[Colloquium] TTIC Talks: Aron Culcotta, Southeastern Louisiana University

[Liv Leader]

When:     Friday, February 24 @ 11 a.m.

Where:    TTIC, 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue, 5th Floor

Who:       Aron Culcotta, Southeastern Louisiana University

Title:       Health Informatics and Disaster Planning using Social Media
Analysis

The proliferation of social media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.)
has created an unprecedented, continuous stream of messages containing
the thoughts of millions of people. The nascent field of Social Media
Analysis (SMA) combines natural language processing, data mining,
machine learning, and statistics to explore what we can infer from the
behavior of social media users. Recent research suggests that such
analysis can provide insights into public health, finance, politics,
social unrest, and natural disasters. In this sense, SMA can be
understood as an alternative to slower and more costly data collection
methods, such as surveys and opinion polls.

In this talk I will first give an overview of SMA methodology, then
present results from three recent applications: (1) estimating
national influenza rates, (2) estimating alcohol consumption volume,
(3) assessing personal risk perception prior to an impeding natural
disaster. These results suggest that relatively simple methods can
extract socially valuable insights from this rich source of data. I
will conclude with a discussion of open problems and discuss how more
sophisticated machine learning algorithms (graphical models,
semi-supervised learning) may expand the capabilities of this emerging
field of study.

Host: Karen Livescu, kivescu at ttic.edu

-- 
Liv Leader
Human Resources Coordinator

Toyota Technological Institute Chicago
6045 S Kenwood Ave
Chicago, IL 60637
Phone- (773) 702-5033
Fax-     (773) 834-9881
Email-  lleader at ttic.edu <jam at ttic.edu>
Web-   www.ttic.edu
<http://www.ttic.edu/>
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