?We belive that the topic is not only contemporary, but also covers an important field for social development due to the ever-increasing use of technology in politics and administration”, says ISS director Nita Kapoor. “It is extra exciting that both the initiative for the course and the development process have been student-driven,” she says.
The sexiest job of the 21st century
Course leader Solveig Bj?rkholt encourages UiO students to take the opportunity to learn something about data science this summer. “Many students ask for more work-related courses, and this is exactly what we want to provide. The position ‘data scientist’ has been called the sexiest job of the 21st century, and it is not without reason,” she says. “Data is the new oil! By using data, we can find out, among other things, which measures help against climate change, how we can reduce poverty, and who is most likely to win the presidential election. There is an abundance of data these days, and there will be more. The course gives an introduction to how we can use this data to generate information, knowledge and insight to the betterment and service of society.”
Bj?rkholt emphasizes that data science is a cross-disciplinary field, and we need social scientists in that field. She believes that social scientists can make important contributions to the field of data science because they have domain knowledge on social questions, which are useful additions if they are also are trained to program and model. But the course is interdisciplinary and will be suitable for anyone who is interested in data, be it humanists, law or medical or STEM students. She says that the course will provide a solid introduction to the programming language R, and will look at how to retrieve, process and visualize data. “There will be no advanced mathematical statistics in this course. Instead, the course will be based on an intuitive introduction”, Bj?rkholt notes.
Why a "hackathon"?
Alex Moltzau, initiator of the course and one who has studied at ISS for several summers in a row, emphasizes that the learning is interactive and team-based. “A large part of the learning takes place between students, and the opportunity to tackle issues together can also be valuable for potential employers,” he says. “We want to involve start-up companies and the public sector to develop solution proposals in collaboration. In Norway, we are extremely good at using new technology, and we will do that in this course as well. It is about creating value for society. Technology has become a big part of our everyday lives, so we need social scientists who understand computer science even better than before”, Alex says.
Political Data Science Hackathon (ISSSV1337) is a 10 ECTS course at Bachelor level and will be based on classroom teaching. As this course is exclusive to UiO students, the application process differs from other ISS courses and there is no course fee this year. The application deadline is 31 March.
