International human rights work attracts activists and lawyers, diplomats and retired politicians. One of the most admired figures in the field, however, is a ponytailed statistics guru from Silicon Valley named Patrick Ball, who has spent nearly two decades fashioning a career for himself at the intersection of mathematics and murder. You could call him a forensic humanitarian.
The tension started in the witness room. “You could feel the stress rolling off the walls in there,” Patrick Ball remembers. “I can remember realizing that this is why lawyers wear sport coats – you can’t see all the sweat on their arms and back.” He was, you could say, a little nervous to be cross-examined by Slobodan Milosevic.
In this afternoon "Lightning Talk" at RightsCon 2014, Megan Price spoke about the importance of using models to adjust for variability when reporting human rights violations and mentioned innovative tools that can be used for tracking abuses.
RIGHTSCON
March 4, 2014
San Francisco, California
Link to RightsCon program
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Patrick Ball (2004). “Statistics,” in Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. ed. by Dinah L. Shelton, Howard Adelman, Frank Chalk, Alexandre Kiss & William A. Schabas. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale.
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
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All photos © 2014 Carter Brooks.
I joined the Benetech Human Rights Program at essentially the same time that HRDAG did, coming to Benetech from years of analyzing data for large companies in the transportation, hospitality and retail industries. But the data that HRDAG dealt with was not like the data I was familiar with, and I was fascinated to learn about how they used the data to determine "who did what to whom." Although some of the methodologies were similar to what I had experience with in the for-profit sector, the goals and beneficiaries of the analyses were very different.
At Benetech, I was initially predominantly focused on product management for Martus, a free ...
At the Thoreau Center for Sustainability's “Lunch and Learn,” Patrick Ball spoke about “Data Mining for Good.” The talk included a discussion of how HRDAG uses random sampling, entity resolution, communications metadata, and statistical modeling to assist prosecutions of human rights violators. With an introduction by John DeCock, Chief Operating and Outreach Officer, Bioneers.
The Thoreau Center for Sustainability
Lunch and Learn
October 23, 2014
San Francisco, California
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What do you get when you bring seven statisticians, one quantitative political scientist, a writer, a computer scientist, and an administrator together for four days in a vacation rental on California’s Russian River? A lot of code, a technical paper and book chapter revised, another paper started, a great hike in the Redwoods, descriptions of food poisoning and crash landings in war zones, and a lot of talk about feelings.
Did I mention feelings? On the first evening of the annual retreat of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, executive director Megan Price asked us to go around the room and share how we were feeling on arrival. The request ...
