The 2005 National Science Foundation workshop report on "Cyberinfrastructure for the Social and Behavioral Sciences" (Fran Berman and Henry Brady) argued that the methods of doing research in the social sciences would be transformed by big data and data science and that the social sciences should be centrally involved in studying the impacts of big data and data science on society. In "The Challenge of Big Data and Data Science," just completed for the Annual Review of Political Science, I have brought these arguments up-to-date. I will talk about defining "big data" and "data science," about the new kinds of research being done in the social sciences over the past decade that use big data and data science methods, and about the impacts of the information revolution on warfare, cities, the media, health care, and jobs and the ways that the social sciences must come to grips with them.
This lecture was presented as part of the Berkeley Distinguished Lectures in Data Science on Tuesday, October 2, 2018. Download the slides and accompanying paper for this talk.
The Berkeley Distinguished Lectures in Data Science, co-hosted by the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) and the Berkeley Division of Data Sciences, features Berkeley faculty doing visionary research that illustrates the character of the ongoing data revolution. This lecture series is offered to engage our diverse campus community and enrich active connections among colleagues. All campus community members are welcome and encouraged to attend. Arrive at 3:30 PM for light refreshments and discussion prior to the formal presentation.
Speaker(s)
Henry Brady
Henry E. Brady is the Class of 1941 Monroe Deutsch Professor of Political Science and Public Policy in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He served as dean of the Goldman School from 2009-2021. He received his PhD in economics and political science from MIT. He has written on electoral politics, political participation, social welfare policy, political polling, and statistical methodology. He has worked for the federal Office of Management and Budget and other organizations in Washington, DC. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2003 and as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2006. He is the co-author of The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy and Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People's Voice in the New Gilded Age, Letting the People Decide: Dynamics of a Canadian Election (1992), Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (1995), Expensive Children in Poor Families: The Intersection of Childhood Disability and Welfare (2000); and Counting All the Votes: The Performance of Voting Technology in the United States (2001).