Using Algorithms to Determine Character – The New York Times

2015/07/27 Leave a comment

Good piece on the increasing use of algorithms in granting loans and in the workplace, and the potential for (and limits to – see emphasized text) reducing bias:

Mr. Merrill, who also has a Ph.D. in psychology (from Princeton, in case Mr. Gu wants to lend him money), thinks that data-driven analysis of personality is ultimately fairer than standard measures.

“We’re always judging people in all sorts of ways, but without data we do it with a selection bias,” he said. “We base it on stuff we know about people, but that usually means favoring people who are most like ourselves.” Familiarity is a crude form of risk management, since we know what to expect. But that doesn’t make it fair.

Character (though it is usually called something more neutral-sounding) is now judged by many other algorithms. Workday, a company offering cloud-based personnel software, has released a product that looks at 45 employee performance factors, including how long a person has held a position and how well the person has done. It predicts whether a person is likely to quit and suggests appropriate things, like a new job or a transfer, that could make this kind of person stay.

It also characterizes managers as “rainmakers” or “terminators,” depending on how well they hold talent. Inside Workday, the company has analyzed its own sales force to see what makes for success. The top indicator is tenacity.

“We all have biases about how we hire and promote,” said Dan Beck, Workday’s head of technology strategy. “If you can leverage data to overcome that, great.”

People studying these traits will be encouraged to adopt them, he said, since “if you know there is a pattern of success, why wouldn’t you adopt it?”

In a sense, it’s no different from the way people read the biographies of high achievers, looking for clues for what they need to do differently to succeed. It’s just at a much larger scale, based on observing everybody.

There are reasons to think that data-based character judgments are more reasonable. Jure Leskovec, a professor of computer science at Stanford, is finishing up a study comparing the predictions of data analysis against those of judges at bail hearings, who have just a few minutes to size up prisoners and decide if they could be risks to society. Early results indicate that data-driven analysis is 30 percent better at predicting crime, Mr. Leskovec said.

“Algorithms aren’t subjective,” he said. “Bias comes from people.”

That is only true to a point: Algorithms do not fall from the sky. Algorithms are written by human beings. Even if the facts aren’t biased, design can be, and we could end up with a flawed belief that math is always truth.

Upstart’s Mr. Gu, who said he had perfect SAT scores but dropped out of Yale, wouldn’t have qualified for an Upstart loan using his own initial algorithms. He has since changed the design, and he said he is aware of the responsibility of the work ahead.

“Every time we find a signal, we have to ask ourselves, ‘Would we feel comfortable telling someone this was why they were rejected?’ ” he said.

Using Algorithms to Determine Character – The New York Times.

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Douglas Todd: Mixed unions applauded by some, but dismissed by others as brownwashing

2015/07/27 Leave a comment

Canadians G2 Multiple origensTodd reports on the study by Feng Hou, Zheng Wu and Christoph Schimmele showing that community size and availability matter (“Group Size and Social Interaction: a Canada-US Comparison of Interracial Marriage”).

The overall StatsCan ethnic origin data shows the longer the community has been in Canada, the greater the number of Canadians with mixed ethnic origins, the result of more mixed unions. The above chart highlights second-generation immigrants who indicate also having Canadian ancestry (the third generation for most of the newer communities are not large enough, and old enough, to analyze):

But three cultural trends are shaking up this utopian dream, which places inter-ethnic couples at the vanguard of cultural fusion.

The first shift is demographic. Canadian statisticians have documented how the growth of ethnic groups in the Western world is actually making inter-ethnic couples less likely in major cities.

Secondly, many of the countries with traditional cultures that produce immigrants to the West remain resistant to ethnic intermarriage, often because of concerns about offsprings’ religious identities.

Thirdly, some race activists and social scientists are criticizing what they call the “brownwashing” of the population, arguing a mixed-union revolution is mostly sought by white liberals.

… A study published this year by Hou, Zheng Wu and Christoph Schimmele found the intermarriage rate among members of an ethnic group goes down in regions that house a large cohort of that group. No one is quite sure why.

