"I think it's important to introduce kids to the world of ideas early," says QSS Steering committee member, Associate Dean for the Sciences, and the William H. Neukom 1964 Distinguished Professor of Computational Science. In Kids n' Code - Version 2.0, a Huffpost article in which Professor Rockmore discusses his work with local elementary school children in Hanover, NH, and how he teaches them about algorithms.
"Our study suggests that weather conditions may affect people's decisions on not only whether to vote but also who they vote for." QSS Steering Committee member Yusaku Horiuchi, referencing his study of the effect of weather on voting behavior. The quote comes from an Irish News Magazine article, Study shows potential Democrat voters are more likely to switch allegiance if it rains.
Each term as part of his Data Visualization course, Professor Yusaku Horiuchi organizes a contest for his students in which the the top six visualizations are chosen by student vote. The fall 2017 winners can be viewed here.
Erik Peterson, currently a post-doctoral fellow in the Program in Quantitative Social Science, recently accepted an offer to become Assistant Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University. After undergraduate education at Northwestern University, where Erik wrote a thesis under the supervision of Professor Jamie Druckman, Erik received his doctorate in political science from Stanford University. He has been at Dartmouth since the fall of 2017.
Among other things, Erik is working on projects that seek to identify the effects of cuts in newsroom reporting on democracy. Erik is also conducting research with Assistant Professor of Government, and QSS Director of Undergraduate Research, Sean Westwood on projects designed to identity the origins of affective polarization.
According to Professor Westwood, "Erik exemplifies the kind of scholar we are trying to foster within QSS: a social scientist who uses cutting-edge methods to explore major questions."
William Clark, Head of the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M, described Erik as "energetic, well-trained, and extremely prolific." He suggested that Erik "will play an important role in our recently created research program in Political Behavior and Political Institutions and should also have lots of opportunities to collaborate with scholars in Psychology, Communication Studies, and Behavioral Economics."
QSS congratulates Erik on his new faculty position! Erik will be starting at A&M in the summer of 2018 and until that time will be working on his research at Dartmouth.
Using new data collection technologies, QSS steering committee members Brenda Nyhan and Yusaku Horiuchi, with Dartmouth undergraduate students from Nyhan's "Experiments in Politics" course, have been able to contribute to social science research on the prevalence and effect of fake news and fact checking. A recent Dartmouth News story, "Dartmouth Scholar Is at the Center of the Fake News Debate" highlights Professor Nyhan and his work.