From Princeton to London via Chicago: My Summer Institute in Computational Social Science journey

Continuing our series on the Summer Insitute in Computational Social Science, Joshua Becker traces his SICSS journey.

Before I get into this, you should know I’m a network researcher. So even though this is ostensibly about a summer program, it’s also about networking. I almost didn’t participate in the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science, or SICSS as I now know it fondly. At the time, I thought it was just about learning the skills — and I felt I had a solid methods foundation — and mainly just applied because it seemed like the kind of thing I was supposed to do as a grad student. Having never previously seen the gorgeous Princeton campus, I imagined the trip itself as little more than spending two weeks in suburban New Jersey rather than at home with my wife. Luckily, I applied. And luckily, I was accepted. Mileage may vary, but I made out well on the deal.

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Uncovering new keys to countering anti-Black racism and inequity using computational social science

A new Summer Institute in Computational Social Science organized by Howard University and Mathematica promises to bring the power of computational social science to the issues of systemic racism and inequality in America. This marks the first time the successful SICSS model is being hosted by a Historically Black College or University.

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What a year...Here are our top posts of 2020: From text mining tools in the social sciences to running online experiments and visualizing COVID-19 data

The SAGE Ocean Blog started the year off with a piece on our recently published white paper on software tools for social science. Next week we’ll publish a piece from senior product manager Daniela Duca on the challenges of running social science experiments from home and what tools can help. The move to online teaching, learning, and research feature heavily in our top posts of 2020. Back in April Katie Metzler wrote about the challenge COVID-19 to student research projects and in May, Jason Radford provided some helpful recommendations for translating studies into an online format and recruiting virtual participants.

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Skills, Teaching Methods Chris Burnage Skills, Teaching Methods Chris Burnage

Gary King makes all lectures for Quantitative Social Science Methods course free online

What is the field of statistical analysis? So begins Gary King’s first online course in the Harvard Government Dept graduate methods sequence. King, the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University -- one of 25 with Harvard's most distinguished faculty title -- and Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science has just recorded all his lectures and made them free to access online. The videos range in length from 30 minutes to an hour and half and you can watch them all on YouTube here.

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Skills, Data Analysis, Data Collection Chris Burnage Skills, Data Analysis, Data Collection Chris Burnage

My journey into text mining

My journey into text mining started when the institute of Digital Humanities (DH) at the University of Leipzig invited students from other disciplines to take part in their introductory course. I was enrolled in a sociology degree at the time, and this component of data science was not part of the classic curriculum; however, I could explore other departments through course electives and the DH course sounded like the perfect fit.

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