Chris Danforth

Professor, Department of Mathematics & Statistics

Co-Director, Computational Story Lab

Associate Director, Vermont Complex Systems Center

Director, Vermont Advanced Computing Center

University of Vermont

Research

Lived Experiences Measured Using Rings Study (LEMURS)

Science of Online Corpora, Knowledge, and Stories (SOCKS)

Recent funding from NSF, MRI, AMD, & MassMutual

“Inside the lab that’s quantifying happiness”
Profile of our research group in Outside Magazine

Research team & group publications

"The war in Ukraine has made Russian social-media users glum" The Economist

“Is Everybody Doing … OK? Let’s Ask Social Media”
Story on Hedonometer in New York Times

“Has Twitter just had its saddest fortnight ever?”
Story on Hedonometer in Nature

"Storywrangler: A massive exploratorium for sociolinguistic, cultural, socioeconomic, and political timelines using Twitter" Paper in Science Advances

“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

Hedonometer: a population scale measure of daily happiness

StoryWrangler: A visual comparison of phrase popularity in 150 billion tweets

Recent Publications

116. Say Their Names: Resurgence in the collective attention toward Black victims of fatal police violence following the death of George Floyd.
H. H. Wu, R. J. Gallagher, T. Alshaabi, J. L. Adams, J. R. Minot, M. V. Arnold, B. F. Welles, R. Harp, P. S. Dodds, C. M. Danforth.
PLOS ONE. 2023.
[pdf] [journal url] [arXiv] [thread]
115. Ousiometrics and Telegnomics: The essence of meaning conforms to a two-dimensional powerful-weak and dangerous-safe framework with diverse corpora presenting a safety bias.
P. S. Dodds, T. Alshaabi, M. I. Fudolig, J. W. Zimmerman, J. Lovato, S. Beaulieu, J. R. Minot, M. V. Arnold, A. J. Reagan, C. M. Danforth.
In Review. 2023.
[pdf] [abstract] [online appendix] [thread]
114. A decomposition of book structure through ousiometric fluctuations in cumulative word-time.
M. Fudolig, T. Alshaabi, K. Cramer, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. 2023.
[pdf] [journal url] [arxiv] [thread]
113. Nature Exposure is Associated With Reduced Smartphone Use.
K. Minor, K. L. Glavind, A. J. Schwartz, C. M. Danforth, S. Lehmann, A. Bjerre-Nielsen.
Environment and Behavior. 2023.
[pdf] [journal url] [thread] [press]
112. An assessment of measuring local levels of homelessness through proxy social media signals.
Y. M. Bird, S. E. Grobe, M. V. Arnold, S. P. Rogers, M. I. Fudolig, J. W. Zimmerman, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds.
In Review. 2023.
[pdf] [arXiv] [thread] [press]
111. Curating corpora with classifiers: A case study of clean energy sentiment online.
M. V. Arnold, P. S. Dodds, C. M. Danforth.
In Review. 2023.
[pdf] [arXiv]
110. Sentiment analysis of medical record notes for lung cancer patients at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
D. Elbers, J. La, J. R Minot, R. E. Gramling, M. T. Brophy, N. V. Do, N. Fillmore, P. S. Dodds, C. M. Danforth.
PLOS ONE. 2023.
[pdf] [journal url]
109. Expecting the Unexpected: Predicting Panic Attacks from Mood and Twitter.
E. W. McGinnis, S. Lunna, I. Berman, S. Bagdon, G. Lewis, M. V. Arnold, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds, M. Price, W. E. Copeland, R. S. McGinnis.
In Review. 2023.
[pdf] [arXiv] [press]
108. Discovering Digital Biomarkers of Panic Attack Risk in Consumer Wearables Data.
E. W. McGinnis, S. Lunna, I. Berman, B. Loftness, S. Bagdon, C. M. Danforth, M. Price, W. E. Copeland, R. S. McGinnis.
In Review. 2023.
[pdf] [arXiv]
107. A Large Clinical Trial to Measure Well-Being During the Transition to College Using Wearables: The Lived Experiences Measured Using Rings Study.
M. Price, J. E. Hidalgo, Y. Bird, L. S. P. Bloomfield, C. Buck, J. Cerutti, P. S. Dodds, M. I. Fudolig, R. Gehman, M. Hickok, J. Kim, J. Llorin, J. Lovato, E. McGinnis, R. S. McGinnis, R. Norton, V. Ramirez, K. Stanton, T. H. Ricketts, C. M. Danforth.
Contemporary Clinical Trials. In Press. 2023.
[pdf] [journal url] [press]
106. Detecting Stress in College Freshman from Wearable Sleep Data.
L. S. P. Bloomfield, M. I. Fudolig, P. S. Dodds, J. Llorin, J. L. Lovato, J. Kim, E. W. McGinnis, R. S. McGinnis, M. Price, T. H. Ricketts, K. Stanton, C. M. Danforth.
In Review. 2023.
[pdf] [arXiv]
105. Events and Behaviors Associated with Symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder in First-year College Students.
L. S. P. Bloomfield, M. I. Fudolig, P. S. Dodds, J. Llorin, J. L. Lovato, J. Kim, E. W. McGinnis, R. S. McGinnis, M. Price, T. H. Ricketts, K. Stanton, C. M. Danforth.
In Review. 2023.
[pdf] [arXiv]
104. The Resume Paradox: Greater Language Differences, Smaller Pay Gaps.
J. Minot, M. Maier, B. Demarest, N. Cheney, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds, M. R. Frank.
In Review. 2023.
[pdf] [arXiv] [thread]
103. A blind spot for large language models: Supradiegetic linguistic information.
J. W. Zimmerman, D. Hudon, K. Cramer, J. St. Onge, M. Fudolig, M. V. Arnold, M. Z. Trujillo, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds.
In Review. 2023.
[pdf] [arXiv]

