664 results for search: %E3%80%8C%ED%8A%9C%EB%8B%9D%EB%90%9C%20%ED%8F%B0%ED%8C%85%E3%80%8D%20O6O~5OO~%C6%BC469%20%20%EC%9D%B4%EC%8B%AD%EB%8C%80%EB%85%80%EB%8F%99%EC%95%84%EB%A6%AC%EB%8D%B0%EC%9D%B4%ED%8C%85%20%EC%9D%B4%EC%8B%AD%EB%8C%80%EB%85%80%EB%8F%99%EC%95%84%EB%A6%AC%EB%8F%99%ED%98%B8%ED%9A%8C%E2%98%80%EC%9D%B4%EC%8B%AD%EB%8C%80%EB%85%80%EB%8F%99%EC%95%84%EB%A6%AC%EB%A7%8C%EB%82%A8%D1%87%EC%9D%B4%EC%8B%AD%EB%8C%80%EB%85%80%EB%8F%99%EC%95%84%EB%A6%AC%EB%AA%A8%EC%9E%84%E3%8A%A2%E3%83%A8%E4%9E%8Edesigning/feed/content/colombia/privacy


Guatemala 2011 – Developing Sampling Methods to Help Convict Perpetrators

During 36 years of internal armed conflict, which ended in 1996, an estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were killed or disappeared. HRDAG researchers returned to Guatemala in 2006 to analyze a sample of the estimated 46 million records discovered in the archive of the now disbanded Guatemalan National Police. HRDAG statisticians Daniel Guzmán, Romesh Silva, Patrick Ball and Tamy Guberek, together with Paul Zador and Gary Shapiro of the American Statistical Association, developed a multi-stage random sample of the archive to get a clearer picture of its contents. Sampled documents shed light on the disappearance of Guatemalan union leader Edgar Fernando ...

Analysis of Homicide Patterns in Colombia

Last week Forensis, the Colombian National Institute of Forensic Medicine’s flagship publication, published the first of our analyses of homicide patterns in Colombia. Authored by HRDAG executive director Patrick Ball and UN colleague Michael Reed Hurtado, “Cuentas y mediciones de la criminalidad y de la violencia” (pages 529-545) explores, as the title suggests, the quality of “truth” contained within crime registries. Citing the problem of partial data, missing data, and inherent design bias, Patrick and Michael write that no register, official or unofficial, can present a true reflection of what has really happened. This publication...

Identifiers of Detained Children Have Implications for Data Security and Estimation

Identifiers being sequential could make possible estimations of the population of detained children.

Violence in Blue: The 2020 Update

HRDAG has refreshed a 2016 Granta article about homicides committed by police in the United States.

HRDAG and the Digital Commons

One of the three main goals of HRDAG is education and outreach, and to that end we use Creative Commons licenses for all of our blogposts and, whenever possible, for our publications. Using a Creative Commons license makes it clear that educators are free to use HRDAG's publications, in their entirety, and with the peace of mind that they are doing so with our blessing. Also, the use of the Creative Commons license allows us to participate in and encourage the creation of a digital commons, which we feel helps to advance another one of our goals, the creation of knowledge. We feel that it’s important to offer up our publications for use and reuse ...

Press Release, Timor-Leste, February 2006

SILICON VALLEY GROUP USES TECHNOLOGY TO HELP THE TRUTH COMMISSION ANSWER DISPUTED QUESTIONS ABOUT MASSIVE POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN TIMOR-LESTE Palo Alto, CA, February 9, 2006 – The Benetech® Initiative today released a statistical report detailing widespread and systematic violations in Timor-Leste during the period 1974-1999. Benetech's statistical analysis establishes that at least 102,800 (+/- 11,000) Timorese died as a result of the conflict. Approximately 18,600 (+/- 1000) Timorese were killed or disappeared, while the remainder died due to hunger and illness in excess of what would be expected due to peacetime mortality. The magnitude of deaths ...

The Art and Science of Coding AHPN Documents

The coding, from my perspective, is the heart of the project. I say this, because the coding team has the responsibility of selecting documents according to the random sample, recording the documents’ contents, and applying the criteria to convert that content into an entry in a quantitative database. Not to mention the fact that this team has the privilege of being in direct contact with the documents. At present, because of advanced organizational processes, not everyone has a chance to hold an original document in their hands. The quantitative study had many advantages in this regard; since we started work in parallel with the archival ...

Verdad al acecho (The Truth Is Stalking)


Multiple Systems Estimation: Collection, Cleaning and Canonicalization of Data

<< Previous post: MSE: The Basics Q3. What are the steps in an MSE analysis? Q4. What does data collection look like in the human rights context? What kind of data do you collect? Q5. [In depth] Do you include unnamed or anonymous victims in the matching process? Q6. What do you mean by "cleaning" and "canonicalization?" Q7. [In depth] What are some of the challenges of canonicalization? (more…)

HRDAG Retreat 2015

I look at the beach and then at the table surrounded by nerds, deep in thought and conversation about Dirichlet priors, matching algorithms, and armed conflicts. This peculiar (in the best way) environment catalyzes a moment of reflection: how did I get here? Four years ago, as a second-year statistics PhD student, I watched "Guatemala: The Secret Files" on PBS Frontline World. I listened to stories of family members who disappeared without answers or justice. Then the story shifted to the work being done by archivists and data experts at Guatemala's Historic Archive of the National Police. The scientists' pursuit of the truth energized me. I ...

Counting the Dead in Sri Lanka

ITJP and HRDAG are urging groups inside and outside Sri Lanka to share existing casualty lists.

UN says nearly 93,000 confirmed killed in Syrian conflict


SermonNew death toll estimated in Syrian civil war

Kevin Uhrmacher of the Washington Post prepared a graph that illustrates reported deaths over time, by number of organizations reporting the deaths.


HRDAG Welcomes Two New Scholars

Paula Amado has joined as a Research Scholar, and María Juliana Durán Fedullo has joined as a Visiting Scholar.

verdata: An R package for analyzing data from the Truth Commission in Colombia

Maria Gargiulo, María Julia Durán, Paula Andrea Amado, and Patrick Ball (2024). verdata: An R package for analyzing data from the Truth Commission in Colombia. The Journal of Open Source Software. 6 January, 2024. 9(93), 5844, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.05844. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Maria Gargiulo, María Julia Durán, Paula Andrea Amado, and Patrick Ball (2024). verdata: An R package for analyzing data from the Truth Commission in Colombia. The Journal of Open Source Software. 6 January, 2024. 9(93), 5844, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.05844. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Cuentas y mediciones de la criminalidad y de la violencia

Exploración y análisis de los datas para comprender la realidad. Patrick Ball y Michael Reed Hurtado. 2015. Forensis 16, no. 1 (July): 529-545. © 2015 Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses (República de Colombia).


FAT* Conference 2018

Kristian Lum spoke about "Understanding the Context and Consequences of Pre-Trial Detention" at the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT*).

Data Collection and Documentation for Truth-Seeking and Accountability

Megan Price and Patrick Ball (2014). The Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre. © 2014 SJAC.Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.


Reflections: A Simple Plan

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 ...

Learning Day by Day: Quantitative Research at the AHPN

Working at the Historic Archive of the National Police (AHPN) of Guatemala, there are many skills I learned on the job. My many years of work on the team that studies the recovered documents have been like a custom-made course in how to do quantitative research. The Archive documents I study are the result of 36 years of creation during civil war (1960 to 1996). Many of these documents are simply administrative—but we are able to use them to understand patterns that occurred during the conflict, to get a sense of what mattered to the National Police and what didn’t. Our quantitative research shows us the Police behavior in broad strokes. ...

Our work has been used by truth commissions, international criminal tribunals, and non-governmental human rights organizations. We have worked with partners on projects on five continents.

Donate