I have spent the summer reading about how math & Big Data shape our understanding of the world. To my surprise, it has affirmed the importance of the humanities. Behind the shiny facade of #BigData lies a series of social judgments made by human beings.
A thread w/ citations.
A thread w/ citations.
The field of statistics is full of subjective judgments, such as p < .05 being the threshold for significance, or the selection of variables (@JSEllenberg). These are, as @mathbabedotorg puts it, “opinions embedded in models.” But we lose site of this in popular discourse. 2/9
The judgments made my mathematicians and data scientists are no more capital-T True than those made by activists, artists, journalists, etc. The difference is that mathematical judgments can be embedded in code — distilled to 1s and 0s — and scaled to infinity. @rushkoff 3/9
As Big Data structures society, through markets and tech, we understand it as a singular source of Truth. Companies and cities sprinkle in the term “data-driven” to lend plans legitimacy. We forget the humans behind the data; the wizard behind the curtains. @benzevgreen 4/9
This lends data scientists immense power to shape not only the world, but our very understanding of it. If we are serious about using data for equity, we must impress ethics into data scientists and dismantle institutions designed to exclude. @safiyanoble 5/9
Quants are presented as oracles, who sit on mountains & speak languages (R, Java, Python) unintelligible to commoners. This is BS. Digital languages & equations are sequences of letters that form words, ideas, and relationships...just like human ones. @kanarinka @laurenfklein 6/9
If the Big Data economy is inaccesible to most, it is not because digital languages are, by nature, impenetrable. It is because institutions have been set up to keep people out — and thus privilege the knowledge of people who can make it in. @MITCoLab
Which brings me back to where I started: if we care about justice in a data-driven world, it is critical to understand how history, culture, and lived experience shape technology and its implementation. @schock
We must interrogate the institutions that shield Big Data from scrutiny AND be quantitatively savvy enough to make precise critiques of systems that distort reality and entrench the status quo.
This is the role of fields like #urbanplanning and “urban science.” @MITdusp
/fin
This is the role of fields like #urbanplanning and “urban science.” @MITdusp
/fin
