Abstract The past 15 years have witnessed a remarkable increase in both the scale and scope of social and behavioral data available to researchers, leading some to herald the emergence of a new field: “computational social science.” In this talk I highlight two areas of research that would not have been possible just a handful of years ago: first, using “big data” to study social contagion on networks; and second, using virtual labs to extend the scale, duration, and…

Abstract: This talk will review a series of recent papers that develop new methods based on machine learning methods to approach problems of causal inference, including estimation of conditional average treatment effects and personalized treatment assignment policies. Approaches for randomized experiments, environments with unconfoundedness, instrumental variables, and panel data will be considered. Bio: Susan Athey is The Economics of Technology Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She received her bachelor's degree from Duke University and her Ph.D. from Stanford,…

  Abstract I believe that a deep understanding of cause and effect, and how to estimate causal effects from data, complete with the associated mathematical notation and expressions, only evolved in the twentieth century. The crucial idea of randomized experiments was apparently first proposed in 1925 in the context of agricultural field trails but quickly moved to be applied also in studies of animal breeding and then in industrial manufacturing. The conceptual understanding, to me at least, was tied to…

How Technology Design will Dictate Our Civic Future