Quantifying the Science-Humanities Gap

Project Summary

Spenser Easterbrook, a Philosophy and Math double major, joined Biology majors Aharon Walker and Nicholas Branson in a ten-week exploration of the connections between journal publications from the humanities and the sciences. They were guided by Rick Gawne and Jameson Clarke, graduate students from Philosophy and Biology.

Themes and Categories
Interdisciplinary Inquiry
Data+, Digital Humanities
Contact
Paul Bendich
mathematics
bendich@math.duke.edu

Project Results

The team painstakingly created citation networks for several major philosophy journals and then analyzed the network structure using Gephi. Among other analyses, they found that a small fraction of the philosophy papers in this network were responsible for most of the citations to science journals. They presented their findings to the Moral Attitudes and Decision-Making Lab, and the dataset they created will be used next fall in an undergraduate philosophy class, funded under iiD's Data Expeditions program.

Aharon presenting at the Moral Atittudes and Decision-Making Lab

Download the executive summary (PPTX).

Disciplines Involved

  • Philosophy
  • Network Analysis

Project Team

Undergraduates: Nicholas Branson, Aharon Walker, and Spenser Easterbrook

Project Mentors:

 

Related People

Related Projects

Maximizing Data Communication for Faster Energy Access

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 calls for universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy. Researchers and practitioners around the world have responded to this call by producing a wealth of energy access data. While many data gaps still exist, are we capturing the fullest potential from the information and research we do have, and what it tells us about how to accelerate energy access? Power for All’s Platform for Energy Access Knowledge (PEAK) is an interactive knowledge platform designed to automatically curate, organize, and streamline large, growing bodies of data into digestible, sharable, and useable knowledge through automated data capture, indexing, and visualization. A team of students led by Rebekah Shirley will consult with Power for All to creatively visualize PEAK’s library, and to explore machine learning and natural language processing tools that can enable auto-extraction and visualization of data for more effective science communication.

Data and the Global Corporate Bond Market

Are there relative value opportunities in the global corporate bond markets?  
A team of students will work with Professor Emma Rasiel to understand whether an analysis of credit spreads on bonds issued by international firms in multiple countries over time can shed light on potential arbitrage opportunities. The team will have frequent opportunities to interact with analytics professionals at a leading financial advisory and asset management firm.

 

Construction Machinery and the Business Cycle

A team of students will consult with a leading financial advisory and asset management firm that is seeking to understand how big data can shed light on the secondary market for construction machinery. Students will explore a combination of publicly-available datasets that describe the used-machinery market and its potential implications as an indicator for the business cycle. There will be frequent interactions with analytical professionals from the firm.