SICSS-Haifa

July 3 to July 14, 2022 | University of Haifa

Pre-arrival

The Summer Institute will bring together people from many fields and backgrounds. In order to use our time together efficiently, there are a number of things that you should do before participating in SICSS-Haifa 2022.

  • Complete the pre-institute readings
  • Complete coding bootcamp (if needed)
  • Prepare your computing environment

TAs will host office hours through Slack to support you as you work through these pre-arrival materials.

Reading

In order to prepare for SICSS-Haifa 2022, you should read Matt Salganik’s book, Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age (Read online or purchase from IndieBound, Princeton University Press), or Amazon, Barnes & Noble. Parts of this book are a broad introduction to computational social science, yet if we all read this book ahead of time, then we can use our time together for more advanced topics.

Coding Boot Camp

Please note that much of the coding work presented at SICSS-Haifa will employ Python. If you have never coded with Python please complete this. online course before participation.

Computing environment

Python

Some of the activities will require coding, and we will support Python. You are welcome to use other languages, but we cannot guarantee that we can support them. Before SICSS you should install a modern, stable-release version of Python.

To do so, please go to this. page and download JupyterLab-Dekstop (select the version that matches your operating system). This release of Python will (a) include most of the statistical and scientific packages we will use during SICSS and (b) enable you to organize your project in a code notebook, a tool that is often used in data exploration and analysis.

Slack

Before participating at SICSS-Haifa 2022, you should have an account in the SICSS 2022 Slack workspace. If you have not used Slack before, you should review these getting started materials. Slack can be hard to use at first, but we’ve found that it is the best way to enable everyone to collaborate.

GitHub

Many participants at SICSS use GitHub to collaborate. If you do not yet have one, you should create a GitHub account. If you are a student, we recommend that you apply for a GitHub Student Developer Pack.

Office hours

The SICSS-Haifa TAs will host weekly office hours in the SICSS 2022 Slack. You can find information about the office hours and dates in the SICSS 2022 Slack channel #pre-office-hours. If you are not able to attend during the regularly scheduled office hours or have any questions about office hours, please contact one of the TAs.

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.

Learn More