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Estimating Deaths in Timor-Leste


HRDAG and the Trial of José Efraín Ríos Montt

At some point in the next week, HRDAG's executive director, Patrick Ball, will be providing expert testimony in the trial of General José Efraín Ríos Montt, the de-facto president of Guatemala in 1982-1983. Gen. Ríos is being tried on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. (His military intelligence director, Gen. Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez is also on trial.) Patrick will testify on approximately April 15-18, 2013, and he may begin as early as this Friday, April 12. The trial opened on March 20, 2013, in the Supreme Court building in Guatemala City. According to an Open Society Justice Initiative blogpost covering the event, the ...

Hunting for Mexico’s mass graves with machine learning

“The model uses obvious predictor variables, Ball says, such as whether or not a drug lab has been busted in that county, or if the county borders the United States, or the ocean, but also includes less-obvious predictor variables such as the percentage of the county that is mountainous, the presence of highways, and the academic results of primary and secondary school students in the county.”


Predictive policing violates more than it protects

William Isaac and Kristian Lum. Predictive policing violates more than it protects. USA Today. December 2, 2016. © USA Today.

William Isaac and Kristian Lum. Predictive policing violates more than it protects. USA Today. December 2, 2016. © USA Today.


Analyze This!


Doing a Number on Violators


Estimating the human toll in Syria

Megan Price (2017). Estimating the human toll in Syria. Nature. 8 February 2017. © 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved. Nature Human Behaviour. ISSN 2397-3374.


Weapons of Math Destruction

Weapons of Math Destruction: invisible, ubiquitous algorithms are ruining millions of lives. Excerpt:

As Patrick once explained to me, you can train an algorithm to predict someone’s height from their weight, but if your whole training set comes from a grade three class, and anyone who’s self-conscious about their weight is allowed to skip the exercise, your model will predict that most people are about four feet tall. The problem isn’t the algorithm, it’s the training data and the lack of correction when the model produces erroneous conclusions.


Download: Megan Price

nyt_square_logoExecutive director Megan Price is interviewed in The New York Times’ Sunday Review, as part of a series known as “Download,” which features a biosketch of “Influencers and their interests.”


One Better

The University of Michigan College of Literature, Science and the Arts profiled Patrick Ball in its fall 2016 issue of the alumni magazine. Here’s an excerpt:

Ball believes doing this laborious, difficult work makes the world a more just place because it leads to accountability.

“My part is a specific, narrow piece, which just happens to fit with the skills I have,” he says. “I don’t think that what we do is in any way the best or most important part of human rights activism. Sometimes, we are just a footnote—but we are a really good footnote.”


The Data Scientist Helping to Create Ethical Robots

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.


Los asesinatos de líderes sociales que quedan fuera de las cuentas

Una investigación de Dejusticia y Human Rights Data Analysis Group concluyó que hay un subconteo en los asesinatos de líderes sociales en Colombia. Es decir, que el aumento de estos crímenes en 2016 y 2017 podría ser incluso mayor al reportado por las organizaciones y por las cifras oficiales.


Predictive policing tools send cops to poor/black neighborhoods

100x100-boingboing-logoIn this post, Cory Doctorow writes about the Significance article co-authored by Kristian Lum and William Isaac.


Calculations for the Greater Good

Rollins School of Public HealthAs executive director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, Megan Price uses statistics to shine the light on human rights abuses.


El problema del asesinato a líderes es más grave de lo que se piensa

Una investigación de Dejusticia y Human Rights Data Analysis Group  asegura que en Colombia hay un subregistro de los asesinatos de líderes sociales que se han perpetrado en Colombia. Al analizar las diferentes cifras de homicidios que han publicado diversas organizaciones desde 2016, se llegó a la conclusión que la problemática es mayor de lo que se cree.


How a Data Tool Tracks Police Misconduct and Wandering Officers

Some police officers avoid accountability by “wandering” to another agency. HRDAG and partners created a data tool that tracks officers’ employment history.

Different Convenience Samples, Different Stories: The Case of Sierra Leone.


Making the Case. Investigating Large Scale Human Rights Violations Using Information Systems and Data Analysis

Patrick Ball, Herbert F. Spirer, and Louise Spirer, eds. Making the Case. Investigating Large Scale Human Rights Violations Using Information Systems and Data Analysis . © 2000 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. [full text] [intro] [chapters 1 2 3 4 5 67 8 9 10 11 12]


On ensuring a higher level of data quality when documenting human rights violations to support research into the origins and cause of human rights violations

Romesh Silva. “On ensuring a higher level of data quality when documenting human rights violations to support research into the origins and cause of human rights violations.” ASA Proceedings of the Joint Statistical Meetings, the International Biometric Society (ENAR and WNAR), the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the Statistical Society of Canada. August, 2002.


Collecting Sensitive Human Rights Data in the Field: A Case Study from Amritsar, India.

Romesh Silva and Jasmine Marwaha. “Collecting Sensitive Human Rights Data in the Field: A Case Study from Amritsar, India.” In JSM Proceedings, Social Statistics Section. Alexandria, VA. © 2011 American Statistical Association. All rights reserved.


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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