102. Allotaxonometry and rank-turbulence divergence:
A universal instrument for comparing complex systems.
P. S. Dodds, J. R. Minot, M. V. Arnold, T. Alshaabi, J. L. Adams, D. R. Dewhurst, T. J. Gray, M. R. Frank, A. J. Reagan, C. M. Danforth.
EPJ Data Science. 2023.
[pdf] [arXiv] [journal url] [online appendix] [code] [thread]
101. Computational Paremiology: Charting the temporal, ecological dynamics of proverb use in books, news articles, and tweets.
E. Davis, C. M. Danforth, W. Mieder, P. S. Dodds.
Digital Humanities Quarterly. 2023.
[pdf] [arXiv] [journal url]
100. Twitter misogyny associated with Hillary Clinton increased throughout the 2016 U.S. election campaign.
M. Weaving, T. Alshaabi, M. V. Arnold, K. Blake, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds, N. Haslam, C. Fine.
Scientific Reports. 2023.
[pdf] [journal url] [thread]
99. Park visitation and walkshed demographics in the United States.
K. Linnell, M. Fudolig, L. Bloomfield, T. H. Ricketts, J. P. M. O'Neil-Dunne, P. S. Dodds, C. M. Danforth.
In Review. 2023.
[pdf] [arXiv]
98. Spatial changes in park visitation at the onset of the pandemic.
K. Linnell, M. Fudolig, A. Schwartz, T. H. Ricketts, J. P. M. O'Neil-Dunne, P. S. Dodds, C. M. Danforth.
PLOS Global Health. 2022.
[pdf] [journal url] [arxiv] [thread]
97. Fame and Ultrafame: Measuring and comparing daily levels of 'being talked about' for United States' presidents, their rivals, God, countries, and K-pop.
P. S. Dodds, J. R. Minot, M. V. Arnold, T. Alshaabi, J. L. Adams, D. R. Dewhurst, A. J. Reagan, C. M. Danforth.
Journal of Quantitative Description. 2022.
[pdf] [journal url] [arXiv] [thread] [online appendix]

96. Quantifying Changes in the Language Used Around Mental Health on Twitter Over 10 Years: Observational Study.
A. M. Stupinski, T. Alshaabi, M. V. Arnold, J. R. Minot, M. Price, P. S. Dodds, C. M. Danforth.
Journal of Medical Internet Research: Mental Health. 2022.
[pdf] [journal url] [arXiv] [thread]
95. Augmenting semantic lexicons using word embeddings and transfer learning.
T. Alshaabi, C. V. Oort, M. Fudolig, M. V. Arnold, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds.
Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. 2022.
[pdf] [journal url] [arXiv] [thread]
94. Gauging the happiness benefit of US urban parks through Twitter.
A. J. Schwartz, P. S. Dodds, J. P. M. O’Neil-Dunne, T. H. Ricketts, C. M. Danforth.
PLOS ONE. 2022.
[pdf] [journal url] [arXiv] [online appendix] [thread] [blog] [press]
93. Sentiment and structure in word co-occurrence networks on Twitter.
M. I. Fudolig, T. Alshaabi, M. V. Arnold, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds.
Applied Network Science. 2022.
[pdf] [journal url] [arXiv] [thread]
92. Blending search queries with social media data to improve forecasts of economic indicators.
Y. Li, A. Ahani, H. Zhan, K. Foley, T. Alshaabi, K. Linnell, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds, A. Fox.
arXiv. 2022.
[pdf] [arXiv] [thread]
91. Sirius: A mutual information network tool for exploratory visualization of mixed data
J. L. Adams, T. F. DeLuca, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds, Y. Zheng, K. Anastasakis, B. Choi, A. Min, M. B. Bessey.
arXiv. 2022.
[pdf] [arXiv] [thread] [code]
90. Interpretable bias mitigation for textual data: Reducing gender bias in patient notes while maintaining classification performance.
J. R. Minot, N. Cheney, M. Maier, D. C. Elbers, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds.
ACM Transactions on Computing for Health Care. 2022.
[pdf] [journal url] [arXiv] [thread]
89. Ecological and Coevolutionary Dynamics in Modern Markets Yield Nonstationarity in Market Efficiencies.
C. M. Van Oort, J. H Ring, D. R. Dewhurst, C. M. Danforth, B. F. Tivnan.
Complexity. 2022.
[pdf] [journal url]
88. Doomscrolling during COVID-19: The negative association between daily social and traditional media consumption and mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
M. Price, A. C. Legrand, Z. M. F. Brier, K. van Stolk-Cooke, K. Peck, P. S. Dodds, Z. W. Adams, C. M. Danforth.
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. 2022.
[pdf] [journal url] [arXiv]

