Introduction

This section provides a brief overview of the goals and structure of the book.

The world has changed for empirical social scientists. The new types of “big data” have generated an entire new research field-that of data science. That world is dominated by computer scientists who have generated new ways of creating and collecting data, developed new analytical and statistical techniques, and provided new ways of visualizing and presenting information. These new sources of data and techniques have the potential to transform the way applied social science is done.