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Precog: a low risk, high return investment
Precog has been a constant throughout my college life. Having spent three-plus years at Precog, it is much more than a work experience or research experience on my resume. It is what has defined me and my work interests. In this blog, I will take a shot at the impossible task of summarizing my experience, learnings, and the indelible effect PK and Precog have left on me. Before joining my college, I was very well aware that there existed this majestic lab headed by this mystical professor. My first introduction to Precog was through my brother when I was still in 12th grade. He had applied to Precog but got…
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What #hashtag wars tell us about the organization of Uttar Pradesh IT cells, and how parties mark their allies and enemies
Pitched battles on Twitter are increasingly common among the key players in the Uttar Pradesh elections, since the praises, innuendo, and insults that take shape and virality on Twitter often find new lives on other social media such as WhatsApp, but also on mainstream television and web-based news. We studied nine parties contesting the state legislative elections in Uttar Pradesh â BJP, SP, INC, RLD, BSP, AIMIM, Nishad Party, AAP, and Apna Dal, and collected the hashtags used by over 11,000 politicians at various levels, from sitting MPs and MLAs to party workers. We collected all the hashtags used by the said politicians during Sep 2021 to Jan 2022. We…
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Is a Democrat more likely to wear a mask than a Republican?? Unmasking the partisan combat, an analysis through Instagram
We analyze 3.91 million Instagram posts collected throughout 2020 from the 4 top Democratic and 4 top Republican states. Posts from Democratic states were found to have significantly higher percentages of detected masks, and significantly lower percentages of group photos, showing higher adoption of mask-wearing and social distancing measures than Republican states. The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed life in the world including, United States, with the country recording over 32.3 million cases and 574,000 deaths as of April, 2020. With the ongoing widespread vaccine rollout, the adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions like mask-wearing mandates and stay-at-home laws have proved to be critical for stopping possible transmission routes. In the lead-up to…