WEEK 8

After studying data science for the society last week, it was time for the final course of the semester. The final INTENSIVE of the semester was EVIDENCE, ARGUMENT AND PERSPIRATION. In this class we learned about three interesting types of arguments: deduction, induction and abduction. Both deduction and induction ensure that the inference is true, but the conclusion drawn from abduction is not necessarily true. The lesson focused on textual material on social media. Social media comments are mined by using python’s reddit database and analyzed. This is a different type of class than the insight through data class I took last semester, which focused on data analysis, but this class is really about textual material.
One of the things I found interesting was the ability to analyze current social network comments through a form of data mining. Social networks are being used more and more frequently in today’s society and they can be a great reflection of the prevailing values and cultural differences. Analyzing social networks to understand the psychological state of people can reveal many important social issues. For example, the analysis of memes we did in class reflected people’s dissatisfaction with certain social phenomena through the quirky form of stalk pictures. The comments reveal how this particular social phenomenon is perceived by people from different cultures. Their comments reveal the economic and cultural development of their countries. This can be linked to our curriculum of inequality and intolerance, where people in a more economically developed region are mainly concerned with cultural and spiritual aspects, while in a less economically developed region people are more concerned with the basics of life.
Next I am going to select a particular topic to process and analyze its data, and hopefully I will find something interesting that I have not found before.