Data Science For Social Good

This book is a collection of reflections by thought leaders at first-mover organizations in the exploding field of "Data Science for Social Good", meant as the application of knowledge from computer science, complex systems and computational social science to challenges such as humanitarian response, public health, sustainable development. The book provides both an overview of scientific approaches to social impact – identifying a social need, targeting an intervention, measuring impact – and the complementary perspective of funders and philanthropies that are pushing forward this new sector. This book will appeal to students and researchers in the rapidly growing field of data science for social impact, to data scientists at companies whose data could be used to generate more public value, and to decision makers at nonprofits, foundations, and agencies that are designing their own agenda around data.

This book is a collection of reflections by thought leaders at first-mover organizations in the exploding field of "Data Science for Social Good", meant as the application of knowledge from computer science, complex systems and computational social science to challenges such as humanitarian response, public health, sustainable development. The book provides both an overview of scientific approaches to social impact – identifying a social need, targeting an intervention, measuring impact – and the complementary perspective of funders and philanthropies that are pushing forward this new sector. This book will appeal to students and researchers in the rapidly growing field of data science for social impact, to data scientists at companies whose data could be used to generate more public value, and to decision makers at nonprofits, foundations, and agencies that are designing their own agenda around data.

This book is a collection of reflections by thought leaders at first-mover organizations in the exploding field of "Data Science for Social Good", meant as the application of knowledge from computer science, complex systems and computational social science to challenges such as humanitarian response, public health, sustainable development. The book provides both an overview of scientific approaches to social impact - identifying a social need, targeting an intervention, measuring impact - and the complementary perspective of funders and philanthropies that are pushing forward this new sector. This book will appeal to students and researchers in the rapidly growing field of data science for social impact, to data scientists at companies whose data could be used to generate more public value, and to decision makers at nonprofits, foundations, and agencies that are designing their own agenda around data.

This book efficiently contributes to our understanding of the interplay between data, technology and communicative practice on the one hand, and democratic participation on the other. It addresses the emergence of proactive data activism, a new sociotechnical phenomenon in the field of action that arises as a reaction to massive datafication, and makes affirmative use of data for advocacy and social change. By blending empirical observation and in-depth qualitative interviews, Gutiérrez brings to the fore a debate about the social uses of the data infrastructure and examines precisely how people employ it, in combination with other technologies, to collaborate and act for social change.

Big Data and Social Science: Data Science Methods and Tools for Research and Practice, Second Edition shows how to apply data science to real-world problems, covering all stages of a data-intensive social science or policy project. Prominent leaders in the social sciences, statistics, and computer science as well as the field of data science provide a unique perspective on how to apply modern social science research principles and current analytical and computational tools. The text teaches you how to identify and collect appropriate data, apply data science methods and tools to the data, and recognize and respond to data errors, biases, and limitations. Features: Takes an accessible, hands-on approach to handling new types of data in the social sciences Presents the key data science tools in a non-intimidating way to both social and data scientists while keeping the focus on research questions and purposes Illustrates social science and data science principles through real-world problems Links computer science concepts to practical social science research Promotes good scientific practice Provides freely available workbooks with data, code, and practical programming exercises, through Binder and GitHub New to the Second Edition: Increased use of examples from different areas of social sciences New chapter on dealing with Bias and Fairness in Machine Learning models Expanded chapters focusing on Machine Learning and Text Analysis Revamped hands-on Jupyter notebooks to reinforce concepts covered in each chapter This classroom-tested book fills a major gap in graduate- and professional-level data science and social science education. It can be used to train a new generation of social data scientists to tackle real-world problems and improve the skills and competencies of applied social scientists and public policy practitioners. It empowers you to use the massive and rapidly growing amounts of available data to interpret economic and social activities in a scientific and rigorous manner.

"Data analysis has become a necessary skill across the social sciences, and recent advancements in computing power have made knowledge of programming an essential component. Yet most data science books are intimidating and overwhelming to a non-specialist audience, including most undergraduates. This book will be a shorter, more focused and accessible version of Kosuke Imai's Quantitative Social Science book, which was published by Princeton in 2018 and has been adopted widely in graduate level courses of the same title. This book uses the same innovative approach as Quantitative Social Science , using real data and 'R' to answer a wide range of social science questions. It assumes no prior knowledge of statistics or coding. It starts with straightforward, simple data analysis and culminates with multivariate linear regression models, focusing more on the intuition of how the math works rather than the math itself. The book makes extensive use of data visualizations, diagrams, pictures, cartoons, etc., to help students understand and recall complex concepts, provides an easy to follow, step-by-step template of how to conduct data analysis from beginning to end, and will be accompanied by supplemental materials in the appendix and online for both students and instructors"--

An introductory textbook offering a low barrier entry to data science; the hands-on approach will appeal to students from a range of disciplines.