Why social science needs to embrace machine learning
Quick note: This is just the first post in a series; think of it as a short introduction. I’m a social scientist, and unlike many in my field, I genuinely enjoy math and statistics. My friend Petar jokes that statistics isn’t real math, but I’ll leave that debate for another time. What matters is that social science has long struggled to explain society’s complexity. We rely heavily on methods like surveys, interviews, and content analysis. These are useful but often fall short when predicting or uncovering causal relationships. Society is messy, and humans are unpredictable. ...