

  • 9:15 - 9:45 Mass collaboration Slides

  • 9:45 - 10:15 The Fragile Families Challenge Slides

  • 10:15 - 10:30 Coffee break

  • 10:30 - 11:30 Participating in the Fragile Families Challenge Activity Slides

  • 11:30 - 12:30 A Brief Introduction to Machine Learning with Georgiy Bobashev, Center for Data Science at RTI Slides

  • 12:30 - 1:30 Lunch

  • 1:30 - 2:30 Drone Data Workshop

  • 2:30 - 2:45 Break

  • 2:45 - 3:45 Synthetic Populations Workshop Slides

  • 3:45 - 4:30 Tour of RTI

  • 4:30 - 5:30 Guest speaker: Annie Liang (Princeton livestream)

Saturday June 22, 2019 - Day Off
Sunday June 23, 2019 - Day Off
Monday June 24, 2019 - Experiments
  • 9:00 - 9:15 Logistics (Not open to public/No livestream)

  • 9:15 - 9:30 What, why, and which experiments? Slides

  • 9:30 - 9:45 Moving beyond simple experiments Slides

  • 9:45 - 10:15 Four strategies for making experiments happen Slides

  • 10:15 - 10:30 Coffee break

  • 10:30 - 11:00 Zero variable cost data and musiclab Slides

  • 11:00 - 11:15 Break

  • 11:15 - 12:15 High-throughput behavioral science using virtual labs by guest speaker Abdullah Almaatouq (SICSS 2017)

  • 12:15 - 12:30 Get lunch from cafeteria

  • 12:30 - 1:30 Lunch and guest speaker: Eric Schwartz (Editorial Director, Columbia University Press). Why and How to Publish a Book with a University Press

  • 1:30 - 2:30 Research Speed Dating (Not open to public/No livestream)

  • 2:30 - 4:30 Groups start work

  • 4:30 - 5:00 Wrap-up and Discussion

Tuesday June 25, 2019 - Work on group projects
Wednesday June 26, 2019 - Work on group projects
  • 10:00 - 10:30 Introduction to Git Github (Emily Hadley)

  • 11:45 - 12:30 Voluntary Job Market Lunch Discussion

  • 12:30 - 1:30 Multi-site panel discussion about navigating the job market featuring Chris Bail, Karen Davis, Ridhi Kashyap, and Matti Nelimarkka (Note this requires a new kind of livestream and it might not work right)

  • 1:30 - 2:00 Flash talks from RTI Center For Data Science: Peter Baumgartner: Lessons for Applied Natural Language Processing, Emily Hadley: Machine Learning for Medical Auto-Coding, Jason Nance: Deep Learning ToolKit: Accessible deep learning experimentation

  • 2:00 - 2:30 Group check-in

  • 3:30 - 5:00 Small Group Virtual Reality Lab Tours

Thursday June 27, 2019 - Work on group projects
  • 12:45 - 1:30 Flash Talks - Using R to Run, Collect, and Summarize Data from External Programs (Derek Ramirez), Epidemiology Meets Econometrics: Simulation Methods for Food Policy Impact Evaluation (Ben Allaire), Open Source Knowledge Enrichment (Felecia Vega)

  • 1:30 - 2:00 Group Check-in

  • 3:30 - 5:00 Small Group Virtual Reality Lab Tours

Friday June 28, 2019 - Present group projects
  • 1:30-2:00 Modeling Student Preference in College Proximity to Home: A Synthetic Population Application (Tara Weatherholt, Derek Ramirez, Nestor Ramirez, Becca Merrill), 2:00-2:30 Estimating the Undocumented Immigrant Population and Examining News Discourse in North Carolina through Machine Learning (Felecia Vega, Chris Inkpen, Marwa Salem, Siri Warkentien), 2:30-3:00 Probing the Relationship of Twitter Disinformation and News Discourse (Elena Leonchuk, Zhifan Luo, Ioanna Pavlidou, Jonathan Schlosser), 3:00-3:30 Predicting Stars: A Text Analysis of Yelp Reviews (Claire Chipman Gilliland, Ria Kontou, Helen Liu, Chao Liu, Eugene Uwiragiye, Qinghua Yang, Ben Allaire, Lawrence Whitley), 3:30-4:00 Bioengineered Food Label Study (Sophie Kelmenson, Samantha Mosier), 4:00-4:30 Automated Evaluation of Party Manifestos (Michelle Corea, Molly Jacobs, Tim McDade, Mateo Villamizar Chaparro, Kyle Chan)

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