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Social Network Analysis (SNA) in Medicine

In hospitals, “sentinel events” are events that carry with them a significant risk of unexpected death or harm.  It is estimated that ⅔ of such sentinel events result from communications failures during the handoff of a patient from one provider to another (e.g. during a nursing shift change). In a recent paper, a team ofContinue reading “Social Network Analysis (SNA) in Medicine”

Job Spotlight: Digital Marketer

A digital marketer handles a variety of tasks in online marketing – managing online advertising and search engine optimization (SEO), implementing tracking systems (e.g. to identify how a person came to a retailer), web development, preparing creatives, implementing tests, and, of course, analytics. There are typically three types of employers: Marketing agencies that contract outContinue reading “Job Spotlight: Digital Marketer”

Benford’s Law Applies to Online Social Networks

Fake social media accounts and Russian meddling in US elections have been in the news lately, with Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) testifying this week before the US Congress. Dr. Jen Golbeck, who teaches Network Analysis at Statistics.com, published an ingenious way to determine whether a Facebook, Twitter or other social media account is fraudulent. HerContinue reading “Benford’s Law Applies to Online Social Networks”

Dialects

When talking to several people, do you address them as “you guys”? “Y’all”? Just “you”? And is the carbonated soft drink “soda” or “pop?” Maps based on survey responses to questions like this were published in the Harvard Dialect Survey in 2003. Josh Katz took the data and produced extended visualizations and, last month, aContinue reading “Dialects”

Terrorist Clusters

The “righteous vengeance gun attack” is just one of 10 types of terrorism identified by Chenoweth and Lowham via statistical clustering techniques. Another cluster is “bombings of a public population where a liberation group takes responsibility.” You can read about the 10 clusters, and the 44 dichotomous variables (suicide or not, bombing or not, religiousContinue reading “Terrorist Clusters”