Week 1 - Introduction
Slides
To do before class
As a way to wet your apetite about the content of the first class, I recommend you:
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Listen to this interview with Hilary Mason, Max Shron, and Alex Pentland about the power of data.
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Watch this video by Mike Flowers, Chief Analytics Officer, at the City of New York about how data is used to influence policy decisions.
Additional readings
The contents of this lecture are loosely based on, and explored into further detail, in the following three references :
References
- Anderson, C. (2008). The end of theory: The data deluge makes the scientific method
obsolete. Wired Magazine. Updated 6/23/2008), Available at: http://www. wired.
com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory.
- Lazer, D., Kennedy, R., King, G., & Vespignani, A. (2014). The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis. Science, 343(6176), 1203–1205. http://doi.org/10.1126/science.1248506
- Schutt, R., & O’Neil, C. (2013). Doing data science: Straight talk from the frontline. “ O’Reilly Media, Inc.”