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DateUnitLectureSpeakersAssignments/readings
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1/24Introduction to course; general techniques for writing for a mass audienceEmma
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1/26Social inequalityGuest lecture: Seth Stephens-DavidowitzSeth Stephens-Davidowitz (author, Everybody Lies; NYT Opinion Writer)
Google Searches Can Help Us Find Emerging Covid-19 Outbreaks: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/opinion/coronavirus-google-searches.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfq4hkTFUbBibSRdkhrxqAwvPI2rs6j2H_NjWODDlFyOsRDs2b9k7XbqpufJ0zwzGfDpdnAYMYecZTnKVZLlA_DE6huIeFk5AIZCho8onoVDw4msmWV-h9rGC0ZSyzdr10gbO2sR6Ka2HtXqSLgmYzZ1ow-esTfl-p3HECzq3FA7Q1joE4haF9c8g8ETQQZyCKvO3qCwF-PbiEbhLa6wo1UoJJSG2Z3I7cu_9bLlIkWR-RR2h_4G089NpcJNoSWa_8JBMic8L16q4DVhKzJNksWUDirPuz1ZDung&smid=em-share

The Data of Hate: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/opinion/sunday/seth-stephens-davidowitz-the-data-of-hate.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbcr4hkT1UaACbSRdkhrxqAwuPSxrA1lzjlITSVDC1ewvwVDo6bvkvEe6tvYMQywybeWN9MdbMmWPU3yeEaP0VxRk-ovp6A0twjEhkClLiSDCkwzo6fGvcx6yPrZW20b74lnbO04EjddWPsCPHA1XB3JRI2pMNvaVv82nQJxavAQuJyjsJsnqt0XuAMTjkDYSSAt_PoGk8-bI3ANkeAn1FwD-JJWjjTnsqe66YAdWhQCVHATHB54gUs-Y8WeYNXbOukcUlWKIepiq4RC2doMI6pG5Q0IoHXnLhpurPMwgeeIefTU2LF8lvrY_PJDeL2Mw&smid=url-share

The Songs that Bind: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opinion/sunday/favorite-songs.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbco4hkSlUaAybSRdkhrxqAwuPSxrA1lzjwJTaSUzdewqEOBI6P4AHNea9nLZMV7giseeVgYvUpVeAgiahWJVBsQA2l5cTdxshYe3xr7Ny-D29zgsuUU_Vor2ayK2PkI-51yOK04h_dYXL4G_CKiQ1XLwhmpJZvfVuqyCZIkv-DSrgpr4E4ifQxBZl6RiMCZD2KupTqCxZ_OdaBanLM-1V8GrEZCXyIw4nqu_9Xex5SCFnGUHp__W85jdpfM9kVN6r7RAUyqS1OYqyZHRdGOmpakQyMzQ&smid=em-share
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1/31Social inequalityML against povertyStudents presentCombining satellite imagery and machine learning to predict poverty
Clinical trial of an AI-augmented intervention for HIV prevention in youth experiencing homelessness
Machine Learning and Mobile Phone Data Can Improve the Targeting of Humanitarian Assistance
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2/2Social inequalityStudent lecture on "The Effects of Police Violence on Inner-City Students", 2:45 - 3:15; Guest lecture on inequality lecture 2: Paul PiersonPaul Pierson (John Gross Professor of Political Science, Berkeley; author, Winner-Take-All Politics; American Amnesia; and Let Them Eat Tweets)The Effects of Police Violence on Inner-City Students; "Hacker-Pierson excerpts.pdf" (both posted on Canvas)
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2/7Social inequalityOpportunity AtlasJohn Friedman (Professor of Economics at Brown University, founding co-Director of Opportunity Insights)
Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental Evidence on Barriers to Neighborhood Choice: https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/cmto_paper.pdf

The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility: https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/atlas_paper.pdf
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2/9Social inequalityStudent lecture on "Racial discrimination in the sharing economy: evidence from a field experiment" (2:45 - 3:15); Guest lecture on inequality 3: Scott Kominers (3:15 - 4)Students, Scott Kominers (MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School; writer, Bloomberg Opinion)Read assigned paper: Racial discrimination in the sharing economy: evidence from a field experiment
Fill out Wednesday speaker form for Scott Kominers.
Do additional assigned readings (from Scott Kominers):

