Data Mining and You

Course Description

Summary

Have you ever seen advertisements on your personal email site directly related to some messages you sent? Social scientists employ some of the same text-mining tools that advertisers do, drawing conclusions about individuals' moods, political views, personalities, and power relationships based on Twitter feeds and Facebook posts. In this course, you will learn the basic mechanisms of commonly used data mining techniques used on emails and social media postings. You will read and discuss clinical and social psychology findings obtained using these techniques and consider personal implications of their use. You will complete web-search assignments, lead group discussions twice during the semester, and write a paper identifying a specific topic for further research related to course readings.