DATA SCIENCE FOR DEMOGRAPHIC PROCESSES
Academic Year 2023/2024 - Teacher: Angelo MAZZAExpected Learning Outcomes
- Knowledge and understanding: The course provides basic concepts and tools of Demography. We will study how traditional methods used in population studies can
help us make sense of new data sources, and how these new data sources may require new approaches and research design. - Applying knowledge and understanding: The student has to be able to perform analyses of population processes using both traditional and new data sources.
- Making judgments: The student will be able to collect, process and interpret quantitative and qualitative data on population processes, also from a political decision-making point of view. The student will be able to identify the links between demographic and social variables in developed and developing countries.
- Communication skills: The student is expected to learn the technical language needed to understand/write properly about population processes.
- Learning skills: Ability to understand the logic of demographic analysis and reasoning
Course Structure
Frontal lectures and R computer labs
Required Prerequisites
No specific background knowledge is required.
Detailed Course Content
Part 1
1. Sources of demographic data.
2. Structural Characteristics of a Population.
3. Mortality tables.
4. Marriage and Fertility.
5. Mobility and migration.
6. Economic outcomes of the aging of the population.
7. Demographic forecasts.
Part 2
1. Software R: Introductory notions, input and import of data, vector and matrix, function calls, charts.
2. Practical statistics summaries
3. API for extracting data from the main social networks
4. Case studies
Textbook Information
Notes and reading material provided by the lecturer
Course Planning
| Subjects | Text References | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The fathers of demographic thought | Sarah Harper, Demography: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2018 |
| 2 | Population censuses | Sarah Harper, Demography: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2018 Demografia. EGEA, 2014 |
| 3 | Population pyramids and projections | Sarah Harper, Demography: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2018 |
| 4 | Population pyramids and projections | Sarah Harper, Demography: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2018 EGEA, 2014 |
| 5 | Measures of population growth | Sarah Harper, Demography: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2018 |
| 6 | Life tables | Sarah Harper, Demography: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2018 |
| 7 | Age-Period-Cohort (APC) Analysis | Sarah Harper, Demography: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2018 |
| 8 | Fertility | Sarah Harper, Demography: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2018 |
| 9 | Migrations | Sarah Harper, Demography: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2018 |
| 10 | Data Science and the R language | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |
| 11 | The R language syntax | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |
| 12 | The babynames R package | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |
| 13 | The dplyr R package | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |
| 14 | The dplyr R package | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |
| 15 | The dplyr R package | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |
| 16 | The ggplot R package | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |
| 17 | The ggplot R package | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |
| 18 | API for social media data extraction | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |
| 19 | The rtweet R package | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |
| 20 | The rtweet R package | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |
| 21 | Sentiment analysis in R | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |
| 22 | Sentiment analysis in R | Materiale didattico distribuito in aula |