What Gets Counted Counts

Author: Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein

Publisher: MIT Press

Publication Year: 2020

Summary: The following book chapter considers how within data science, practitioners are used to seeing the world in 1s and 0s – in fact, models try to predict which observations will be 1s, and which will be 0s. But this article emphasizes the notion that binaries and hierarchies, and other common classification infrastructures are used as tools of power that can exclude specific communities, but they don’t have to be.