Measuring Emotional States in Real-Time


Date : 20 novembre / November 20, 2014
Heure: 19h30
Lieu: Université de Montréal
Pavillon Jean Coutu
Agora Goodman
2940, chemin de Polytechnique
Salle S1-151


Conférencier/Speaker: Chris Danforth, University of Vermont


Abstract: Our happiness depends on where we are, who we are with, and what we are doing. By analyzing a diverse set of large-scale texts which reflect cultural experience, including 50 years of music lyrics, thousands of works of literature, and 50 billion status updates from Twitter, we have built a scientific instrument that quantifies population-scale happiness. Among many fascinating insights into human behavior, we find that expressed happiness decreases through the day requiring a nightly reboot, happiness rises and falls with age and distance from the Earth's equator, and the atoms of language exhibit a suprisingly pro-social bias. This lively presentation will describe these results in the context of our Computational Story Lab's ongoing efforts to understand the geographical and topological dynamics of large-scale socio-technical phenomena.
http://hedonometer.org

Notes biographiques / Biographical notes:

Chris Danforth est Professeur Flint de mathématiques et sciences naturelles et techniques à la University of Vermont. Il co-dirige le Computational Story Lab, un groupe de mathématiciens appliqués au niveau sous-gradué, à la maîtrise, au doctorat et au niveau postdoctoral travaillant à grande échelle, les problèmes des systèmes dans plusieurs domaines incluant la sociologie, les dynamiques non-linéaires, les réseaux et la physique. Sa recherche a eu des échos dans le New York Times, le Science Magazine et la BBC entre autres. Les descriptions de ses projets sont disponibles au site web: http://uvm.edu/~cdanfort et son blogue: http://onehappybird.com

Chris Danforth is the Flint Professor of Mathematical, Natural, and Technical Sciences at the University of Vermont. He co-directs the Computational Story Lab, a group of applied mathematicians at the undergraduate, masters, phd, and postdoctoral level working on large-scale, system problems in many fields including sociology, nonlinear dynamics, networks, ecology, and physics. His research has been covered by the New York Times, Science Magazine, and the BBC among others. Descriptions of his projects are available at his website: http://uvm.edu/~cdanfort or his blog http://onehappybird.com