577 results for search: %E6%80%8E%E6%A0%B7%E8%A7%A3%E5%86%B3%E5%BC%80%E6%9C%BA%E6%97%B6%E6%9B%B4%E6%96%B0%E7%9A%84%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98-%E3%80%90%E2%9C%94%EF%B8%8F%E6%8E%A8%E8%8D%90KK37%C2%B7CC%E2%9C%94%EF%B8%8F%E3%80%91-%E6%B3%95%E6%B2%BB%E5%BB%BA%E8%AE%BE%E5%B7%A5%E4%BD%9C%E4%BC%9A%E8%AE%AE%E8%AE%B0%E5%BD%95-%E6%80%8E%E6%A0%B7%E8%A7%A3%E5%86%B3%E5%BC%80%E6%9C%BA%E6%97%B6%E6%9B%B4%E6%96%B0%E7%9A%84%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98zxdz8-%E3%80%90%E2%9C%94%EF%B8%8F%E6%8E%A8%E8%8D%90KK37%C2%B7CC%E2%9C%94%EF%B8%8F%E3%80%91-%E6%B3%95%E6%B2%BB%E5%BB%BA%E8%AE%BE%E5%B7%A5%E4%BD%9C%E4%BC%9A%E8%AE%AE%E8%AE%B0%E5%BD%95trau-%E6%80%8E%E6%A0%B7%E8%A7%A3%E5%86%B3%E5%BC%80%E6%9C%BA%E6%97%B6%E6%9B%B4%E6%96%B0%E7%9A%84%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98s9y9p-%E6%B3%95%E6%B2%BB%E5%BB%BA%E8%AE%BE%E5%B7%A5%E4%BD%9C%E4%BC%9A%E8%AE%AE%E8%AE%B0%E5%BD%95lwom/feed/rss2/privacy


Rise of the racist robots – how AI is learning all our worst impulses

“If you’re not careful, you risk automating the exact same biases these programs are supposed to eliminate,” says Kristian Lum, the lead statistician at the San Francisco-based, non-profit Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG). Last year, Lum and a co-author showed that PredPol, a program for police departments that predicts hotspots where future crime might occur, could potentially get stuck in a feedback loop of over-policing majority black and brown neighbourhoods. The program was “learning” from previous crime reports. For Samuel Sinyangwe, a justice activist and policy researcher, this kind of approach is “especially nefarious” because police can say: “We’re not being biased, we’re just doing what the math tells us.” And the public perception might be that the algorithms are impartial.


How we go about estimating casualties in Syria—Part 1

I spent the two weeks over Easter working with Patrick and Megan in San Francisco, trying to figure out a strategy of how best to estimate the number of casualties the Syrian civil war has claimed in the past two years. In January, HRDAG published a report on the number of fully identified casualties reported in the Syrian Arab Republic between March 2011 and November 2012. The number of de-duplicated records of killings for this period was 59,648, a number that is likely to be an undercount since we know that many incidences of lethal violence in conflict go unreported, and that the unreported cases are not missing at random. (more…)

Donate with Cryptocurrency

Help HRDAG use data science to work for justice, accountability, and human rights. We are nonpartisan and nonprofit, but we are not neutral; we are always on the side of human rights. Cryptocurrency donations to 501(c)3 charities receive the same tax treatment as stocks. Your donation is a non-taxable event, meaning you do not owe capital gains tax on the appreciated amount and can deduct it on your taxes. This makes Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency donations one of the most tax efficient ways to support us. We are a team of experts in machine learning, applied and mathematical statistics, computer science, demography, and social science, and ...

Syria’s celebrations muted by evidence of torture in Assad’s notorious prisons

The Human Rights Data Analysis Group, an independent scientific human rights organization based in San Francisco, has counted at least 17,723 people killed in Syrian custody from 2011 to 2015 — around 300 every week — almost certainly a vast undercount, it says.


Quantitative Research at the AHPN Guatemala

In early 2006 I joined the Historical Archive of the National Police (Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional, or AHPN) without knowing the impact it would have on my future. I started with cleaning, organizing and classifying documents—and learning, with other colleagues, what a historical archive is and how it works. By April of that year, parallel to these learning processes, I was selected along with 20 other people to begin work on the challenging Quantitative Research project. I started as a "coder," transferring key content from documents into a database. (more…)

Remembering Scott Weikart

HRDAG’s core values all have a connection to Scott Weikart, 1951–2023.

An Award for Anita Gohdes

On November 26, HRDAG colleague Anita Gohdes was awarded the German Dissertation Prize for the Social Sciences. The patron of the prize is the President of the German Parliament, Norbert Lammert, who presented Anita with the award. Anita’s dissertation, “Repression 2.0: The Internet in the War Arsenal of Modern Dictators,” investigates the role played by social media networks in modern dictatorships, such as President Assad’s regime in Syria. On one hand, Anita argues, social media can help opposition groups to organize more effectively, but on the other hand, the same networks allow regimes to monitor and manipulate the population. ...

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.”


Machine learning is being used to uncover the mass graves of Mexico’s missing

“Patrick Ball, HRDAG’s Director of Research and the statistician behind the code, explained that the Random Forest classifier was able to predict with 100% accuracy which counties that would go on to have mass graves found in them in 2014 by using the model against data from 2013. The model also predicted the counties that did not have mass hidden graves found in them, but that show a high likelihood of the possibility. This prediction aspect of the model is the part that holds the most potential for future research.”


HRDAG’s Year in Review: 2021

At HRDAG, 2021 was all about service and partnership.

La misión de contar muertos


Killings of Social Movement Leaders in Colombia

Using multiple system estimation, we estimate the total population of social movement leaders killed in Colombia during 2018.

Colombia

Text in English Para evaluar afirmaciones sobre la reducción de la violencia letal en Colombia En marzo de 2007, el Grupo de Análisis de Datos de Derechos Humanos (HRDAG por sus siglas en inglés) publicó un estudio con el título de "Para Evaluar Afirmaciones Sobre la Reducción de la Violencia Letal en Colombia." Los autores de dicho estudio evaluaron aseveraciones que la violencia en Colombia disminuyó tras la desmovilización de los paramilitares. Demostraron que tales afirmaciones se basan tanto en una sobreinterpretación de datos no ajustados como en inferencias causales infundadas. Los autores concluyeron que se requieren múltip...

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Help Us Advance Justice And Human Rights Your donations enable HRDAG to use data science and help our partners answer important questions about human rights and patterns of mass violence. Or Write a Check If you prefer to donate by check, please make it payable to: “Community Partners for HRDAG” Mail it to: Community Partners P. O. Box 741265 Los Angeles, CA 90074-1265

About HRDAG

We are non-partisan—we do not take sides in political or military conflicts, nor do we advocate any particular political party or government policy. However, we are not neutral: we are always in favor of human rights. We support the protections established in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international human rights treaties and instruments.

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).


“El reto de la estadística es encontrar lo escondido”: experto en manejo de datos sobre el conflicto

In this interview with Colombian newspaper El Espectador, Patrick Ball is quoted as saying “la gente que no conoce de álgebra nunca debería hacer estadísticas” (people who don’t know algebra should never do statistics).


Setting the Record Straight


PredPol amplifies racially biased policing

100x100-micHRDAG associate William Isaac is quoted in this article about how predictive policing algorithms such as PredPol exacerbate the problem of racial bias in policing.


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.


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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