The intermarriage rate in mid-sized Canadian cities such as Kelowna, Victoria and Trois-Rivières, where there are relatively few visible minorities, is reaching almost 40 per cent. People there appear motivated to go outside their ethno-cultural group for friends, dates and, importantly, marriage partners.

On the other hand, in Canadian metropolises where visible minorities, mostly Asians, account for almost half the population, the intermarriage rate is much lower. In Metro Vancouver it’s just 9.6 per cent. In multi-racial Toronto it’s only 8.2 per cent.

People seem to feel little need to find a partner outside their ethno-cultural group when living among hundreds of thousands of people with familiar backgrounds.

For instance, South Asians and ethnic Chinese make up the largest immigrant groups to Canada. But Statistics Canada reports they’re among the least likely to intermarry. Only 19 per cent of Chinese-Canadians in a couple, and 13 per cent of South Asian-Canadians, are in a mixed union.

Hou admits researchers can’t explain the complicated causes of intermarriage. But he cautioned against “blindly treating the prevalence of intermarriage as the litmus test of inter-group relations.” Hou says, “The prevalence can be low or go down simply for demographic reasons.”

Douglas Todd: Mixed unions applauded by some, but dismissed by others as brownwashing.

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Canadian converts to Islam focus of study by Australian sociologist

2015/07/27 1 Comment

Some Government rhetoric notwithstanding, the Kanishka Project continues to fund some interesting and potentially useful studies on the sociology of extremism and radicalization:

Public Safety Canada is funding a project by an Australian academic to study why Canadians convert to Islam.

This is the first study on the subject ever conducted in Canada and one of a number of studies to receive money from Public Safety through its Kanishka Project, which funds research into terrorism and counterterrorism.

“Canada was a country that had not even one published journal article on converts between its borders. So, I thought, ‘Wow, what a great opportunity,'” said Prof. Scott Flower of the University of Melbourne.

Flower’s earlier research looked into Muslim converts in Papua New Guinea and Australia and he was looking for comparative cases in other Western nations.

Scott Flower, a researcher from The University of Melbourne in Australia, says he understands why some Muslims may be leery of his research. (University of Melbourne)

He hopes to spend the next few months in Canada conducting interviews with converts to Islam with a view to finding out what spurred their conversion.

Flower doesn’t know what the government will eventually do with his research but he did stress in an interview with CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning that he understands how the subjects of his study might be leery of it.

“You’d have to be very ignorant to not sense the level of concern amongst the Muslim community in general, let alone the convert community. There’s been a number of recent legislative bills passed in this country — I won’t use the word oppressive — but I would say that it’s really made Muslims go to ground,” said Flower.

He added that this atmosphere is complicating his research.

“That’s really posing a challenge to recruiting participants to what is really a study that is not interested in security whatsoever,” he said.

Canadian academics who have received money from the Kanishka Project for other studies say there is nothing nefarious about its intentions.

“All the work is being done by independent scholars that are arm’s length,” explained Jeremy Littlewood, a Carleton University professor and terrorism expert.

Amarnath Amarasingam, a post-doctoral fellow at Dalhousie University in Halifax, agrees with Littlewood, but sympathized with Flower’s challenges.

Amarasingam is conducting his own research into violent radicalization, also funded by the Kanishka Project.

“We’ve tried very hard to explain that [our] research was independent. None of the data is being handed over and the government is seeing the final product and there is no secret report,” he said.

“As the researchers retain copyright, such reports provide policy research advice and do not necessarily represent the policy position of Public Safety Canada,” wrote Jean Paul Duval, a spokesperson for the department, in an email to CBC News.

Canadian converts to Islam focus of study by Australian sociologist – Politics – CBC News.

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Government seeks to revoke Canadian citizenship of convicted terrorist Misbahuddin Ahmed

2015/07/27 Leave a comment

And then there were two. The focus (so far) is on those who have been convicted in Canadian courts (which avoids all sorts of due process issues with respect to those convicted overseas):

Pakistan-Canadian Ahmed, 32, is serving 12 years at Warkworth, a medium-security prison in Ontario.

