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Duncan Watts
1,759 posts
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Duncan Watts
@duncanjwatts
Stevens University Professor, University of Pennsylvania Computational Social Scientist. Founder and director of CSS Lab at Penn @csspenn
Philadelphia
duncanjwatts.com
Joined March 2009
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  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Jul 8, 2020
    27 years ago I came to this country on a J-1 visa to study @Cornell for my PhD. Given my race, gender, and nationality (Australian) I was in the most favored category of immigrants, but it was still stressful, uncertain, and at times alienating.
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Sep 27, 2021
    Thrilled to announce the launch of the Computational Social Science Lab at UPenn! Integrative thinking. Use-inspired basic science. Research Infrastructure. Mass Collaboration. Open Science. It's all here! css.seas.upenn.edu
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Apr 27, 2024
    Thrilled and honored to join this distinguished community, and grateful to my mentors, collaborators, and especially my students, who have taught me so much along the way.
    user avatar
    National Academy of Sciences
    @theNASciences
    Apr 26, 2024
    Congratulations Duncan Watts of @Penn, newly inducted #NASmember! #NAS161 #socialsciences #computerscience
    42K
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Jun 2, 2020
    Replying to @LeonydusJohnson
    OK I'll explain: the bias is in who gets arrested. For a white person to get arrested for violent crime they have to do something much more violent than a black person. Same is true for traffic stops and stop and frisk. They aren't comparable groups of people! @5harad @jonmummolo
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Feb 26, 2020
    I'd just like to say that what is happening now with the COVID-19 proto-pandemic is completely consistent with a model that @peterdodds and I published 15 years ago. We both moved on to other things, but in case it's useful, here it is.
    pnas.org
    Multiscale, resurgent epidemics in a hierarchical metapopulation model | PNAS
    Although population structure has long been recognized as relevant to the spread of infectious disease, traditional mathematical models have unders...
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Dec 6, 2019
    Finally, a nuanced take! Biased Algorithms Are Easier to Fix Than Biased People nyti.ms/38brSto
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Jan 26, 2022
    Honored to be named a 2021 AAAS Fellow along with nine (!) of my colleagues. Go @Penn!
    Ten from Penn elected 2021 AAAS Fellows | Penn Today
    From penntoday.upenn.edu
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Jan 17, 2019
    Delighted to be joining @Penn, including @Wharton, @PennEngineers, and @AnnenbergPenn, and looking forward to exciting new ventures!
    user avatar
    Penn
    @Penn
    Jan 17, 2019
    Duncan Watts (@duncanjwatts), a pioneer in the use of data to study networks, will become the 23rd Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor on July 1. In announcing his appointment, President Amy Gutmann said he “stands at the epicenter of these fields.” bit.ly/2CoDGcL
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Oct 10, 2019
    This is great. We need more of this sort of work. I predict lots of other effects will suffer a similar fate. I would also note that this is different from failure to replicate. "Failure to explain a useful amount of variance" is the other (IMO much bigger) shoe to drop.
    user avatar
    Dan Goldstein
    @dggoldst
    Oct 10, 2019
    Screen time is associated with lower well-being about as much as regularly eating potatoes is. Putting "variance explained" into perspective from nature.com/articles/d4158… h/t @jakehofman
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Aug 16, 2022
    About 20 years late to the game, but happy to launch my personal website duncanjwatts.com including links to publications, courses, and my lab css.seas.upenn.edu
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Oct 11, 2019
    Thanks @nature for publishing our paper! (and for ignoring reviewer #2). @stevenstrogatz and I are honored and grateful.
    user avatar
    Magdalena Skipper
    @Magda_Skipper
    Oct 11, 2019
    Our Facebook project to showcase 150 articles from @nature, one for each year the journal has been published is up to 1998 when we published "Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks"; it helped establish the field of network science: go.nature.com/2pZEGl0 #Nature150
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Jul 8, 2020
    Replying to @duncanjwatts
    A major strength of the American intellectual and scientific enterprise has always been its eagerness to attract, train, and keep talent from across the world. This ruling isn't the first to throw sand in those gears but its scope, insensitivity, and pointlessness is breathtaking
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    May 9, 2019
    New paper! Objecting to experiments that compare two unobjectionable policies or treatments
    pnas.org
    Objecting to experiments that compare two unobjectionable policies or treatments | PNAS
    Randomized experiments have enormous potential to improve human welfare in many domains, including healthcare, education, finance, and public polic...
  • user avatar
    Duncan Watts
    @duncanjwatts
    Nov 2, 2020
    Bad time to advertise but I am hiring two positions (Research Data Engineer and Research Project Manager) to help us study media bias and misinformation. Please apply! Please RT widely! And please, please vote!! wd1.myworkdaysite.com/en-US/recruiti… wd1.myworkdaysite.com/en-US/recruiti…