How NFTs create value (on Canvas)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-28/world-can-have-covid-boosters-and-its-first-doses-too
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-11/economics-nobel-prize-2021-for-card-angrist-and-imbens
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-25/why-facebook-and-twitter-opened-the-door-to-nfts
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2/14Social inequalityTesting for discriminationEmmaDo assigned readings:

Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?
Orchestrating impartiality


Fill out Monday paper form for assigned readings
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2/16Social inequalityEmma lecture on "A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States" (2:45 - 3:15); Guest lecture on inequality 4: Cheryl Phillips (3:15 - 4)Students, Cheryl Phillips (teaches data journalism at Stanford; founder of Big Local News and co-founder of Stanford Open Policing Project; two-time Pulitzer winner at the Seattle Times)Read assigned paper: A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States Fill out Wednesday speaker form for Cheryl Phillips. Do her assigned readings: https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=20030105&slug=racial05m https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/inside-100-million-police-traffic-stops-new-evidence-racial-bias-n980556 https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-lapd-searches-20190605-story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/15/would-having-more-women-officers-improve-policing/
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2/21Social inequalityRacial discrimination in policingStudents presentFill out Monday paper form for assigned readings:

An Analysis of the New York City Police Department’s “Stop-and-Frisk” Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias,
A Few Bad Apples? Racial Bias in Policing,
Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect
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2/23Social inequalityEmma lecture (2:45-3:15) on "Barr says there’s no systemic racism in policing. Our data says the attorney general is wrong"; practice writing the intro to "Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect" and Karen Hao guest lecture (3:15-4)Emma, Karen Hao (senior AI editor at MIT Technology Review)Fill out Wednesday speaker form for Karen Hao. Do assigned readings:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/11/1020600/facebook-responsible-ai-misinformation/
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/17/75285/ai-fairer-than-judge-criminal-risk-assessment-algorithm/
"Barr says there’s no systemic racism in policing. Our data says the attorney general is wrong"
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3/2Environment/Algorithmic fairnessEnvironment/algorithmic fairnessStudentsFill out Monday paper form for assigned readings. Do assigned readings:

Stay Ahead of Poachers: Illegal Wildlife Poaching Prediction and Patrol Planning Under Uncertainty with Field Test Evaluations
Algorithmic monoculture and social welfare
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3/7Algorithmic fairnessAlgorithmic fairness: case studies. StudentsFill out Monday paper form for assigned readings. Do assigned readings:

Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification
Human decisions and machine predictions
Algorithmic risk assessment in the hands of humans
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3/9Algorithmic fairnessGuest lecture, Sendhil Mullainathan, 3:15 - 4; first 30 min will be reviewing his paperStudents and Sendhil Mullainathan (Roman Family University Professor of Computation and Behavioral Science at Chicago Booth; author, Scarcity: Why Having too Little Means so Much; New York Times contributor)Fill out Wednesday speaker form for Sendhil Mullainathan. Do assigned readings:

Dissecting racial bias in an algorithm used to manage the health of populations
Biased Algorithms Are Easier to Fix Than Biased People
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3/14Algorithmic fairnessImpossibility results in algorithmic fairnessStudentsFill out Monday paper form for assigned readings. Do assigned readings:

Machine Bias
Fair prediction with disparate impact: A study of bias in recidivism prediction instruments
Inherent Trade-Offs in the Fair Determination of Risk Scores
Algorithmic decision making and the cost of fairness
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3/16Algorithmic fairnessGuest lecture, Allison Koenecke (2:45 - 3:15)Allison Koenecke (incoming assistant professor of Information Science, Cornell); Kelsey Piper (staff writer, Vox)Do assigned readings:

Racial disparities in automated speech recognition
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3/21EnvironmentEnvironmentStudentsFill out Monday paper form for assigned readings. Do assigned readings:

Public health impacts of an imminent Red Sea oil spill
Flood forecasting with machine learning models in an operational framework
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3/23Healthcare/public healthStudent lecture on "Hidden in Plain Sight — Reconsidering the Use of Race Correction in Clinical Algorithms" (2:45-3:15); Guest lecture (3:15 - 4)Erin Brodwin; (health tech reporter, Axios; previously at STAT)Read assigned paper:

Hidden in Plain Sight — Reconsidering the Use of Race Correction in Clinical Algorithms

Fill out Wednesday speaker form for Erin Brodwin and also read her assigned readings:

How a virtual mentoring program brings care closer to rural patients
Health tech leaders look to design to make care more equitable
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3/28Algorithmic fairnessGuest lectureCathy O'Neil (author, Weapons of Math Destruction; Algorithmic auditor at ORCAA)Fill out Wednesday speaker form for Cathy O'Neil.