A third accused was acquitted of the one conspiracy charge against him and charges against the fourth man were dropped.

“Misbah knows about this and instructed me to do whatever is possible to prevent the revocation of his citizenship,’ said lawyer Ertel. “We intend to challenge the legislation and oppose this in every way.

“Like many Canadians I’m no fan of the draconian legislation or the apparent lack of restraint in its application,’ he added.

Ahmed now has 60 days to respond to the government’s application.

When he sentenced Ahmed, Ontario Superior Court Justice Colin McKinnon said he was convinced that Ahmed had renounced his terrorist inclinations.

He refused to impose a maximum sentence, meaning Ahmed could apply to the parole board for early release after serving one-third of his sentence.

“But for the fact that Mr. Ahmed has been convicted for terrorism offences rather than some other serious offence,” said the judge, “he would likely be considered an appropriate candidate for a conditional (non-custodial) sentence.”

He rejected the prosecutions request for a 20-year sentence saying it would be an “injustice.”

Ahmed, a former Ottawa Hospital diagnostic-imaging technician and the father of three young daughters was convicted of conspiracy to facilitate terrorism and facilitating terrorism. He was acquitted of a more serious third charge of possessing an explosive device.”

Crown prosecutors say Ahmed’s sentence is too lenient and are appealing.

Ahmed, for his part, is appealing the sentence on the grounds it is too harsh.

Government seeks to revoke Canadian citizenship of convicted terrorist Misbahuddin Ahmed | Ottawa Citizen.

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Canada’s diverse work force gave my startup an unfair edge

2015/07/25 Leave a comment

A concrete example of Canada’s advantage in having a diverse workforce by Allen Lau, CEO of Wattpad:

In today’s Internet economy, software is king. The next technology behemoths will innovate with software and operating systems instead of new devices and machines. Several Canadian companies (Kik, Hootsuite, Slack) have proved that you can win on the global stage, even when you’re based in Canada. When you build an Internet company, success does not come from the patents you hold or the lobbyists you’ve hired; it’s about the product and the value it offers to users.

I would even argue that these companies are doing exceptionally well because they’re based in Canada. Indeed, we have one major advantage that our neighbours to the south will never be able to trump with a powerful lobby or judicial strategy.

More than half of Toronto’s residents were born outside Canada, myself included. For my company, Wattpad, a global community of 40 million readers and writers, I believe that Toronto’s diversity gives me an unfair advantage.

True innovation is rooted in the ability to solve problems. Toronto’s diversity has helped me build a team that is insightful and mindful enough to tackle the challenges that arise when you build a global Internet company.

When you aspire to serve a global population, you need diversity in your work force. I’m talking about the kind of diversity that goes beyond hiring someone to translate text in the product. You need to hire people who can not only speak different languages, but also understand cultural nuances. This is something that exists naturally in Toronto, as well as other parts of Canada.

Since the Internet is the first technology that simultaneously connects billions of people around the world, companies that focus only domestically miss out on a massive business opportunity. I see this opportunity get bigger every day as the number of people who can access the Internet grows, thanks largely in part to affordable smartphone technology.

When Wattpad first launched, it supported one language: English. Growth was painfully slow. My co-founder, Ivan Yuen, and I decided to support additional languages, such as Vietnamese and Tagalog. Almost immediately, this move attracted new readers and writers from around the world. However, user growth did not come without challenges.

As we expanded into other languages – ones we didn’t read or understand – it became critical to engage these international audiences and support their needs by adapting our product. Fortunately, we had made the decision to base our company in Toronto, and could immediately reach out to friends and colleagues who were fluent in these newly supported languages and could offer us regional perspectives and insights.

Today, Wattpad sees growth in markets where smartphone penetration is on the rise, and in places that are underserved by the traditional publishing industry. Fifty per cent of our traffic comes from outside North America, and we have a team based in our Toronto headquarters that supports the growing international community. The majority of Wattpad employees can speak a second or third language. They are world travellers, having lived in 76 different cities around the world. Many are immigrants or first-generation Canadians.

