Specialized trainings

Quantitative surveys: a toolbox for the social sciences

Valid as part of the DENS and the "digital humanities" minor of the Humanities graduate program: 6 ECTS (Semester 1). Option to attend as an auditor.

Sessions: Mondays, 3 pm to 6 pm, in the conference room of the Centre de Sciences de données (ENS-PSL, 45 rue d'Ulm, at the top of staircase B or C): September 16, September 23, October 7, October 21, November 4, November 18, December 2 and December 16, 2024.

This course offers an introduction to various quantitative methods based on social science surveys. Each session is organized around the encounter between a question (sociological, anthropological, historiographical), data and a method: mapping, dimensionality reduction, partitioning, sequence analysis, textual analysis, Bayesian statistics. The aim of the course is to provide a schematic understanding of how these methods are implemented, their merits and limitations. How can spatial data and temporal sequences be represented? What do Bayesian statistics offer that the frequentist approach lacks? How can we analyze the morpho-syntactic properties of a text? How can we move from a large number of variables to a small number of classes? These questions will be posed in context, in a dynamic of adjustment between data, method and research question (a dynamic of inquiry).

Prerequisites: programming issues will be covered only in outline, no experience in this field is required.

Validation requirements: students must submit a four-page document applying one of the methods discovered during the course to their own data: presentation of the data, interest of the method, implementation and interpretation. Those with no programming experience will be assisted with the implementation.  

Course coordinator: Théo Boulakia: theo.boulakia@ens.psl.eu

Letters and figures: the computational analysis of language at the service of the study of texts

Valid as part of the DENS and the "digital humanities" minor of the Humanities graduate program: 6 ECTS (Semester 2). Teaching also registered in the Literature and Language department.

Whether they are dedicated to simple tasks, such as identifying lexicon, syntactic phenomena, particular rhythms, or whether they venture to identify the major themes of a text, the stylistic idiosyncrasies of an author, or the narrative structures of a work, so-called “automatic language processing” tools are playing an increasingly important role in contemporary literary studies. What are the main contributions obtained by these computational approaches? When should we integrate (or not!) these methods into our work? How to use it? It is to answer these questions that this course will tackle, by exploring in a theoretical and practical way the possibilities offered by these tools, their results, and their limits.

Prerequisites: The course does not presuppose any mathematical or computer knowledge.

Validation methods: attendance and mini-thesis implementing one or more of the tools covered during the semester

Academic Leader: Florian Cafiero: florian.cafiero@columbia.edu

Introduction to natural language processing

The course provides an overview of automatic language processing techniques applied (and applicable) to digital humanities issues.

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IHMC Quantitative Workshop

This workshop aims to accompany students, doctoral students and researchers in the use of quantitative techniques in history. At the same time, it will also discuss the debates related to these uses.

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Walking Ethnography and Digital Tools

The course provides intellectual and digital tools for editing ethnographic survey materials, and learning about data management and modeling using ArchEthno software.

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Archives of research in progress

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Urban Machines

An introduction to digital mapping as a rendering format. Students are asked to annotate (in real time if they can with their smartphone) a free digital map (mymaps) with texts, quotes, references, photos or drawings.

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