You may have seen something going around in the wake of the 2020 US Presidential Election where people are claiming they can prove there was fraud in the votes using math.

They are wrong. This is a post you can share to explain why.

ETA: RadioLab did a really excellent episode on this which includes a lot of what’s below including interviews with me and Dr. Mebane who did the election analysis at umich. If you don’t want to read all this, go check that episode here: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/breaking-benford

I am an expert with published research on Benford’s Law, the statistical…

I teach a class in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland called “Becoming a Social Media Influencer”. It’s a hands-on class where students create social media accounts (or work with ones they already have) and learn how to make good content, to build a community, to gain insights into social media algorithms, and to develop strategies for growing their accounts. We do in-class critiques and offer feedback along with doing readings and trying out new tech.

I come to this from my own experience as a computer scientist who studies social media and as someone who…

Anyone can register for this 3-credit class at https://oes.umd.edu/
Graduate version (600-level) will be posted soon

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course students will be able to:

Understand and interpret social media analytics

· Generate high quality photos and text content for social media

· Implement strategies for building engagement with social media content

· Build influential social media profiles

Readings and Online Resources:

There is no required text for this course. All readings are free and available online.

Grading

35% homework assignments

30% participation in online discussions

35% final project

Course Schedule

1. Social Media Platforms

a…

Here are a few key features to know about when participating in a WebEx meeting in a role other than host. A video guide to this tutorial is embedded at the bottom of this story.

Main Icons

Under the main video window is a set of icons:

• Mic: Mute and unmute your microphone
• Video: Turn your video on and off
• Share Screen: Click here to choose any application you have open and share that screen in place of video from your camera
• Participants: Brings up the participant list
• Chat: Opens a chat window
• Leave: Exit the meeting

Hand Raising

You can raise your hand…

There are a few errors students often run into in my classes that use Gephi. Here are some of the most common with fixes.

“Error: Cannot find Java 1.8 or higher”

You checked and you have Java 1.8 or higher installed, right? (if not, to do that — that’s the problem).

This error usually happens on Windows and there’s an easy solution. Go to the Gephi folder in your Applications folder. If you’re on windows 10, look in C:\Program Files (x86)\Gephi-0.9.1\bin\

There will be two versions of Gephi in there. They are probably called gephi.exe and gephi64.exe. Try them both. …

Auto-play videos that start yelling at me when I just want to read a paragraph or two of news make me crazy. I’ve been fighting a years-long battle against the CNN videos with limited success. Today, I landed on a solution that is working.

1. Install Ad Block Plus.
2. Click the ABP stop sign icon and select Options.
3. Click on Advanced on the left and scroll down to My Filter List
4. Click Edit Filters and add a line that looks like this
   *theoplayer*
5. Click Save. You are now auto-play video free!

I expect this won’t work forever, as it seems to be an escalating battle where CNN really really needs you to have their annoying videos play. For now, enjoy the silence!

Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump)is a prolific Twitter user who breaks every convention that I’ve seen in my study of politicians and government officials using the platform. You can read all his tweets on his Twitter profile, but they are also handily archived and searchable at http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com/

I grabbed a copy of everything he’s posted since he joined in May 2009 — a total of 30,123 tweets. This includes his retweets in addition to tweets he authored. This article is the first in a series that will analyze that data.

It’s Just Words

There are lots of fancy ways to analyze the words people use…