In this NPR story, HRDAG’s Patrick Ball comments on first-of-its-kind projections.
HRDAG director of research Patrick Ball is quoted in this New York Times article about a paper that models death tolls in Gaza.
Daniel Manrique-Vallier, Patrick Ball, Mauricio Sadinle. (2022). Capture-Recapture for Casualty Estimation and Beyond: Recent Advances and Research Directions. In: Carriquiry, A.L., Tanur, J.M., Eddy, W.F. (eds) Statistics in the Public Interest. Springer Series in the Data Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75460-0_2
Manrique-Vallier, D., Ball, P., Sadinle, M. (2022). Capture-Recapture for Casualty Estimation and Beyond: Recent Advances and Research Directions. In: Carriquiry, A.L., Tanur, J.M., Eddy, W.F. (eds) Statistics in the Public Interest. Springer Series in the Data Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75460-0_2
But while HRDAG’s estimate relied on the painstaking efforts of human workers to carefully weed out potential duplicate records, hashing with statistical estimation proved to be faster, easier and less expensive. The researchers said hashing also had the important advantage of a sharp confidence interval: The range of error is plus or minus 1,772, or less than 1 percent of the total number of victims.
“The big win from this method is that we can quickly calculate the probable number of unique elements in a dataset with many duplicates,” said Patrick Ball, HRDAG’s director of research. “We can do a lot with this estimate.”
We're thrilled to announce that Tarak Shah has joined our team as our new data scientist.
Bailey joined HRDAG as a data scientist in 2022.
“The Rafto Prize 2021 is awarded to the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) for their wide-reaching documentation of grave human rights abuses. By using statistics and data science they uncover large-scale human rights violations that might otherwise go undetected. This novel approach has enabled courts to bring perpetrators to justice and given closure to affected victims and their families. HRDAG represents a new generation of human rights defenders that advances the enforcement of human rights globally.”
On October 23, 2018, Patrick Ball keynoted at the Open Source Summit in Edinburgh, Scotland.
“In 2016, two researchers, the statistician Kristian Lum and the political scientist William Isaac, set out to measure the bias in predictive policing algorithms. They chose as their example a program called PredPol. … Lum and Isaac faced a conundrum: if official data on crimes is biased, how can you test a crime prediction model? To solve this technique, they turned to a technique used in statistics and machine learning called the synthetic population.”
Trina Reynolds-Tyler is HRDAG's 2019 Human Rights Intern.
Today, February 11, is the day of national protests against the National Security Administration.
The critical threat is mass surveillance. In the words of The Day We Fight Back, “Together we will push back against powers that seek to observe, collect, and analyze our every digital action. Together, we will make it clear that such behavior is not compatible with democratic governance. Together, if we persist, we will win this fight.” (more…)
Under apartheid, South Africans from all sides suffered violence and human rights abuses. One of the mandates of the the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was to report truth by reporting on violations and victims.
Dr. Patrick Ball, as Deputy Director of the Science and Human Rights Program (SHRP) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), used the who-did-what-to-whom data model to provide statistical analysis of the violations reported to the Commission, for use in the final report of the TRC.
Links:
http://shr.aaas.org/southafrica/trcsa/
http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/index....
As an organization that uses science to advocate for human rights, the goals and issues represented by Ada Lovelace Day are very near and dear to our hearts. Additionally, we are lucky to work with and be advised by some pretty kick-ass ladies in STEM (see our People page to learn more about these amazing women (and men)).
I brainstormed a list of women I could write about, as Finding Ada suggests we celebrate today by blogging about a STEM heroine. I considered Anita Borg (she has her own institute!), who advocated tirelessly for women in computer science. I thought about Sally Wyatt, keynote speaker and organizer of the fascinating workshop...
Data coding is the process of converting unstructured information, such as a narrative testimony, into discrete facts such as names and roles of actors (victims, witnesses, perpetrators) in crimes, as well as the date and place of act. Data coding must not discard or distort information. When more than one person is identifying, classifying and counting the elements reported in a qualitative source, the results of what they find may differ slightly based on each individual's interpretation and care in doing the coding. These differences can be measured by measuring IRR (inter-rater reliability). We give the same source document to several coders and ...
Following a brutal 11-year civil war, the Parliament of Sierra Leone called for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to create "an impartial, historical record of the conflict", and "address impunity; respond to the needs of victims; promote healing and reconciliation; and prevent a repetition of the violations and abuses suffered." The full text of the TRC report is available on the Sierra Leone Web.
HRDAG assisted the TRC to build a systematic data coding system, electronic database, and secure data analysis process to manage the thousands of statements given to them in the course of their work. Dr. Ball visited Freetown twice, and HRDAG ...
We welcome the verdict of a week ago by Judges Barrios, Bustamante, and Xitumul in the conviction of General Efraín Ríos Montt for genocide and crimes against humanity. Their 718-page written opinion contains many compelling arguments, findings, and conclusions. But the section we at HRDAG are most interested in is the one on page 245 (see original, below), where Patrick's testimony is referred to. (more…)
Field Consultant
Carolina Lopéz has worked with the Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional (AHPN) in Guatemala for eight years, and is currently a member of the Archive Technical Coordination team. A professional working within the social sciences, she prefers using alternative research on past practices to develop an understanding of the present. Her work consists primarily of monitoring and creating strategies to systematize, track and create process controls. She also has thorough knowledge of management of historical archive documents.
Since 2006, Carolina has worked in quantitative research at the AHPN with HRDAG team members Patrick ...
