Computational
Social Science
Ariel Brio
July 23, 2009
About me
BS, Policy & Management, Carnegie
Mellon University, 2005
 MS, Public Policy & Management,
Carnegie Mellon University, 2006
 US Department of Defense, 2006-2007
 Booz Allen Hamilton, 2007-2009
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Contents
Introduction – What is Computational
Social Science?
 Examples
 Current state of the field

Introduction
Data-driven social science
Computational Social Science seeks to
gain meaning into social phenomena from
quantitative data-sets
 Diverges from traditional social science in
that it applies mathematical methods to
mine social data
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Introduction
Social Sciences include:
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Pure fields:
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Political Science
Sociology
Economics
Psychology
Applied fields
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Management
Marketing
Information systems
Policy analysis
Finance
Introduction
Quantitative methods
Statistics & probability
 Operations research
 Data-mining
 Decision Science
 Visualization
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Examples
Logistics systems
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Management of goods, information,
people, and resources
 Military
 Commercial
 Information
systems
Examples
Computable General Equilibrium
Models
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Combines databases of economic and transactional data
with input/output models that describe relationships of
data to economies and trade
Examples
Social Network Analysis
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Quantitative and visual models
of social relationships
Relationships are measured
and clustered to better
understand social dynamics
Used often for targeting – both
commercial and military
Examples
MLB Steroid network – Supply
Examples
MLB Steroid network – Team ties
Examples
9/11 Al Qaeda network
Al Qaeda
Examples
Amazon network
The field
Computational Social Science is going
through a renaissance
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Internet, databases, and Web 2.0
transformed the measurement and storage
of social systems
 Social
networking
 Massive data-bases & cloud computing
The field
Organizations making an impact
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Academic & Research
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Commercial & Industry
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Santa Fe Institute
Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science
MIT Human Dynamics Group
UCI Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science
Michigan Institute for Social Research
Hi-tech: Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook
Defense: Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC
Ford Motors
ExxonMobil
Government & Non-profit
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MITRE
RAND
DoD, CIA, NSA, FBI
The field
Getting involved at Arizona
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Eller College of Management
 Artificial
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Intelligence Lab
Department of Systems & Industrial
Engineering
 Multidisciplinary
University Research Institute
 Modeling Optimization & Research Education
Thank you