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Mapping Mexico’s hidden graves

When Patrick Ball was introduced to Ibero’s database, the director of research at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group in San Francisco, California, saw an opportunity to turn the data into a predictive model. Ball, who has used similar models to document human rights violations from Syria to Guatemala, soon invited Data Cívica, a Mexico City–based nonprofit that creates tools for analyzing data, to join the project.


Scatter and keep working

Structural Zero Issue 02 July 17, 2025 Part Two of Our Three Part “Gathering the Data” Series. Read part one.  As a statistician, I spend most of my days working at a computer. Because I work with data about human rights violations, I go to places where I can document evidence of crimes—like disappearances, killings, and torture. So while I may just be working at a computer, those computers can be in places where there is still the potential for violence to emerge. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about how to work in countries emerging from conflict. Those lessons seem especially applicable today, ...

How much faith can we place in coronavirus antibody tests?

Given a positive test result, what is the probability that an individual has antibodies? This HRDAG-authored Granta article explains the science.

The Forensic Humanitarian

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.


Analyze This!


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.


Data Mining on the Side of the Angels

“Data, by itself, isn’t truth.” How HRDAG uses data analysis and statistical methods to shed light on mass human rights abuses. Executive director Patrick Ball is quoted from his speech at the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany.


Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Data

In July 2009, The Human Rights Data Analysis Group concluded a three-year project with the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help clarify Liberia’s violent history and hold perpetrators of human rights abuses accountable for their actions. In the course of this work, HRDAG analyzed more than 17,000 victim and witness statements collected by the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and compiled the data into a report entitled “Descriptive Statistics From Statements to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” Liberian TRC data and the accompanying data dictionary anonymized-statgivers.csv contains information ...

In Syria, Uncovering the Truth Behind a Number

Huffington Post Politics writer Matt Easton interviews Patrick Ball, executive director of HRDAG, about the latest enumeration of killings in Syria. As selection bias is increasing, it becomes harder to see it: we have the “appearance of perfect knowledge, when in fact the shape of that knowledge has not changed that much,” says Patrick. “Technology is not a substitute for science.”


How Machine Learning Protects Whistle-Blowers in Staten Island

People filed complaints against NYPD officers, and HRDAG went above and beyond to protect the privacy of the people who reported the offenses.

Want to know a police officer’s job history? There’s a new tool

NPR Illinois has covered the new National Police Index, created by HRDAG’s Tarak Shah, Ayyub Ibrahim of Innocence Project, and Sam Stecklow of Invisible Institute.


War and Illness Could Kill 85,000 Gazans in 6 Months

HRDAG director of research Patrick Ball is quoted in this New York Times article about a paper that models death tolls in Gaza.


New Report Raises Questions Over CPD’s Approach to Missing Persons Cases

In this video, Trina Reynolds-Tyler of Invisible Institute talks about her work with HRDAG on the missing persons project in Chicago and Beneath the Surface.


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”.


‘Bias deep inside the code’: the problem with AI ‘ethics’ in Silicon Valley

Kristian Lum, the lead statistician at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, and an expert on algorithmic bias, said she hoped Stanford’s stumble made the institution think more deeply about representation.

“This type of oversight makes me worried that their stated commitment to the other important values and goals – like taking seriously creating AI to serve the ‘collective needs of humanity’ – is also empty PR spin and this will be nothing more than a vanity project for those attached to it,” she wrote in an email.


The Statistics of Genocide

Patrick Ball and Megan Price (2018). The Statistics of Genocide. Chance (special issue). February 2018. © 2018 CHANCE.


Working Where Statistics and Human Rights Meet

Robin Mejia and Megan Price (2018). Working Where Statistics and Human Rights Meet. Chance (special issue). February 2018. © 2018 CHANCE.


On or off the record? Detecting patterns of silence about death in Guatemala’s National Police Archive

Tamy Guberek and Margaret Hedstrom (2017). On or off the record? Detecting patterns of silence about death in Guatemala’s National Police Archive. Archival Science. 9 February 2017. © Springer. DOI 10.1007/s10502-017-9274-3.

Tamy Guberek and Margaret Hedstrom (2017). On or off the record? Detecting patterns of silence about death in Guatemala’s National Police Archive. Archival Science. 9 February 2017. © Springer. DOI 10.1007/s10502-017-9274-3.


Evaluation of the Kosovo Memory Book at Pristina

On February 4, 2015, at the National Archive in Pristina, Kosovo, HRDAG executive director Patrick Ball gave a presentation on research (done with  colleague Jule Krüger) about the database of the Kosovo Memory Book (KMB). The KMB is part of the Humanitarian Law Centre in Belgrade and Pristina). In this photo, Patrick is speaking, and HLC-Belgrade executive director emeritus Natasa Kandic and Professor Michael Spagat are at the table with him. At the laptop between Spagat and Patrick is Laza Lazarevic of HLC; he is part of the KMB team. About 130 people attended—a terrific response. Presentation on the research behind the Evaluation of the ...

Human Rights Violations: How Do We Begin Counting the Dead?

At the 2014 Joint Statistical Meetings, Patrick Ball discussed his invited paper, "Human Rights Violations: How Do We Begin Counting the Dead?" Also at the JSM, he was honored as a new Fellow of the American Statistical Association and inducted by ASA President Nathaniel Schenker. Joint Statistical Meetings August 7, 2014 Boston, Massachusetts Link to JSM 2014 online program Back to Talks

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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