Culturomics, an emerging field of study that applies climate-modeling levels of supercomputing power towards predicting human behavior, using "computerized analysis of vast digital book archives, offering novel insights into the functioning of human society", has been tried with digital news archives. [more inside]
posted by nomisxid on Sep 7, 2011 - 12 comments

Apparently They, of "They say..." fame, have been misusing the statistical significance test. So much of what "They say" might not actually be. (via)
posted by cross_impact on Jan 18, 2011 - 51 comments

Data Analysis for Politics and Policy was written by Edward Tufte in 1974. It's an introduction to basic data analysis techniques with examples taken from the social sciences. The book is written in a friendly, conversational tone and is only 179 pages long. The chapter explaining simple linear regression is the heart of the book.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear on Mar 13, 2010 - 13 comments

R is quickly becoming the programming language for data analysis and statistics. R (an implementation of S) is free, open-source, and has hundreds of packages available. You can use it on the command-line, through a GUI, or in your favorite text editor. Use it with Python, Perl, or Java. Sweave R code into LaTeX documents for reproducible research. [more inside]
posted by parudox on Feb 15, 2010 - 114 comments

Spacehack "A directory of ways to participate in space exploration. Interact and connect with the space community."
posted by chrismear on Aug 4, 2009 - 6 comments

The memespread project. How does a meme spread? What part does MetaFilter play in the process? [via waxy.org]
posted by cbrody on Apr 8, 2004 - 13 comments