Machine Learning with Social Data: Opportunities and Challenges

This is a class about using the tools of machine learning to study social data. The power of machine learning tools is their applicability around a wide range of tasks. There are huge opportunities for applying these tools to learn and make decisions about real people but there are also important challenges. This course aims to (1) show social scientists and digital humanities scholars the potential of machine learning to help them learn about humans, make policy and help people while also (2) showing computer scientists how a social science research design perspective can improve their work and give them new outlets for their skills.