Data science centres around data, originated by human or non-human. This course provides students with an extensive exposure to the elements of computational social science that concerns exclusively with human-generated data. Topics include opportunities and challenges for social science research in the digital age, descriptive/predictive vs. explanatory research, found data versus made data, research design, causal inference, sampling of social units, online experiment, behavioural analytics, text mining, and social research ethics.

Note: To pass the course, apart from obtaining a minimum of 40% in the overall mark, a student must also obtain a minimum mark of 30% in both continuous assessment and examination components.