Data Science

What does the post-pandemic future hold for office workers? Will we drift back to old ways of working, or continue with hybrid/remote working? What do the experts advise on how best to adapt?

Joanna Bale talks to LSE’s Connson Locke, Grace Lordan and Carsten Sorensen, as well as Hailley Griffis, a social media management company executive, who believes that offices will soon become extinct.

LSE iQ is a university podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science.

LSE IQ podcast

Has COVID killed the office?

Sandy Pentland - Reinventing Society In The Wake Of Big Data

Speaker(s): Professor Kenneth Benoit, Kenneth Cukier | The ubiquity of "big data" about social, political and economic phenomena has the potential to transform the way we approach social science. In this talk, Professor Benoit outlines the challenges and opportunities to social sciences caused by the rise of big data, with applications and examples. He discusses the rise of the field of data science, and whether this is a threat or a blessing for the traditional social scientific model and its ability to help us better understand society. Kenneth Benoit (@kenbenoit) is currently Professor of Quantitative Social Research Methods at LSE. He is also Part-Time Professor in the Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin, and has previously held a position at the Central European University (Budapest). He is currently Principal Investigator on 5-year grant funded by the European Research Council entitled QUANTESS: Quantitative Text Analysis for the Social Sciences. Kenneth Cukier (@kncukier) is the Data Editor at The Economist, following a decade at the paper covering business and technology, and as a foreign correspondent (most recently in Japan from 2007-12). Previously he was the technology editor of the Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong and worked at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. In 2002-04 he was a research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is the co-author of "Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We Work, Live and Think" (2013) and "Learning with Big Data: The Future of Education" (2014) with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger. Simon Hix (@simonjhix) is Professor of European and Comparative Politics and Head of Department of Government at LSE.

The Challenge of Big Data for the Social Sciences [Audio]

To have any chance of success, highly creative, collaborative uses of new forms of digital media must be a cornerstone of any strategy for progressive social and environmental movements. Four leading innovators in this domain share their insights. Hosted by Matthew Monahan, Namaste Foundation. With: Ben Knight, co-founder of Loomio; Edward West, co-founder of Impact Hub Oakland and Hylo social network; Ingrid Sanders, founder of PopExpert, a crowd-sourced, community-driven platform. 

Recorded Saturday, October 17, 2015 at the National Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California.


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Digital Media: Collaboration and Movement Building in a Data-Driven Society

Todd Toler from Wiley explains how research communication is evolving beyond the typeset article into formats that are richer, more discoverable, and create a dynamic research pipeline.

Episode 2: Transformations in Access and Data

How will the role of data science in democracy be transformed as software expands the public’s ability to conduct our own experiments at scale? In the 1940s-70s, debates over authoritarian uses of statistics led to new paradigms in social psychology, management theory, and policy evaluation. Today, large-scale social experiments and predictive modeling are reviving these debates. Technology platforms now conduct hundreds of undisclosed experiments per day on pricing and advertising, and the algorithms that shape our social lives remain opaque to to the public. Democratic methods for data science may offer an alternative to this corporate libertarian paternalism.

In this talk, hear about the history and future of democratic social experimentation, from Kurt Lewin and Karl Popper to Donald Campbell. You’ll also hear about CivilServant, software that supports communities to conduct their own experiments on algorithms and social behavior online.

J. Nathan Matias is a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media, an affiliate at the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard, and founder of CivilServant. He conducts independent, public interest research on flourishing, fair, and safe participation online. These include research on harassment reporting, volunteer moderation online (PDF), behavior change toward equality (PDF), social movements (PDF), and networks of gratitude.

Nathan has extensive experience in tech startups, nonprofits, and corporate research, including SwiftKey, Microsoft Research, and the Ministry of Stories. Nathan’s creative work and research have been covered extensively by international press, and he has published data journalism and intellectual history in the Atlantic, Guardian, PBS, and Boston Magazine.

Slides: http://cmswm.it/cmsw-matias-slides

MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing

Nathan Matias: "Authoritarian and Democratic Data Science in an Experimenting Society"

For more episodes visit http://lse.ac.uk/iq. To subscribe on iTunes visit http://apple.co/2r40QPA or search for 'LSE IQ' in your favourite podcast app.

Welcome to LSE IQ, a new monthly podcast from the London School of Economics and Political Science. This is the podcast where we ask some of the smartest social scientists - and other experts - to answer pressing questions about economics, politics or society. 

In this episode, Jo Bale investigates how big company bosses continue to command ever increasing salaries despite shareholder rebellions, government intervention and public criticism. She talks to Sir Vince Cable of LSE's Institute of Global Affairs, Deborah Hargreaves of the High Pay Centre, Dr Dirk Jenter, Associate Professor of Finance at LSE, Professor Sandy Pepper of LSE's Department of Management and Max Steuer of LSE's Centre for Philosophy. 

To subscribe on iTunes please visit - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/lse-iq-podcast/id1223817465

Or search for 'LSE IQ' in your favourite podcast app or add our RSS feed -http://www.lse.ac.uk/assets/richmedia/webFeeds/lseiqpodcast_iTunesStore.xml

For further information about the podcast visit http://lse.ac.uk/iq and please tell us what you think using the hashtag #LSEIQ https://twitter.com/hashtag/LSEIQ?f=tweets

Why is CEO pay so high?

To subscribe on Apple podcasts please visit http://apple.co/2r40QPA or search for 'LSE IQ' in your favourite podcast app or visit http://lse.ac.uk/iq

Welcome to LSE IQ, a new monthly podcast from the London School of Economics and Political Science. This is the podcast where we ask some of the leading social scientists - and other experts - to answer intelligent questions about economics, politics or society. 

It is with alarming regularity that reports of prison violence, overcrowding and concerns over the impact of funding cuts are hitting the headlines. With 46% of all prisoners reoffending within a year of release last year, the system could be considered not just expensive and unpleasant, but failing. In this episode, Jess Winterstein takes a look at the prison system in England and Wales and asks, is our prison system broken?   

This episode features: Dr Simon Bastow, LSE Fellow, Department of Management; Professor Nicola Lacey, School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy at LSE; and Dr Sharon Shalev, a fellow of the Mannheim Centre for the Study of Criminology and Criminal Science at LSE and founder of SolitaryConfinement.org

For further information about the podcast and all the related links visit http://lse.ac.uk/iq and please tell us what you think using the hashtag #LSEIQ.

Is our prison system broken?

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a world-leading university, specialising in social sciences, with a global community of people and ideas that transform the world. Our podcasts focus on the social sciences and the world today.

The Challenge of Big Data for the Social Sciences [Audio]

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