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His mathematical models are tailored to identify word patterns and thematic elements in written text. The number and strength of links among novels determine influence, much the way Google ranks Web sites.

Data-centric specialties are growing fast, giving rise to a new vocabulary. In political science, this quantitative analysis is called political methodology. In history, there is cliometrics, which applies econometrics to history. In literature, stylometry is the study of an author’s writing style, and these days it leans heavily on computing and statistical analysis. Culturomics is the umbrella term used to describe rigorous quantitative inquiries in the social sciences and humanities.

“What is critical and distinctive to human evolution is ideas, and how they evolve,” says Jean-Baptiste Michel, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard.

Data-centric specialties are growing fast, giving rise to a new vocabulary. In political science, this quantitative analysis is called political methodology. In history, there is cliometrics, which applies econometrics to history. In literature, stylometry is the study of an author’s writing style, and these days it leans heavily on computing and statistical analysis. Culturomics is the umbrella term used to describe rigorous quantitative inquiries in the social sciences and humanities.

Such biological metaphors seem apt, because much of the research is a quantitative examination of words. Just as genes are the fundamental building blocks of biology, words are the raw material of ideas.

Understanding how to use Python, or write code to solve problems, is just a way of having an additional tool to be creative with."

"The old teaching method — you know, where a teacher says something and you write it down and then take a test — that's about as passive as it gets," he says. "This idea pushes kids to be more actively involved since, by and large, it's something we're both learning together. That leads to a lot of innovative teaching — and a lot of innovative learning, for that matter."

"I'm certainly not a coder," says Lisa Brown, an English teacher and head of the English department at Beaver. "But, like anything, the more I've played around with it the more I've realized there's a lot that's really accessible and understandable."