Book

A typically long-form method of collected information in the form of writing or images that may be split into multiple sections through chapters or be produced by more than one author.

The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

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Author: Dierdre Mask; Publisher: St. Martin’s Press; Publication Year: 2020. The following book does not talk about data ethics per say, it does focus on the ethics on how locations are identified. Having a street address can increase access to healthcare (it is difficult for healthcare workers to find a home that does not have an address) and enable people to hold jobs (many employers solely rely on direct deposit, but banks…

The Power of Habit

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Author: Charles Duhigg; Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Publication Year: 2014. The following book discusses how in 2002, statistician Andrew Pole began working for Target as a data expert. He was tasked with making an algorithm that could predict pregnancy status. A year after his algorithm was implemented, the father of a high school female angrily entered a Minnesota Target wondering why his…

Standards of Practice Handbook

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Author: N/A; Publisher: The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute; Publication Year: 2014. Summary: The following handbook discusses regulation in relation to ethics of financial analysts. It covers how to keep privacy of data, to transfer data, and to store the data. Through the regulations, it conveys an idea that data should be treated in the most decent way, and an analyst should try his or her best to protect data, both…

Weapons of Math Destruction

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Author: Cathy O’Neil; Publisher: Crown; Publication Year: 2016. The following book discusses “weapons of math destruction”: algorithms that try to quantify subjective qualities or judgment metrics. For example, an algorithm that tries to quantify “creditworthiness” is meant to streamline and increase efficiency. However the designs of this system and many others like it end up…

Data Feminism

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Author: Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein; Publisher: MIT Press; Publication Year: 2020. In the following book D’Ignazio and Klein present a new lens for thinking about data science and ethics. Their ideas are based on the concept of “intersectionality” coined by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw which is understood as “the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of…

What Gets Counted Counts

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Author: Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein; Publisher: MIT Press; Publication Year: 2020. 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…

The Numbers Don’t Speak for Themselves

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Author: Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein; Publisher: MIT Press; Publication Year: 2020. The following book chapter discusses how context is everything. Numbers are just numbers and cannot speak for themselves. Future data scientists need to incorporate the context with whatever models that they build because this fosters understanding the environment where the data was collected and in turn, produce…

On Rational, Scientific, Objective Viewpoints from Mythical, Imaginary, Impossible Standpoints

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Author: Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein

Publisher: MIT Press

Publication Year: 2020

Summary: The following book chapter from “Data Feminism” can be beautifully summed up by words from Black feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins: “Neither ethics nor emotions are subordinated to reason.” We need to fight the patriarchal idea that emotions are bad, and that emotion matters in a design process – we need…

Invisible Women

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Author: Caroline Criado Perez; Publisher: Vintage Books; Publication Year: 2020. The following book shows us how bias exists in even the most innocuous of circumstances. In systems that are primarily designed for and by men, many systematically ignore the female half of the population. Criado Perez provides case studies from nearly every sect to showcase this data disparity and its detrimental…

The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values

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Author: Brian Christian; Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Publication Year: 2020. The following book focuses on word2vec, an algorithm from 2013 that allows for vector computation of words. That is, word2vec allows for computations like king – man + woman = queen. Google used word2vec as part of Search and Translate. Multiple hiring platforms also used the algorithm. Researchers eventually…