A new minor in Social Data Analytic is being offered starting in Fall 2020. It is organized by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, with the Departments of Economics, Linguistics, Philosophy, and Political Science, along with the Departments of English, Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, and Statistics and Actuarial Science, and the School of Communication.

On August 12th, 2020 from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm, we will celebrate the official launch of the minor program with SFU alumni speakers who work in data analytics. Speakers include:

• Kathleen Creel, a doctoral candidate in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, focusing on ethical and epistemic issues in computing science and machine learning.
  
• Vagrant Gautam, a Speech Recognition Engineer at Dialpad. Vagrant graduated in 2019 from SFU with a joint-major in linguistics and computing science.
• Vanna Lodders, a research analyst at a national market research and public opinion polling company in Vancouver.
  
• Jorge Vasquez, the Practice Lead of the eCommerce Digital Intelligence Analyst team at Best Buy Canada.

You can sign up for the FREE event here: Eventbrite Page

What does the the program offer?

The Social Data Analytics Minor is the only degree program of its kind in Canada to provide the skills to effectively navigate, analyze, and communicate “big data” in the social science context.

Students learn to collect, analyze, and critically evaluate the large volume of digitized, real-world data derived from and related to human behavior. They will learn to communicate data-driven insights to the public, scholarly community, and policymakers, and they will do so while respecting and upholding the privacy and ethical concerns that have emerged in the big data era.

Everything comes together in the Capstone Project Seminar, where students work in teams to apply their skills to a real-world social or policy problem.

What are the admission requirements?

Entry is via a formal minor program application and applications will be considered for both students entering Simon Fraser University and those already enrolled. Students may apply for admission to the minor program at any time. It is strongly recommended that students contact the Social Data Analytics advisor or program director early about admission and scheduling.

For information about specific courses, check out this page for more information.