Chris Danforth
Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Director, Vermont Advanced Computing Center
Co-Director, Computational Story Lab
Associate Director, Vermont Complex Systems Institute
Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment
PRONOUNS he/him
Innovation Hall E422
82 University Place
Burlington, VT 05405
United States
- Ph.D., University of Maryland - College Park
- B.S. in Mathematics & Physics, Bates College
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Vermont Advanced Computer Center
Computational Story Lab
Vermont Complex Systems Institute
Gund Institute for Environment
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Area(s) of expertise
- Computational social science
- complex systems
- chaos
- global happiness
- health benefits of nature
BIO
Chris is an applied mathematician interested in modeling a variety of physical, biological, and social phenomenon. He has applied principles of chaos theory to improve weather forecasts and developed a real-time remote sensor of global happiness using messages from Twitter. Danforth co-runs the Computational Story Lab with Peter Dodds.
Courses
- MATH 2522 - Linear Algebra
- MATH 3737 - Numerical Analysis
- MATH 3766 - Chaos, Fractals & Dynamical Systems
- MATH 5230 - Graduate Ordinary Differential Equations
- MATH 6989 - Graduate Seminar
Bio
Chris is an applied mathematician interested in modeling a variety of physical, biological, and social phenomenon. He has applied principles of chaos theory to improve weather forecasts and developed a real-time remote sensor of global happiness using messages from Twitter. Danforth co-runs the Computational Story Lab with Peter Dodds.
Courses
- MATH 2522 - Linear Algebra
- MATH 3737 - Numerical Analysis
- MATH 3766 - Chaos, Fractals & Dynamical Systems
- MATH 5230 - Graduate Ordinary Differential Equations
- MATH 6989 - Graduate Seminar
Projects
Story Wrangler: a visual comparison of phrase popularity in 150 billion tweets
Hedonometer: a population scale measure of daily happiness
Research & Press
“Inside the lab that’s quantifying happiness”
Profile of our research group in Outside Magazine
“Has Twitter just had its saddest fortnight ever?”
Story on Hedonometer in Nature
“Instagram photos reveal predictive markers of depression”
Paper in EPJ Data Science, coverage by New York Times
“The emotional arcs of stories are dominated by six basic shapes”
Paper in EPJ Data Science, coverage by The Atlantic
“Human language reveals a universal positivity bias”
Paper in PNAS, coverage by New York Times