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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).

Police Violence in Puerto Rico: Flooded with Data

Kilómetro Cero is making a comparison of police killings in Puerto Rico and police killings in the non-territorial United States, and HRDAG is helping to organize the data.

Frequently Asked Questions

Multiple Systems Estimation What is MSE?  What do you mean by statistical inference?  What is an overlap, and how do we know when lists overlap?   How does MSE find the total number of violations?  How was MSE originally developed?  How does the Benetech Human Rights Program use MSE?    1. What is MSE? A: 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. Return to Top 2. What do you mean by statistical inference? A: ...

The John Maddox Prize for Patrick Ball

Congratulations to Patrick on this well deserved award!

Beka Steorts Named MIT Under-35 Innovator

We’ve known for years that Beka Steorts is on the cutting-edge of statistical science, and now The MIT Technology Review has realized the same. Last week she was named one of 35 Innovators Under 35, in the category of humanitarian. We first became familiar with Beka's work in 2013 when she was a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon and was introduced to us by Prof. Steve Fienberg. Since then, we’ve felt very fortunate to collaborate with her on projects such as the UN enumeration of casualties in the Syrian conflict, and we look forward to many more years of work with her. She is one of several young stars we include in our superheroine hall ...

Full Updated Statistical Analysis of Documentation of Killings in the Syrian Arab Republic

Price, Megan, Jeff Klingner, Anas Qtiesh, and Patrick Ball. 2013. Commissioned by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Human Rights Data Analysis Group (June 13). © 2013 HRDAG. Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. [pdf via UN]

Updated Statistical Analysis of Documentation of Killings in the Syrian Arab Republic

Megan Price, Anita Gohdes, and Patrick Ball (2014). Human Rights Data Analysis Group, commissioned by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). August 22, 2014. © 2014 HRDAG. Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

The ‘Dirty War Index’ and the Real World of Armed Conflict.

Amelia Hoover, Romesh Silva, Tamy Guberek, and Daniel Guzmán. “The ‘Dirty War Index’ and the Real World of Armed Conflict.” May 23, 2009. © 2009 HRDAG. Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

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…)

Ciencia de datos para trazar un mapa de la crueldad a la mexicana

From the article: Esta entidad, que existe desde 1991, es liderada por su fundador, Patrick Ball, un científico que acumula una experiencia de más de 25 años realizando análisis cuantitativos en los lugares y en las situaciones más convulsos del planeta. Sobre su colaboración con el proyecto del predictor de fosas clandestinas en México, único en el mundo, Ball afirmó en entrevista:

“Cuando hablamos de crímenes de lesa humanidad estamos hablando de instituciones, de organizaciones grandes, cometiendo miles o centenares de miles  de violaciones a víctimas distribuidas sobre una geografía enorme. Para entender los patrones en esas violaciones, la estadística puede brindar una mirada sobre quiénes son los responsables materiales e intelectuales, quiénes son las víctimas y dónde o cuándo pasaron esas violaciones. Pero la estadística no es contabilidad, pues no estamos hablando solamente de las violaciones que podemos ver, sino que también debemos calcular las violaciones no observadas, las escondidas, invisibles, para incluir en nuestro análisis la totalidad de las violaciones”.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

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...

HRDAG Retreat 2018

What follows is an elaborate criss-crossing of collaborations—retreat is a time to embrace the productivity that comes with being in the same room.

500 Tamils disappeared in Army custody — New Study

The Sri Lankan army must explain to the families of the disappeared and missing what happened to an estimated 500 Tamils who disappeared in their custody at the war end on/around 18 May 2009, said two international NGOs who have been collating and analysing lists of names.

Sri Lanka has one of the largest numbers in the world of enforced disappearances but these 500 represent the largest number of disappearances all in one place and time in the country. For a detailed account of the process of estimating the 500 please see: “How many people disappeared on 17-19 May 2009 in Sri Lanka?” .

Lessons at HRDAG: Holding Public Institutions Accountable

Principled Data Processing is a way to prove to someone, usually yourself, that what you did was right.

HRDAG’s Year End Review: 2019

In 2019, HRDAG aimed to count those who haven't been counted.

Our Copyright Policy

We have specified "Some Rights Reserved" on our website, instead of the more conventional "All Rights Reserved." This is because some of our web content is covered by a Creative Commons license, which means that it may be copied and even re-purposed, with some stipulations. We have made this decision because HRDAG wants to contribute to the digital commons, defined by Creative Commons as "a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law." Our Creative Commons License We are using the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, also known as the BY-NC-SA license. Here is ...

Killings and Refugee Flow in Kosovo, March–June, 1999 (A report to ICTY).

Patrick Ball, Wendy Betts, Fritz Scheuren, Jana Dudukovic, and Jana Asher. Killings and Refugee Flow in Kosovo, March–June, 1999 (A report to ICTY). © 2002 American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Bar Association Central and East European Law Initiative. [full text]

How Many Peruvians Have Died?

Patrick Ball, Jana Asher, David Sulmont, and Daniel Manrique. “How Many Peruvians Have Died?” © 2003 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Liberia 2009 – Coding Testimony to Determine Accountability for War Crimes

In July 2009, HRDAG concluded a three-year project with the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to help clarify Liberia’s violent history and hold perpetrators accountable. A military coup in 1979 sparked 24 years of civil war in Liberia where warring factions subjected civilians to severe human rights abuses. The TRC sought to determine whether these violations represented a systematic pattern or policy. This chapter describes how HRDAG developed a statistical analysis of the more than 17,000 victim and witness statements collected by the TRC and applied Ball’s “Who Did What To Whom?” methodology. HRDAG scientist Kristen ...

Welcoming our new Technical Lead

After almost two months of searching for the perfect fit, we’re very pleased to announce that Josh Shadlen has joined HRDAG as our new technical lead. Finding Josh was no easy feat. We were looking for what many people would call a “data scientist,” that is, someone with expertise in both computer science and statistics. These days, “data science” is one of the hottest fields out there. Bringing the perfect mix of academic depth and thoughtful reflection, Josh stood out for us. With prior jobs including gigs at Silicon Valley startups and Twitter, he’s got high-level (more…)

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.

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