"A Non-Expert’s Introduction to Data Ethics for Mathematicians"

My chapter in our new book is also out. Here are some details about it.

Title: A Non-Expert’s Introduction to Data Ethics for Mathematicians

Author: Mason A. Porter

Abstract: I give a short introduction to data ethics. I begin with some background information and societal context for data ethics. I then discuss data ethics in mathematical-science education and indicate some available course material. I briefly highlight a few efforts—at my home institution and elsewhere—on data ethics, society, and social good. I then discuss open data in research, research replicability and some other ethical issues in research, the tension between privacy and open data and code, and a few controversial studies and reactions to studies. I also discuss ethical principles, institutional review boards, and a few other considerations in the scientific use of human data. I then briefly survey a variety of research and lay articles that are relevant to data ethics and data privacy. I conclude with a brief summary and some closing remarks.

My focal audience is mathematicians, but I hope that this chapter will also be useful to others. I am not an expert about data ethics, and this chapter provides only a starting point on this wide-ranging topic. I encourage you to examine the resources that I discuss and to reflect carefully on data ethics, its role in mathematics education, and the societal implications of data and data analysis. As data and technology continue to evolve, I hope that such careful reflection will continue throughout your life.

XKCD and Flawed Data

XKCD nailed it yet again, especially with the mouseover text.

Topography Will Tear Us Apart

I feel like this tweet was written just for me.

Unknown Topographies https://t.co/uyNZF9G7TX

— Brian Glaser (@bsglaser) May 29, 2020

(Tip of the cap to Dave Richeson.)

UCLA's New Undergraduate Major in "Data Theory"

At @UCLA (joint between the Math & Stats departments), I helped design a brand new, very exciting Data Theory undergraduate major.

Courses: https://t.co/z27ZJybKQj

To look up course identities: https://t.co/cHcYrQzVcH

Catalog listing: https://t.co/MMOfGX4Cf4 pic.twitter.com/ZZA4E1G8tE

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) August 1, 2019

Matrices of Chocolates (and Delicious Missing Data)

Hmmm... this seems like a great way to demonstrate linear algebra and matrices. And then to demonstrate matrices with progressively more missing data... (Delicious missing data.)

A rectangular Hankel chocolate box. You need O( log( m + n ) ) time to eat it. pic.twitter.com/jkhYQSb9mT

— Daniel Kressner (@_kreda_) March 20, 2019

"On Brand" Story from Childhood

A Topps baseball card had a batting average that was inconsistent with a player's hit and at-bat totals, so I typed (with a typewriter) and snail-mailed a letter to Topps to inform them that their calculation, their data, or both were wrong. I also asked them what the error was. https://t.co/u3KPrC5YSq

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) February 23, 2019

(They answered me. Apparently, the batting average was correct, but the data were entered incorrectly.)

But Are These Data Cookies Reproducible?

I think it's very important to check the reproducibility of these data.

(Tasty, tasty reproducibility.)

Last day of class tomorrow! I baked cookies for my Intro to Data Analytics students, with frosted data plots. Lucky them. #DAatDU pic.twitter.com/j3TCNeDOBe

— Dr. Sarah Supp (@srsupp) December 14, 2018

(Tip of the cap to Javier Buldú.)

Update: Now that I think of it, "Sweet, sweet reproducibility." would have been better phrasing, given its larger set of allusions.

XKCD on Curve Fitting

Yes, yes, and yes!

Here is today's new XKCD.

A Cartoon Depiction of Deep Learning Versus Traditional Machine Learning

So true. :)

great meme pic.twitter.com/d5AW6WliTy

— Lex Flagel (@flagelbagel) July 29, 2018

(Tip of the cap to Michael Stumpf.)

"Smooths" Versus "Smoothes"

A new champion was crowned recently.



Update: Also, this may be Microsoft's fault.

The Pulse of Manhattan

Seriously.

The population of #Manhattan, hour-by-hour. #NYC #datavizhttps://t.co/KATB4uq9va pic.twitter.com/ov3xTQlVm0

— Randy Olson (@randal_olson) May 9, 2018

Visualizations of Music

These visualizations are really cool!

