Interrogate Data: Data Exploration and Analysis

Ethical Practice of Statistics and Data Science is intended to prepare people to fully assume their responsibilities to practice statistics and data science ethically. Aimed at early career professionals, practitioners, and mentors or supervisors of practitioners, the book supports the ethical practice of statistics and data science, with an emphasis on how to earn the designation of, and recognize, "the ethical practitioner". The book features 47 case studies, each mapped to the Data Science Ethics Checklist (DSEC); Data Ethics Framework (DEFW); the American Statistical Association (ASA) Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice; and the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Code of Ethics. It is necessary reading for students enrolled in any data intensive program, including undergraduate or graduate degrees in (bio-)statistics, business/analytics, or data science. Managers, leaders, supervisors, and mentors who lead data-intensive teams in government, industry, or academia would also benefit greatly from this book. This is a companion volume to Ethical Reasoning For A Data-Centered World, also published by Ethics International Press (2022). These are the first and only books to be based on, and to provide guidance to, the ASA and ACM Ethical Guidelines/Code of Ethics.

This book is written for software product teams that use AI to add intelligent models to their products or are planning to use it. As AI adoption grows, it is becoming important that all AI driven products can demonstrate they are not introducing any bias to the AI-based decisions they are making, as well as reducing any pre-existing bias or discrimination.  The responsibility to ensure that the AI models are ethical and make responsible decisions does not lie with the data scientists alone. The product owners and the business analysts are as important in ensuring bias-free AI as the data scientists on the team. This book addresses the part that these roles play in building a fair, explainable and accountable model, along with ensuring model and data privacy. Each chapter covers the fundamentals for the topic and then goes deep into the subject matter - providing the details that enable the business analysts and the data scientists to implement these fundamentals.  AI research is one of the most active and growing areas of computer science and statistics. This book includes an overview of the many techniques that draw from the research or are created by combining different research outputs. Some of the techniques from relevant and  popular libraries are covered, but deliberately not drawn very heavily from as they are already well documented, and new research is likely to replace some of it.

A new way of thinking about data science and data ethics that is informed by the ideas of intersectional feminism.Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask- Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In Data Feminism, Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics-one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought. Illustrating data feminism in action, D'Ignazio and Klein show how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how, for example, an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective data visualization, and how the concept of invisible labor can expose the significant human efforts required by our automated systems. And they show why the data never, ever "speak for themselves." Data Feminism offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. But Data Feminism is about much more than gender. It is about power, about who has it and who doesn't, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed.

An innovative and accessible guide to doing social research in the digital age In just the past several years, we have witnessed the birth and rapid spread of social media, mobile phones, and numerous other digital marvels. In addition to changing how we live, these tools enable us to collect and process data about human behavior on a scale never before imaginable, offering entirely new approaches to core questions about social behavior. Bit by Bit is the key to unlocking these powerful methods--a landmark book that will fundamentally change how the next generation of social scientists and data scientists explores the world around us. Bit by Bit is the essential guide to mastering the key principles of doing social research in this fast-evolving digital age. In this comprehensive yet accessible book, Matthew Salganik explains how the digital revolution is transforming how social scientists observe behavior, ask questions, run experiments, and engage in mass collaborations. He provides a wealth of real-world examples throughout and also lays out a principles-based approach to handling ethical challenges. Bit by Bit is an invaluable resource for social scientists who want to harness the research potential of big data and a must-read for data scientists interested in applying the lessons of social science to tomorrow's technologies. Illustrates important ideas with examples of outstanding research Combines ideas from social science and data science in an accessible style and without jargon Goes beyond the analysis of "found" data to discuss the collection of "designed" data such as surveys, experiments, and mass collaboration Features an entire chapter on ethics Includes extensive suggestions for further reading and activities for the classroom or self-study

Longlisted for the National Book Award | New York Times Bestseller A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern life and threaten to rip apart our social fabric. We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives--where we go to school, whether we get a car loan, how much we pay for health insurance--are being made not by humans, but by mathematical models. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules, and bias is eliminated. But as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination: If a poor student can't get a loan because a lending model deems him too risky (by virtue of his zip code), he's then cut off from the kind of education that could pull him out of poverty, and a vicious spiral ensues. Models are propping up the lucky and punishing the downtrodden, creating a "toxic cocktail for democracy." Welcome to the dark side of Big Data. Tracing the arc of a person's life, O'Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future, both as individuals and as a society. These "weapons of math destruction" score teachers and students, sort résumés, grant (or deny) loans, evaluate workers, target voters, set parole, and monitor our health. O'Neil calls on modelers to take more responsibility for their algorithms and on policy makers to regulate their use. But in the end, it's up to us to become more savvy about the models that govern our lives. This important book empowers us to ask the tough questions, uncover the truth, and demand change.

This book highlights that the capacity for gathering, analysing, and utilising vast amounts of digital (user) data raises significant ethical issues. Annika Richterich provides a systematic contemporary overview of the field of critical data studies that reflects on practices of digital data collection and analysis. The book assesses in detail one big data research area: biomedical studies, focused on epidemiological surveillance. Specific case studies explore how big data have been used in academic work. The Big Data Agenda concludes that the use of big data in research urgently needs to be considered from the vantage point of ethics and social justice. Drawing upon discourse ethics and critical data studies, Richterich argues that entanglements between big data research and technology/internet corporations have emerged. In consequence, more opportunities for discussing and negotiating emerging research practices and their implications for societal values are needed.

In the midst of the fourth industrial revolution, big data is weighed in gold, placing enormous power in the hands of data scientists - the modern AI alchemists. But great power comes with greater responsibility. This book seeks to shape, in a practical, diverse, and inclusive way, the ethical compass of those entrusted with big data. Being practical, this book provides seven real-world case studies dealing with big data abuse. These cases span a range of topics from the statistical manipulation of research in the Cornell food lab through the Facebook user data abuse done by Cambridge Analytica to the abuse of farm animals by AI in a chapter co-authored by renowned philosophers Peter Singer and Yip Fai Tse. Diverse and inclusive, given the global nature of this revolution, this book provides case-by-case commentary on the cases by scholars representing non-Western ethical approaches (Buddhist, Jewish, Indigenous, and African) as well as Western approaches (consequentialism, deontology, and virtue). We hope this book will be a lighthouse for those debating ethical dilemmas in this challenging and ever-evolving field.