SICSS-UCLA

June 21 to July 2, 2021 | University of California, Los Angeles | Virtual event

Schedule & Materials

All times are in Pacific Daylight Time, and times are subject to change depending on speaker availability.
Monday June 21, 2021 - Introduction to Digital Trace Data (e.g., via Webscraping, APIs, Mturk)

  • 10:00 - 10:20 Introduction to SICSS, Computational Social Science, and the California Center For Population Research by Dr. Jennie Brand (In Zoom full group)

  • 10:20 - 10:40 Introductions (What is Computational Social Science) (In rounds of Zoom break-out rooms)

  • 10:45 - 12:00 Guest Speaker: Philipp Brandt (In Zoom full group)

  • 12:00 - 1:00 Break

  • 1:00 - 2:15 Lecture: Collecting Digital Data (e.g., via Webscraping, APIs, Mturk) (In Zoom full group)

  • 2:15 - 3:30 Project Speed Dating: Goal is to get to know each other and brainstorm project ideas (In Zoom breakout rooms)

  • 3:30 - 4:00 Group Discussion + Intro to Tomorrow’s Exercise (In Zoom full group)

  • 4:00 - 4:30 OPTIONAL: Open Office Hours on Zoom (getting started with Slack, R, Q & A)

Tuesday June 22, 2021 - Introduction to Digital Trace Data (e.g., via Webscraping, APIs, Mturk)

  • 10:00 - 10:15 Outline the Day (In Zoom full group)

  • 10:15 - 11:45 Data Collection Exercise (In Zoom full group)

  • 11:45 - 1:00 Break

  • 1:00 - 2:15 Guest Speaker Panel: Computational Social Science in Industry with George Berry, Allison McGrath, and Grace Rowe moderated by Bernard Koch (In Zoom full group)

  • 2:15 - 2:45 Review Data Collection Exercise

  • 2:45 - 3:45 Project Time: Brainstorm project groups and ideas (In Zoom break-out rooms)

  • 3:45 - 4:00 Debrief

Wednesday June 23, 2021 - Introduction to Causal Inference (Potential Outcomes + Experiments)

  • 10:00 - 10:15 Outline the Day (Zoom full group)

  • 10:15 - 11:00 Lecture: Potential Outcomes (In Zoom full group)

  • 11:00 - 11:30 Small Group Discussions (In Zoom break-out room)

  • 11:30 - 1:15 Break

  • 1:15 - 2:00 Group Discussion + Exercise (In Zoom break-out room)

  • 2:00 - 3:00 Guest Speaker: Jennie Brand (In Zoom full group)

  • 3:00 - 4:00 Project Time: Finalize project groups, post abstract and list of group members to our #projects channel in Slack (In Zoom break-out room)

  • 4:00 - 4:30 OPTIONAL: Open Office Hours on Zoom

Thursday June 24, 2021 - Introduction to Text Analysis

  • 10:00 - 11:00 Lecture: The Landscape of Approaches to Text Analysis (In Zoom full group)

  • 11:00 - 11:30 CSS Skills Workshop on Bash (In Zoom full group)

  • 11:30 - 1:00 Break

  • 1:00 - 2:00 Text Analysis Exercise (In Zoom break-out room)

  • 2:00 - 4:00 Project Time and Project Check in with an Organizer (In Zoom break-out room)

Friday June 25, 2021 - Introduction to Causal Inference (DAGS + Observational Data)

  • 10:00 - 10:15 Outline the Day (In Zoom full group)

  • 10:15 - 11:00 Lecture: DAGs + Observational Data (In Zoom full group)

  • 11:00 - 11:45 Small Group Discussions (In Zoom break-out room)

  • 11:45 - 1:00 Break

  • 1:00 - 2:00 Group Discussion + Exercise (In Zoom break-out room)

  • 2:00 - 4:00 Project Time (In Zoom break-out room)

Monday June 28, 2021 - Text Analysis + Unsupervised Machine-Learning

  • 10:00 - 10:15 Outline the Day (In Zoom full group)

  • 10:15 - 11:30 Lecture: Word Embedding + Topic Modeling (In Zoom full group)

  • 11:30 - 11:45 Small Group Discussions + Exercise (In Zoom break-out room)

  • 11:45 - 1:00 Break

  • 1:00 - 1:30 Guest Speaker: Savannah Larimore (SICSS-UW 2018) (In Zoom full group)

  • 1:30 - 4:00 Project Time (In Zoom break-out rooms)

  • 4:00 - 4:30 OPTIONAL: Open Office Hours on Zoom

Tuesday June 29, 2021 - Text Analysis + Unsupervised Machine-Learning

  • 10:00 - 10:30 CSS Skills Workshop on GitHub (In Zoom full group)

  • 10:30 - 11:45 Text Analysis Exercise (In Zoom break-out room)

  • 11:45 - 1:00 Break

  • 1:00 - 3:00 Project Time (In Zoom break-out rooms)

  • 3:00 - 4:00 Lecture: Unsupervised Machine-Learning (In Zoom full group)

Wednesday June 30, 2021 - Introduction to Supervised Machine Learning

  • 10:00 - 10:15 Outline the Day (In Zoom full group)

  • 10:15 - 11:15 Lecture: Supervised Machine Learning (In Zoom full group)

  • 11:15 - 11:45 Discussion (In Zoom full group)

  • 11:45 - 12:45 Break

  • 12:45 - 2:00 Guest Speaker: Abigail Jacobs (In Zoom full group)

  • 2:00 - 4:00 Group Exercise (In Zoom break-out rooms)

  • 4:00 - 4:30 OPTIONAL: Open Office Hours

Thursday July 1, 2021 - Project Day

  • 10:00 - 10:45 Lecture: Supervised Machine Learning (In Zoom full group)

  • 10:45 - 11:45 Project Time (In Zoom break-out room)

  • 11:45 - 12:45 Break

  • 12:45 - 4:00 Project Time (In Zoom break-out room)

Friday July 2, 2021 - Project Day and Presentations

  • 10:00 - 11:45 Project Time (In Zoom break-out room)

  • 11:45 - 12:45 Break

  • 12:45 - 2:30 Project Time (In Zoom break-out room)

  • 2:30 - 4:00 Presentations (In Zoom full group)

  • 4:00 - 4:10 Farewells (In Zoom full group)

Host a Location

You can host a partner location of the Summer Institutes of Computational Social Science (SICSS) at your university, company, NGO, or government agency.

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