Perspectives on Computational Research for Economics

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course focuses on scaling up computational approaches to social science analysis and modeling with big data in context of opportunities afforded by high performance and cloud computing. We will begin by exploring various data structures encountered in social science research, how to deal with large or complex data storage and streaming data, and how to factor considerations of computational complexity into their analyses. We will also study social science applications of parallel computing, both on stand-alone machines and in supercomputing environments, to carry out complex computations. Students will learn to carry out parallel I/O and parallel computation on their own machines and on a cluster. We will also address API construction and access, and explore cloud configurations for social science research designs. We will also help students construct web-based outward facing data, analysis and visualization portals. Students will efficiently gather, structure, perform and present analysis on large-scale social science data. This course will be specifically tailored to students concentrating in Economics.