Political Scientists and YData - A starter pack of data science tools for digging into any academic field

Professor Alan Gerber / Profesor Joshua Kalla
May 14, 2019

YData is an introduction to data science designed to get students interested in and working with the fundamentals of and skill sets in Data science.

The article, “A Starter Pack of Data Science Tools for Digging into any Academic Field”, explains the use of data driven tools and ideas across a variety of academic fields.

Professor Alan Gerber, Dean of Social Science and professor of Political Science “explained in a YaleNews preview of the course last semester, YData’s purpose is to “demystify” data science for all Yale students: Neither a humanist nor a scientist should have to go through life seeing the everyday applications of big data and algorithms — from ATMs to Amazon Alexa — as black boxes.”

Joshua Kalla, Professor of Political Science taught “the seminar that explored how contemporary political campaigns use big data and computing to their tactical advantage.”  Joshua Kalla is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University with a secondary appointment as Assistant Professor of Statistics and Data Science. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley (2018). His research studies political persuasion, prejudice reduction, and decision-making among voters and political elites, primarily through the use of randomized field experiments