Data Visualisation of Music https://t.co/45mrRmaTW1 & https://t.co/xFiy9Gs5ay #music #dataviz pic.twitter.com/fLc071JyOG

— Benjamin Hennig (@geoviews) October 7, 2017

(Tip of the cap to Lucas Lacasa.

Happiness is Not Communicating :)

Note that, on average, the happier people spend much less time communicating with other people electronically. (For example, notice the result for "Phone".)

I take that a step further and try not to spend too much time communicating with others (electronically or otherwise), and I am extremely happy!

Anybody chasing a User Active Minutes metric should spend time with this chart. It's a trap! https://t.co/aksBRKSRre pic.twitter.com/MksLi1JXNl

— William Pietri (@williampietri) September 3, 2017

(Tip of the cap to Hiroki Sayama.)

Will Love Tear this Research Apart?

Yes, the actual reason that this type of visualization is now called a "joyplot" is because of the classical Joy Division cover. Sometimes things are right in the world.

Even if love doesn't tear their paper apart, the referees surely will.

I also wrote about this here and here.

Nothing beats the moment of revelation when you suddenly realize why they're called "joyplots". pic.twitter.com/8sbmDWGWg9

— Stuart Ritchie (@StuartJRitchie) August 25, 2017

(Tip of the cap to MathFeed.)

Update (8/27/17): You can also see some discussion of this visualization in my Facebook post.

Math Profs are the Least Boring (And Other Observations from Data Analysis)

Here is some interesting data analysis using reviews from Rate My Professors.

You can see from this data analysis that math professors appear to be the least boring among all professors (yay!) and there are some expected (and perhaps more surprising) gender gaps (boo!) in the reviews.

(Tip of the cap to Nicholas Christakis.)

What Happens in London Stays in London

I'll be in London for a couple of days for a meeting with one of my industrial collaborators and the Royal Society Workshop on Mathematics for the Modern Economy. Come to the workshop!

Historical Naval Charts and Maps

The National Maritime Museum (one of the Royal Museums of Greenwich) has a really cool collection of historical sea charts and maps. It would be really cool to do some research involving them!

I found this out via the follow tweet.

This portulan chart is decorated with compass roses, towns, rulers, tents, mountains, animals and ships. #MapMondayhttps://t.co/l4BDRiuQU3 pic.twitter.com/l6lAMceEhA

— Nat. Maritime Museum (@NMMGreenwich) June 26, 2017

(Tip of the cap to Sydney Padua.)

How Do People from Different Cultures Draw Circles?

Here is a really interesting article about how people from different cultures draw circles.

I was once — well, at least once — told in elementary school that I was drawing circles the wrong way (because I was using the wrong sense around the clock). I think I responded with the definition of a circle and that the definition doesn't depend on the sense in which one draws it, and I think my teacher did not appreciate that.

On a similar note, in high school, I once lost 50% of the point total on an answer for misspelling ellipse (by using one 'l' instead of two), which was the correct answer. I called bullshit (on the grounds that it was my mathematics knowledge that was being tested), but unfortunately I lost.

More closely related to the article, one thing I noticed in the UK is that the most common way to write an 'x' there is with two arcs, so that they won't always cross if one writes quickly. In contrast, I write two attempts at lines that explicitly cross. (I haven't checked if this is US versus UK convention.)

And, indeed, most Americans drew their circles counterclockwise in this data set, and I draw mine clockwise.

(Tip of the cap to Improbable Research for their Facebook post.)

Update: Here is a lovely quote from the article: In a 1977 paper Theodore Blau, then-president of the American Psychological Association and creator of the torque test, argued that drawing clockwise circles was a sign of learning and behavioral aberrance.

Subway Maps Compared to their Actual Geographies

Here are some cool visualizations of subway maps morphing to their actual geographies.

And if you want to learn about the amount of information to navigate such things, you may be interested in this paper.

(Tip of the cap to Marta González.)

Data Analysis of Gender in Film Dialog

The data set used in this analysis would be really cool to explore (perhaps in combination with movie networks).

The Largest Ever Analysis of Film Dialogue by Gender: 2,000 scripts, 25,000 actors, 4 million lines https://t.co/QV7NzluIpL pic.twitter.com/ampVQskeAu

— Sinan Aral (@sinanaral) May 26, 2017