Do assigned readings:
Weapons of Math Destruction, Chapter 1 (available on canvas - see "Library Reserves" section, and read "Chap. 1: Bomb Parts: What is a Model? + chapter notes")
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3/30Healthcare/public healthStudent lecture on "Diagnosing physician error: a machine-learning approach to low-value care"; writing exercise (3:15 - 4)StudentsFill out Monday paper form for assigned readings:

Diagnosing physician error: a machine-learning approach to low-value care
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4/11Healthcare/public healthMachine learning models in the clinicStudentsFill out Monday paper form for assigned readings. Do assigned readings:

Dermatologist-level classification of skin cancer with deep neural networks
A validated, real-time prediction model for favorable outcomes in hospitalized COVID-19 patients
Automated Identification of Adults at Risk for In-Hospital Clinical Deterioration
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4/13Healthcare/public healthGuest lecture on healthcare/public health 2 (Tim Althoff 2:45 - 3:30; Carl Gershenson 3:30 - 4:00)Tim Althoff (assistant professor of computer science, UW); Carl Gershenson (project director at The Eviction Lab)Fill out Wednesday speaker form for Carl Gershenson. Check out his lab's Eviction Tracking System (https://evictionlab.org/eviction-tracking/) and a few of his lab's research blog posts:

https://evictionlab.org/demographics-of-eviction/
https://evictionlab.org/us-eviction-filing-patterns-2021/
https://evictionlab.org/filing-and-vaccination-rates/
https://evictionlab.org/top-evicting-landlords-drive-us-eviction-crisis/
https://evictionlab.org/serial-eviction-filings/

Take a look through papers Tim Althoff will discuss:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.08441.pdf
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07714.pdf
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.15144.pdf
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4/18Healthcare/public healthFighting COVID I (Emma lecture, 2:45 - 3:30); Guest lecture, Kelsey Piper (3:30 - 4)Emma, Kelsey PiperFill out Monday paper form for assigned readings. Do assigned readings:

Mobility network models of COVID-19 explain inequities and inform reopening
Supporting COVID-19 policy response with large-scale mobility-based modeling

Briefly review assigned readings from Kelsey Piper but no need to fill out paper form a second time:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22776428/ivermectin-science-publication-research-fraud
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22663127/ivermectin-covid-treatments-vaccines-evidence
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4/20Healthcare/public healthEmma lecture on "An algorithmic approach to reducing unexplained pain disparities in underserved populations" (2:45 - 3:15 PM); Guest lecture on healthcare/public health (Caroline Chen, 3:15 - 4 PM)Emma, Caroline Chen (journalist, ProPublica)Fill out Wednesday speaker form for Caroline Chen. Do her assigned readings:

https://www.propublica.org/article/black-patients-miss-out-on-promising-cancer-drugs
https://www.propublica.org/article/babies-are-dying-of-syphilis-its-100-preventable

Also read:

An algorithmic approach to reducing unexplained pain disparities in underserved populations
Writeup milestone due 4/21 at 11:59 PM
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4/25Healthcare/public healthFighting COVID IIStudentsFill out Monday paper form for assigned readings:

Efficient and targeted COVID-19 border testing via reinforcement learning
Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine
Impact of community masking on COVID-19: A cluster-randomized trial in Bangladesh
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4/27Workshopping / slack time
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5/2Workshopping / slack time
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5/4Workshopping / slack time
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5/9Final lecture: life advice and next steps in data science for social goodEmmaDo (optional) final readings (on canvas):

The Halloween of my Dreams, Majorie Williams
The Opposite of Loneliness, Marina Keegan
Lost & Found (excerpt), Kathryn Schulz


Final writeup due 5/11 at 11:59 PM
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