It’s time to scale the science in the social sciences

The social sciences are at a remarkable confluence of events. Advances in computing have made it feasible to analyze data at the scale of the population of the world. How can we combine the depth of inquiry in the social sciences with the scale and robustness of statistics and computer science? Can...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Prabhakar Raghavan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publishing 2014-07-01
Series:Big Data & Society
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951714532240
Description
Summary:The social sciences are at a remarkable confluence of events. Advances in computing have made it feasible to analyze data at the scale of the population of the world. How can we combine the depth of inquiry in the social sciences with the scale and robustness of statistics and computer science? Can we decompose complex questions in the social sciences into simpler, more robustly testable hypotheses? We discuss these questions and the role of machine learning in the social sciences.
ISSN:2053-9517