ahalliday

“Fighting Poverty with Data: Research at the Intersection of Machine Learning and Development Economics” with Joshua Blumenstock ’03

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Friday, April 15th at 12pm in Downey House 113. In wealthy nations, novel sources of “big data” from the internet and social media are creating new opportunities for commercial profit, enabling new approaches to social science research, and inspiring new perspectives on public policy. In developing economies, however, fewer sources of robust data exist, and … Read more

“Signaling not Persuasion: the Surprising Power of the Presidential Bully Pulpit” with Justin Grimmer, Stanford

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Thursday, March 24th at 4:30pm in Russell House Why do Presidents “go public”?  We use novel natural experiments, social media data, and extensive news analysis to show that Presidents have little direct effect on public opinion when they appeal to the public.  Rather, we argue, Presidents go public to signal to Congress that an issue … Read more

DaCKI Manhattans and Martinis

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Tuesday, December 15th at 4:15 in Allbritton 311 Classes will be but a memory, a bit of grit for your pearls of winter productivity. There will be nice snacks and cocktails of course, rye and gin, maraschino and lemon where they’re meant to be. We’ll be there to hear about (and see) some of the diverse … Read more

Matthew Daniels: “Depiction, even over Description: How Data Journalism is Changing the Art of Storytelling”

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At 4:30 on Wednesday November 4th, in 41 Wyllys, Room 112 In cooperation with the Allbritton Center, the Digital and Computational Knowledge Initiative (DACKI) is pleased to be bringing Matt Daniels to Wesleyan next week to give a talk Wednesday and then to meet with students in classes and small groups on Thursday. He is … Read more

“Predicting Premier League Soccer Using a Sentiment Analysis of Twitter” with Professor Robert Schumaker

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In this talk Professor Schumaker, who teaches at Central Connecticut State University, will try to answer the question: “Can the sentiment contained in tweets serve as a meaningful proxy to predict match outcomes and if so, can the magnitude of these outcomes be similarly predicted based on the degree of sentiment?” This talk should be an excellent … Read more

Tyler Lange: “What is the Church?”

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Between 1300 and 1550, church court across Europe frequently excommunicated delinquent debtors for breach of faith. This did not reflect the preoccupations of prelates or ecclesiastical judges, but widespread, popular demand for legal-religious remedies in matters of day-to-day, relatively minor credit. By examining the practice of excommunication for debt in light of recent theories of … Read more

Maps, Networks, and Art Markets: Doing Digital Art History

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Monday, March 30th, 2015, at 4:15pm in Usdan 108. A talk with Pamela Fletcher, Professor of Art History and Co-Director of the Digital and Computational Studies Initiative, Bowdoin College. How and why did galleries run by dealers become the standard way to sell art? Professor Fletcher considers the invention of the commercial art gallery in London … Read more

Thomas Uses CT Scans, Computer-Aided Visualizations to Study and Teach Microfossils

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Ellen Thomas, Research Professor of Earth and Environmental Studies, is featured on the News @ Wesleyan blog. “Up until recently, Thomas taught students about microfossils through microscope studies and by showing text book illustrations and images embedded in slide presentations. But with support from the National Science Foundation, Thomas and her peers were able to … Read more

Amanda Cox: “Data Visualization at the New York Times”

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Wesleyan will host The New York Times’ Amanda Cox, who will give a talk on “Data Visualization at the New York Times.” Cox has been an essential part of one of the most interesting developments in contemporary journalism, the growth of data journalism, which in the innovative contexts of papers such as the Times and … Read more

Dr Silke Schwandt: Digital Humanities

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Dr Silke Schwandt from Bielefeld University will lead an informal discussion of getting involved in collaborative digital humanities projects and integrating new text analysis methods in research. Schwandt will talk about her experience as a humanist involved in a large multi-year digital humanities project to make richly accessible the largest single body of medieval texts, and … Read more