Canada’s diverse work force gave my startup an unfair edge – The Globe and Mail.

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Does ‘sharing’ mean caring? – AirBnb, Uber and McDonald’s

2015/07/25 Leave a comment

Good piece by Francis Woolley on the risks to social inclusion with the rise of sharing services like AirBnB and Uber:

The idea of rating might seem fair. People who do bad things, such as making drivers wait or spilling red wine on the carpet, get bad ratings and are punished. Yet once a service starts rating customers, it becomes a bit less impartial; a bit less like McDonald’s, where almost everyone receives the same quality of service. Highly rated customers get a ride right away; low-rated customers wait longer.

But taxi drivers have always had to find ways to avoid bad fares and seek out good ones. In the past, drivers have made snap decisions about whether or not to pick up a potential passenger on the basis of that person’s appearance – characteristics such as their clothing, age or race. But anyone can get a good rating on Uber by being ready on time and giving generous cash tips to the driver. A world where the people who get rides quickly are those who have earned a high Uber rating seems fairer than one where the people who get rides quickly are those whose skin tone holds the promise of a more generous tip.

But what about AirBnB, which insists that users post a clear, frontal face photo? A photo that reveals a user’s age, race and gender?

There is ample scholarly evidence of discrimination in housing markets. Women, people with good jobs and those with the right ethnic origin find it easier to obtain rental accommodation. There is also growing evidence of discrimination in online markets. For example, an experiment by economists Jennifer Doleac and Luke Stein found that online photos made a real difference to the selling price for goods. A used iPod held in a black hand sold for, on average, 11-per-cent less than the same iPod held in a white hand. IPods held in tattooed hands sold for 10-per-cent less than iPods held by the tattoo-free.

The sharing economy puts power in the hands of the people. Unfortunately people can be real jerks. It is easy to criticize McDonald’s, and those worker-exploiting, tax-avoiding multinational corporations. But McDonald’s makes a substantial contribution to human dignity every day by providing millions of people with good (or good enough) coffee at a reasonable price, free WiFi and a washroom.

Does ‘sharing’ mean caring? – The Globe and Mail.

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How Minority Job Seekers Battle Bias in the Hiring Process

2015/07/25 Leave a comment

More evidence (USA) on the impact of bias and prejudice in the hiring process:

For example, research has shown that white job applicants receive 50% more callbacks for interviews than equally qualified African American applicants. And, in the low-wage labor market, scholars have found that African American men without criminal records receive similar callback rates for interviews as white men just released from prison. Researchers have also documented discrimination in hiring against women, with particularly strong penalties against mothers.

But how does this reality affect these groups – African Americans and women – as they hunt for jobs? Do they tailor their searches narrowly to help them avoid discrimination, sticking to job opportunities deemed “appropriate” for them? Or do they cast a wider net with the hopes of maximizing their chances of finding a job that does not discriminate?

Until now, we have known little about this issue, largely because no existing data source has closely followed individuals through their job search.

New research that we recently published in the American Journal of Sociology attempts to address this limitation by drawing on two original datasets that track job seekers and the positions to which they apply.

The results of our study point to three general conclusions about the job search process:

  1. African Americans cast a wider net than whites while searching for work.
  2. Women tend to apply to a narrower set of job types than men, often targeting roles that have historically been dominated by women.
  3. Past experiences of discrimination appear to drive, at least in part, the broader job search patterns of African Americans.

On an important side note, these racial differences exist for both men and women and these gender differences exist for both whites and African Americans.

The study’s conclusion:

Together, the findings from our study suggest that the job search process plays an important role in shaping, reinforcing and sometimes counteracting inequality in the labor market.

At the same time, discrimination and other barriers to employment must be considered to fully understand how labor market inequality is generated.

And, as the comparison of race and gender suggests, how individuals adapt to workplace barriers can take different forms and have distinct consequences.

Our research points to the importance of systematically examining both job search processes as well as discriminatory behavior and other constraints in the workplace if we hope to fully understand and rectify persistent racial and gender inequalities in the labor market.

