Computational Social Science

Ariel Brio

July 23, 2009

About me

BS, Policy & Management, Carnegie Mellon University, 2005

MS, Public Policy & Management, Carnegie Mellon University, 2006

US Department of Defense, 2006-2007 Booz Allen Hamilton, 2007-2009

Contents

Introduction – What is Computational Social Science?

Examples Current state of the field

Data-driven social science

Computational Social Science seeks to gain meaning into social phenomena from quantitative data-sets

Diverges from traditional social science in that it applies mathematical methods to mine social data

Introduction

Social Sciences include:

Pure fields: Political Science Sociology Economics Psychology

Applied fields Management Marketing Information systems Policy analysis Finance

Introduction

Quantitative methods

Statistics & probability Operations research Data-mining Decision Science Visualization

Introduction

Logistics systems

Management of goods, information, people, and resourcesMilitaryCommercial Information systems

Examples

Computable General Equilibrium Models

Combines databases of economic and transactional data with input/output models that describe relationships of data to economies and trade

Examples

Social Network Analysis

Quantitative and visual models of social relationships

Relationships are measured and clustered to better understand social dynamics

Used often for targeting – both commercial and military

Examples

MLB Steroid network – Supply

Examples

MLB Steroid network – Team ties

Examples

9/11 Al Qaeda network

Examples

Al Qaeda

Amazon network

Examples

Computational Social Science is going through a renaissance

Internet, databases, and Web 2.0 transformed the measurement and storage of social systemsSocial networkingMassive data-bases & cloud computing

The field

Organizations making an impact

Academic & Research Santa Fe Institute Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science MIT Human Dynamics Group UCI Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science Michigan Institute for Social Research

Commercial & Industry Hi-tech: Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook Defense: Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC Ford Motors ExxonMobil

Government & Non-profit MITRE RAND DoD, CIA, NSA, FBI

The field

Getting involved at Arizona

Eller College of ManagementArtificial Intelligence Lab

Department of Systems & Industrial EngineeringMultidisciplinary University Research InstituteModeling Optimization & Research Education

The field

Thank you