In some ways, artificial intelligence acts like a mirror. Machine learning tools are designed to detect patterns, and they often reflect back the same biases we already know exist in our culture. Algorithms can be sexist, racist, and perpetuate other structural inequalities found in society. But unlike humans, algorithms aren’t under any obligation to explain themselves. In fact, even the people...
Beware the algorithm
[UPDATE: Aviso Retention was purchased by Watermark, and one of their media specialists has been harassing me to update my post to reflect that. I’m not sure why, because as the post below makes clear, the product is worthless; they claim they can predict student performance before classes begin, but his analysis showed that their model sucked. You’d almost be better off flipping a...
Using big data to determine who betrayed Anne Frank
First published on Monday 2 October 2017 11.29 EDT A retired FBI agent has launched a cold case review into identifying those who may have betrayed the hiding place of Anne Frank and her family to the Gestapo in 1944. Investigative techniques developed in the past decade, including the crunching of big data to uncover leads, are to be used by a team of 19 forensic experts led by Vince Pankoke...
The quants are ruining baseball
The owners of America’s baseball teams, gathered at a Houston hotel last year, were discussing once again how their games had become so plodding. This time, however, the explanation was different. Two Major League Baseball officials and a statistician told the group that the sport was being brought to a standstill by the very phenomenon that has revolutionized it in recent years—the embrace of...
NY Times: Majority of our time is spent on data cleaning, not data analysis
Yet far too much handcrafted work — what data scientists call “data wrangling,” “data munging” and “data janitor work” — is still required. Data scientists, according to interviews and expert estimates, spend from 50 percent to 80 percent of their time mired in this more mundane labor of collecting and preparing unruly digital data, before it can be explored for useful nuggets. “Data wrangling is...
When discrimination is baked into algorithms
A recent ProPublica analysis of The Princeton Review’s prices for online SAT tutoring shows that customers in areas with a high density of Asian residents are often charged more. When presented with this finding, The Princeton Review called it an “incidental” result of its geographic pricing scheme. The case illustrates how even a seemingly neutral price model could potentially lead to...
Malcolm Gladwell is skeptical of big data
Malcolm Gladwell had some bad news for mobile marketers: Just because you have more data doesn’t mean you’re going to make better decisions. At Tune’s 2015 Postback conference on Thursday, Gladwell outlined the gap between what we may think we know about audience and the truth. In normal Gladwellian-style, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point and Outliers offered a contrarian view to the...
The Supreme Court, big data, and citizenship
The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, poses a question: whether the Constitution’s long-standing “one person, one vote” principle requires equal numbers of voters per district instead of equal numbers of people, as is current practice. Most commentary on the case has focused on its implications for political parties and racial groups. But focusing on the politics, or even on the merits of the...
Some schools understand the value of data
In this small suburb outside Milwaukee, no one in the Menomonee Falls School District escapes the rigorous demands of data. Custodians monitor dirt under bathroom sinks, while the high school cafeteria supervisor tracks parent and student surveys of lunchroom food preferences. Administrators record monthly tallies of student disciplinary actions, and teachers post scatter plot diagrams of quiz...
Artist helps scientists visualize data
For the past year or so genetic scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York have been collaborating with a specialist from another universe: Daniel Kohn, a Brooklyn-based painter and conceptual artist. Mr. Kohn has no training in computers or genetics, and he’s not there to conduct art therapy classes. His role is to help the scientists with a signature 21st-century problem:...