Big Data, Selection Bias, and the Statistical Patterns of Mortality in Conflict

Megan Price and Patrick Ball (2014). SAIS Review of International Affairs © 2014 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in SAIS Review, Volume 34, Issue 1, Winter-Spring 2014, pages 9-20. All rights reserved.

Ten Years and Counting in Guatemala

We have accomplished so much in the last 10 years at the Historical Archive of the National Police. And yet, despite the efforts, dedication, and commitment of each person who since 2006 has worked in the AHPN, we still can not say “mission accomplished.” In 10 years the environment at the Archive has changed so much and become so full of life. Where the building once sheltered unknown stories, over time some of those stories have been revealed. But Guatemala has a long way to go in letting the world get to know more deeply about the secrets within the documents stored there. Guatemalans and the rest of the world have a very important ...

Matching the Libro Amarillo to Historical Human Rights Datasets in El Salvador

Selection Bias and the Statistical Patterns of Mortality in Conflict.

How We Choose Projects

For more than 20 years, HRDAG has been carving out a niche in the international human rights movement. We know what we’re good at and what we’re not qualified to do. We know what quantitative questions we think are important for the community, and we know what we like to do. These preferences guide us as we consider whether to take on a project. We’re scientists, so our priorities will come as no surprise. We like to stick to science (not ideology), avoid advocacy, answer quantifiable questions, and increase our scientific understanding. While we have no hard-and-fast rules about what projects to take on, we organize our deliberation ...

Technical Memo for Amnesty International Report on Deaths in Detention

Statistics and Slobodan

Patrick Ball and Jana Asher (2002). “Statistics and Slobodan: Using Data Analysis and Statistics in the War Crimes Trial of Former President Milosevic.” Chance, vol. 15, No. 4, 2002. Reprinted with permission ofChance. © 2002 American Statistical Association. All rights reserved.

Uncertainty in COVID Fatality Rates

In this Granta article, HRDAG explains that neither the infectiousness nor the deadliness of the disease is set in stone.

In Solidarity

We stand with our partners and every organizer fighting for justice.

Palantir Has Secretly Been Using New Orleans to Test Its Predictive Policing Technology

One of the researchers, a Michigan State PhD candidate named William Isaac, had not previously heard of New Orleans’ partnership with Palantir, but he recognized the data-mapping model at the heart of the program. “I think the data they’re using, there are serious questions about its predictive power. We’ve seen very little about its ability to forecast violent crime,” Isaac said.

Reflections: Some Stories Shape You

The first time I met anyone at HRDAG, I was a journalist. It was 2006. I was working on a story about a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon who’d collaborated with the organization on a survey in Sierra Leone, and I contacted Patrick Ball to discuss the work. At the time, I found him challenging. But I thought his work—trying to estimate how many people were killed, or, in that study, otherwise injured, during wars—was fascinating. Over the next few years, I got to know other researchers working on similar questions. In 2008, as the war in Iraq ramped up, I spoke with epidemiologists from Johns Hopkins University, the World Health Organiz...

Data Mining for Good: CJA Drink + Think

At the Center for Justice and Accountability's happy hour, "Drink and Think," Patrick Ball spoke about "Data Mining for Good." The talk included a discussion of how HRDAG brings human rights abusers to justice through data analysis, and HRDAG's work conducting quantitative analysis for truth commissions, NGOs, the UN and other partners. The event was held at Eventbrite. More photos are below. The Center for Justice and Accountability Young Professionals' Committee for Human Rights September 16, 2014 San Francisco, California Link to CJA event page Back to Talks All photos © 2014 Carter Brooks.

Learning the Hard Way at the ICTY: Statistical Evidence of Human Rights Violations in an Adversarial Information Environment.

Amelia Hoover Green. In Collective Violence and International Criminal Justice: An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. Alette Smeulers, Antwerp, Belgium. © 2010 Intersentia. All rights reserved. [Link coming soon]

The True Dangers of AI are Closer Than We Think

William Isaac is quoted.

Quantifying Injustice

“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.”

Estimating the Number of SARS-CoV-2 Infections and the Impact of Mitigation Policies

This Harvard Data Science Review article uses the least unreliable source of pandemic data: reported deaths.

Theoretical limits of microclustering for record linkage

Using Statistics to Assess Lethal Violence in Civil and Inter-State War

Patrick Ball and Megan Price (2019). Using Statistics to Assess Lethal Violence in Civil and Inter-State War. Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application, Volume 6. 7 March 2019. © 2019 Annual Reviews. All rights reserved. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-statistics-030718-105222.

Patrick Ball and Megan Price (2019). Using Statistics to Assess Lethal Violence in Civil and Inter-State War. Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application. 7 March 2019. © 2019 Annual Reviews. All rights reserved. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-statistics-030718-105222.

Low-risk population size estimates in the presence of capture heterogeneity

James Johndrow, Kristian Lum and Daniel Manrique-Vallier (2019). Low-risk population size estimates in the presence of capture heterogeneity. Biometrika, asy065, 22 January 2019. © 2019 Biometrika Trust. https://doi.org/10.1093/biomet/asy065

James Johndrow, Kristian Lum and Daniel Manrique-Vallier (2019). Low-risk population size estimates in the presence of capture heterogeneity. Biometrika, asy065, 22 January 2019. © 2019 Biometrika Trust. https://doi.org/10.1093/biomet/asy065

Welcoming Our New Admistrative Coordinator

After a long search, we're pleased to welcome Suzanne Nathans as our new administrative "hub" at HRDAG. It was no easy feat to find someone whose skills and experience promise to be such a good fit with our team. Suzanne comes to HRDAG with a great deal of experience in nonprofit administration, success stories in operations, communications, and organization, and warmth and compassion. (more…)

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Big Data, Selection Bias, and the Statistical Patterns of Mortality in Conflict

Ten Years and Counting in Guatemala

Matching the Libro Amarillo to Historical Human Rights Datasets in El Salvador

Selection Bias and the Statistical Patterns of Mortality in Conflict.

How We Choose Projects

Technical Memo for Amnesty International Report on Deaths in Detention

Statistics and Slobodan

Uncertainty in COVID Fatality Rates

In Solidarity

Palantir Has Secretly Been Using New Orleans to Test Its Predictive Policing Technology

Reflections: Some Stories Shape You

Data Mining for Good: CJA Drink + Think

Learning the Hard Way at the ICTY: Statistical Evidence of Human Rights Violations in an Adversarial Information Environment.

The True Dangers of AI are Closer Than We Think

Quantifying Injustice

Estimating the Number of SARS-CoV-2 Infections and the Impact of Mitigation Policies

Theoretical limits of microclustering for record linkage

Using Statistics to Assess Lethal Violence in Civil and Inter-State War

Low-risk population size estimates in the presence of capture heterogeneity

Welcoming Our New Admistrative Coordinator

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

HRDAG

Selected projects

Stay informed about our work

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

HRDAG

Selected projects

Stay informed about our work

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