Complex Human Data Summer School

Researchers from psychology and other disciplines are increasingly relying on computational analyses of large data sets to draw conclusions about human behaviour. This kind of research requires skills that are not often taught as part of the psychology curriculum, and the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences is therefore pleased to announce the first annual Complex Human Data summer school.

The school is designed for advanced undergraduates and first-year PhD students, and aims to give attendees the key skills they need to collect complex data, model the data, and evaluate their models. Participants from industry are also welcome.  The program includes both lectures and laptop-based sessions which provide hands-on experience of the computational tools and approaches to be covered.

Dates: December 9 - 14, 2018

Location: The University of Melbourne

Topics will include:

  • Programming in R (the main language for the summer school)
  • Best practices for running online studies
  • Reproducibility and Open Science
  • GitHub
  • Probabilistic models of cognition
  • Experience sampling
  • Exploratory data analysis
  • Bayesian data analysis
  • Generalised linear models

Organisers:

  • Simon Dennis
  • Charles Kemp
  • Amy Perfors
  • Danielle Navarro

Other faculty members from the Complex Human Data Hub at Melbourne will also be involved.

Required background:

Participants are expected to have an interest in psychology and some experience with computer programming. The school is designed both for psychology students with an interest in computational approaches and students from computer science (or technical disciplines) with an interest in psychology.  Although we expect that many participants will be graduate students, a subset of the available slots will be reserved for advanced undergraduates.

How to apply:

Please submit

- A short CV

- A statement of up to 500 words describing your background, your interests, and what you hope to get out of the summer school

- For applicants from outside Melbourne, a short statement of financial need explaining why a scholarship would be especially helpful (optional)

Applications should be sent to chdsummerschool@gmail.com before October 15th, 2018. Applicants from outside Melbourne will be automatically considered for scholarships regardless of whether they submit statements of financial need, but such statements may be helpful if there are more applications than support available.

Cost:

Registration is free for undergraduates and graduate students, and $2500 for participants from industry. Scholarships will be available to help with transport and accommodation costs.