February 2, 2016
Helpful prediction vs recycled prejudice
From What World Are We Building? by danah boyd
One of the perennial problems with the statistical and machine learning techniques that underpin “big data” analytics is that they rely on data entered as input. When the data you input is biased, what you get out is just as biased. These systems learn the biases in our society, and they spit them back out at us.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »