The Privilege Embedded in your Unit of Analysis
How much water per bouquet? If we watered them all using the average required per bouquet, we’d over water one and underwater one. What’s the problem: we’re using the denominator of bouquets instead of flowers. Defining your denominator is as important as defining...
A Great Way to Think About Data Science: The Bowtie
One of the best ways to talk about some of the equity challenges posed by the data science process is what we like to call the “bowtie”. The ends of the bowtie are almost always broader than the knot at the center, and it’s how you tie the knot that keeps the bowtie...
Measure Upstream Discrimination
When we try to measure gaps in outcomes between groups, we often turn to an approach called a Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition. I’m all for identifying discriminatory gaps, but we need to be careful that we don’t discount certain kinds of discrimination from our data...
Crafting Models for Equity
Author’s Note: This is going to be a long piece, but if we can get this concept down we’ll learn a way to embed our equity priorities deep, deep into the mathematical heart of our data work. Let’s go. The Model: A reflection of the world as the modeller understands...