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Author Archives: Kerry McCarthy

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16. Big Data and social research – 2 years on

Next month will be two years since my first post. Back then examples of big data in social research and evaluation were more limited and the courses on offer were not so specialised for a social research audience. Things are different today. 1) A wider range of social research methods courses connected to big data,…

August 9, 2018UncategorizedBy Kerry McCarthy

15. Where R we going – part II?

In my last post I talked about why I chose to pursue R via DataCamp. Between January and the end of March I completed the first three courses of the data analyst with R track. I found a rhythm for learning in limited time – structured exercises through the DataCamp course, daily practice to recap…

June 6, 2018Data analysis with R, Skills & toolsBy Kerry McCarthy

14. Where R we going?

An upsurge in paid work meant professional development took a back seat for a while. In this post I talk about finding a realistic way forward for developing my data skills, within a limited amount of time. In my last post, ten months ago, I described lessons learned from dipping into different software and programming…

December 11, 2017Data analysis with R, Skills & toolsBy Kerry McCarthy

13. Try, try again: getting started with some software and coding

In this blog I will share what I have learned from sitting at my desk trying to install and use new software and code. The aim is to help you get started and, more importantly, keep going. First up, an overview. • Installing software and loading data rarely worked perfectly and takes some time. Think…

January 31, 2017Skills & tools, UncategorizedBy Kerry McCarthy

12. Back to reading, Bit by Bit

I paused efforts on an introductory course on machine learning and statistical inference after finding Professor Matthew J. Salganik’s draft book, Bit by Bit: social research in the digital age, which has been available for open peer review since summer 2016 (click on the book title to access it, and here to learn about the…

December 12, 2016Big data, Interesting examples, Social research, UncategorizedBy Kerry McCarthy

11. Jumping through Hadoops

Week one of the course introduced Apache Hadoop software, used for distributed processing of massive unstructured data, week two took us deeper into accessing and operating on big data and took me far, far away from my comfort zone. The least geeky explanations of Hadoop and MapReduce that I could find are here and here…

November 16, 2016Big data, Skills & tools, UncategorizedBy Kerry McCarthy

10. Getting going with big data analytics

After social media analytics I signed up for this Big Data Analytics programme. Also by Queensland University of Technology, it is a series of four courses covering the collecting, storing and managing (week 1); statistical inference and machine learning (week 2); mathematical modelling (week 3) and data visualisation (week 4). (As an aside for anyone…

November 2, 2016Big data, Skills & tools, UncategorizedBy Kerry McCarthy

9. A pause for tips on evaluation

This post is a short detour from the Big Data path, and a brain dump of ways of working I find to be helpful when commissioning an evaluation, or responding to an ITT to deliver an evaluation (if you have ever asked me for advice then it will look familiar!). As I started to explore…

November 2, 2016Evaluation, Skills & tools, UncategorizedBy Kerry McCarthy

8. Social media analytics: TAGS, tweets & newts

Following last week’s overview this post provides a bit more detail on the doing of social media analysis. This course ran for three weeks, each week focusing on a different aspect and using a different tool: understanding & gathering (TAGS), analysing (Tableau), and visualising with social network analysis(Gephi). As stated, the course does work for…

October 19, 2016Skills & tools, Social media analytics, UncategorizedBy Kerry McCarthy

7. A first attempt at social media analytics

My first, uninformed answer to the question what is big data? was ‘stuff off social media’. In particular, social media familiar to me and that is accessible – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Much of the content on Facebook or Instagram is shared ‘privately’ between users that are connected to each other in a closed network. Twitter,…

October 12, 2016Big data, Skills & tools, Social research, UncategorizedBy Kerry McCarthy
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