87. Storywrangler: A massive exploratorium for
sociolinguistic, cultural, socioeconomic, and political timelines using Twitter.
T. Alshaabi, J. L. Adams, M. V. Arnold, J. R. Minot, D. R. Dewhurst, A. J. Reagan, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds.
Science Advances. 2021.
[pdf] [journal url] [arXiv] [appendix] [online visualization] [thread] [press]
86. Probability-turbulence divergence: A tunable allotaxonometric instrument for comparing heavy-tailed categorical distributions.
P. S. Dodds, J. R. Minot, M. V. Arnold, T. Alshaabi, J. L. Adams, D. R. Dewhurst, A. J. Reagan, C. M. Danforth.
arXiv. 2021.
[pdf] [arXiv] [online appendix] [thread]
85. The incel lexicon: Deciphering the emergent cryptolect of a global misogynistic community.
K. Gothard, D. R. Dewhurst, J. R. Minot, J. L. Adams, M. V. Arnold, T. Alshaabi, A. J. Reagan, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds.
arXiv. 2021.
[pdf] [arXiv] [thread]
84. Generalized Word Shift Graphs: A Method for Visualizing and Explaining Pairwise Comparisons Between Texts.
R. J. Gallagher, M. R. Frank, L. Mitchell, A. J. Schwartz, A. J. Reagan, C. M. Danforth, P. S. Dodds.
EPJ Data Science. 2021.
[pdf] [journal url] [arXiv] [code] [thread]
83. Computational timeline reconstruction of the stories surrounding Trump: Story turbulence, narrative control, and collective chronopathy.
P. S. Dodds, J. R. Minot, M. V. Arnold, T. Alshaabi, J. L. Adams, A. J. Reagan, C. M. Danforth.
PLOS ONE. 2021.
[pdf] [journal url] [arXiv] [online appendix] [thread] [press]
82. Long-term word frequency dynamics derived from Twitter are corrupted: A bespoke approach to detecting and removing pathologies in ensembles of time series.
P. S. Dodds, J. R. Minot, M. V. Arnold, T. Alshaabi, J. L. Adams, D. R. Dewhurst, A. J. Reagan, C. M. Danforth.
arXiv. 2021.
[pdf] [arXiv] [thread]

Full publication list

Teaching

Video lectures for recent course on Nonlinear Dynamics available for free on YouTube

2022 Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award

Applied Mathematics classes taught at UVM include Linear Algebra, Numerical Analysis, Nonlinear Dynamics, Ordinary Differential Equations, and Data Ethics

We now offer an undergraduate degree in Data Science, as well as both MS and PhD degrees in Complex Systems & Data Science

Tweets

Statistics in slow motion pic.twitter.com/Y4zZoFiwuy
— Chris Danforth (@ChrisDanforth) February 23, 2018

Meanwhile, weather prediction, our society's best algorithmic decision support tool, and one of the great success stories of science, continues to improve.https://t.co/sDRtAOzBVv pic.twitter.com/wPK0IZwCZR
— Chris Danforth (@ChrisDanforth) January 24, 2019

Did Trump's speech on January 6 incite violence? Yes.

Data journalism piece led by @aleszubajak w/analysis of Parler from @uvmcomplexity Director @peterdodds & Data Artist @artistjaneadams contributes evidence for conviction:https://t.co/VEoO80EYjz
— Chris Danforth (@ChrisDanforth) February 12, 2021

Tweets

Your morning dose of glowing deterministic nonperiodic flow!

Chaotic project with my 5th grade son. pic.twitter.com/s1QwBSDJkC
— Chris Danforth (@ChrisDanforth) May 30, 2019

Hahahahaha, Duuuuude, Yessssssssss!

How do words get stretched for dramatic effect? In many very interesting ways! Details:https://t.co/ZkBLiPW2wR pic.twitter.com/3fqbPLjQvb
— Chris Danforth (@ChrisDanforth) July 10, 2019

Yesterday was the saddest day in the history of @Twitter pic.twitter.com/91VP3Ywtnr
— hedonometer (@hedonometer) May 30, 2020