Larry Barrett has joined HRDAG as a Human Rights and Data Science Intern until February, 2022.
Access to the records contained in archives is a concern shared by many. Archives support memory and free access to them strengthens democratic processes. Everyone should be allowed to see first-hand the records contained in an archive and be free to interpret them as needed.
Access to archives can increase knowledge on various topics and opens opportunities for different fields of knowledge. (more…)
During the conflict between NATO and Yugoslavia in early 1999, hundreds of thousands of people fled Kosovo, and thousands more were killed. Who were the perpetrators? Statistical analysis helped answer this question.
While at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), members of the HRDAG team wrote several reports on the conflict. With partners at ABA CEELI (American Bar Association/Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative), HRDAG submitted an expert report that was used in the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević at the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) in The Hague, ...
New paper in Biometrika, co-authored by HRDAG's Kristian Lum and James Johndrow: Theoretical limits of microclustering in record linkage.
So much of what I learned at HRDAG was intangible, and I'm grateful to have been able to go deep.
Over the last few years, we've tried to make the data organized in our projects publicly accessible. We have encouraged our partners to publish the data at the completion of the project. We continue to believe it is important to offer access to the data used in our projects for the sake of transparency as well as to encourage further research and analysis. However, we are increasingly concerned about how raw data are used. Data collected by what we can observe is what statisticians call a convenience sample, which is subject to selection bias.
We're keeping these datasets available for researchers who want to use them for simulation or estimation ...
I got an email from my superheroic PhD adviser in June 2006: Would I be interested in relocating to Palo Alto for six months in order to work with Patrick Ball at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group? (She'd gotten a grant and would cover my stipend.) Since I'd spent the last several months in New Haven wrestling ineffectually with giant, brain-melting methodological problems, I said yes immediately.
The plan with my adviser was simple: I'd digitize the ancient, multiply-photocopied pages of data from the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador, combine them with two other datasets, match across all the records, and produce reliable ...
Multiple systems estimation, or MSE, is a family of techniques for statistical inference. MSE uses the overlaps between several incomplete lists of human rights violations to determine the total number of violations. In this blogpost, and four more to follow, I’ll answer both conceptual and practical questions about this important method. (In posts to follow, questions that refer to specific statistical procedures or debates will be marked, "In depth.") (more…)
Une Nouvelle Etude Démontre qu’ Hissène Habré supervisait les Prisons de la Police Politique où des Milliers de Personnes Sont Décédées.
10ème Anniversaire de l’Inculpation de l’Ancien Dictateur Tchadien
Janvier 29, 2010, N’Djaména, Tchad, Palo Alto, CA, Etats-Unis – A l’occasion du 10ème anniversaire de la première mise en accusation d’Hissène Habré au Sénégal, le Groupe d'Analyse des Données de Droits Humains de Benetech (GADDH) a réalisé une nouvelle étude qui démontre que l’ancien dictateur tchadien était bien informé des politiques et des pratiques de sa police politique. Cette étude pourrait s’avérer ...
The Colombian Truth Commission (CEV), the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) have worked together to integrate data and calculate statistical estimates of the number of victims of the armed conflict, including homicides, forced disappearances, kidnapping, and the recruitment of child soldiers. Data are available through National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), the Truth Commission, and GitHub. Published in 2023.
The Colombian Truth Commission (CEV), the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) have worked together to integrate data and calculate statistical estimates of the number of victims of the armed conflict, including homicides, forced disappearances, kidnapping, and the recruitment of child soldiers. Data are available through National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), the Truth Commission, and GitHub.
“Kristian Lum… organized a workshop together with Elizabeth Bender, a staff attorney for the NY Legal Aid Society and former public defender, and Terrence Wilkerson, an innocent man who had been arrested and could not afford bail. Together, they shared first hand experience about the obstacles and inefficiencies that occur in the legal system, providing valuable context to the debate around COMPAS.”
Contrario a lo que se puede pensar, los datos oficiales sobre líderes sociales asesinados no necesariamente corresponden a la realidad y podría haber mucha mayor victimización en las regiones golpeadas por este flagelo, según el más reciente informe del Centro de Estudios de Justicia, Derecho y Sociedad (Dejusticia) en colaboración con el Human Rights Data Analysis Group.
Kristian Lum is focusing on artificial intelligence and the controversial use of predictive policing and sentencing programs.
What’s the relationship between statistics and AI and machine learning?
AI seems to be a sort of catchall for predictive modeling and computer modeling. There was this great tweet that said something like, “It’s AI when you’re trying to raise money, ML when you’re trying to hire developers, and statistics when you’re actually doing it.” I thought that was pretty accurate.
“I was always a math nerd. My mother has a polaroid of me in the fourth grade with my science fair project … . It was the history of mathematics. In college, I was a math major for a year and then switched to statistics.
I always wanted to work in social justice. I was raised by hippies, went to protests when I was young. I always felt I had an obligation to make the world a little bit better.”
Patrick Ball won the Karl E. Peace Award for Outstanding Statistical Contributions for the Betterment of Society at the 2018 Joint Statistical Meeting.
Patrick Ball of the California-based Human Rights Data Analysis Group said he had calculated the mortality rate of political prisoners from 1985 to 1988 using reports completed by Habre’s feared secret police.
