The Scan Statistic for Multidimensional Data and Social Media Applications

This chapter reviews the literature on the scan statistic with particular emphasis on its application. The chapter considers the application of the scan statistic to social media data, where it explores changes in the sentiments of sadness, fear, anger, joy, and love. This compares 2017 to 2016 data for each geographical location around the world. The temporal scan statistic is used to flag periods within 2017 with significantly different sentiments from the average of the whole of 2016. This was carried out firstly within Australia and then, in less details, in other pockets around the world.