How Minority Job Seekers Battle Bias in the Hiring Process | TIME.

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Court strikes down Ottawa’s ‘safe country’ list for refugees | Toronto Star

2015/07/25 Leave a comment

Another major defeat for the Government in the Courts:

In a major blow to the Harper government, the Federal Court has struck down its so-called safe country list for refugees as unconstitutional.

In a ruling Thursday, the court said Ottawa’s designation by country of origin or DCO discriminates against asylum seekers who come from countries on this list by denying them access to appeals.

“The distinction drawn between the procedural advantage now accorded to non-DCO refugee claimants and the disadvantage suffered by DCO refugee claimants . . . is discriminatory on its face,” wrote Justice Keith M. Boswell in a 118-page decision.

“It also serves to further marginalize, prejudice, and stereotype refugee claimants from DCO countries which are generally considered safe and ‘non-refugee producing.’

“Moreover, it perpetuates a stereotype that refugee claimants from DCO countries are somehow queue-jumpers or ‘bogus’ claimants who only come here to take advantage of Canada’s refugee system and its generosity.”

It is yet another devastating hit to the Conservative government which recently also lost two cases on constitutional grounds over the ban of the niqab at citizenship ceremonies and on health cuts for refugees.

“This is another Charter loss for the (Stephen) Harper government,” noted Lorne Waldman, president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, a party to the legal challenge against the DCO regime.

The government said it will appeal the decision and ask the court to set it aside while it is under appeal.

“Reforms to our asylum system have been successful resulting in faster decisions and greater protection for those who need it most,” said a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Chris Alexander.

“We remain committed to putting the interests of Canadians and the most vulnerable refugees first. Asylum seekers from developed countries such as the European Union or the United States should not benefit from endless appeal processes.”

The latest court decision means all failed refugee claimants — whether from the government’s safe country list or not — are entitled to appeal negative asylum decisions at the Immigration and Refugee Board’s refugee appeal division or better known as the RAD.

Court strikes down Ottawa’s ‘safe country’ list for refugees | Toronto Star.

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Salman Rushdie on Islam: ‘We have learned the wrong lessons’

2015/07/25 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, I think he is right:

Salman Rushdie believes that if The Satanic Verses had been published today, the members of the literary elite who rounded on Charlie Hebdo in the wake of the French satirical magazine winning a PEN prize for courage would not have defended him.

In an interview with the French magazine L’Express, the novelist said that “it seems we have learned the wrong lessons” from the experience of The Satanic Verses, which saw a fatwa issued against him by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, sending him into hiding. “Instead of realising that we need to oppose these attacks on freedom of expression, we thought that we need to placate them with compromise and renunciation,” he said.

Speaking about the decision by PEN’s American branch to award Charlie Hebdo with a freedom of expression courage award in May, which led to more than 200 writers putting their names to a letter protesting the decision for valorising “material that intensifies the anti-Islamic, anti-Maghreb, anti-Arab sentiments already prevalent in the western world”, Rushdie said the conflict had left “deep divisions” in the literary world. He would never have imagined that writers such as Michael Ondaatje, Peter Carey and Junot Díaz “would have taken this attitude”, and he had written to one of the key dissenters, Teju Cole, about the situation, he revealed.

“[Cole] replied with a bizarre letter: ‘My dear Salman, dear big brother, everything I know I learned it at your feet,’” Rushdie said. “But his reply was mostly full of false claims: Teju assured me that he would never have taken this part against The Satanic Verses because, in my case, it was to do with an accusation of blasphemy, but in the case of Charlie Hebdo, it was about the alleged racism of the magazine against the Muslim minority.”

Rushdie told L’Express that he disagreed, saying that the 12 people murdered at Charlie Hebdo’s offices were killed because their words were seen as blasphemous. “It’s exactly the same thing,” he said. “I’ve since had the feeling that, if the attacks against The Satanic Verses had taken place today, these people would not have defended me, and would have used the same arguments against me, accusing me of insulting an ethnic and cultural minority.”

The novelist told the French magazine that he believes “we are living in the darkest time I have ever known”, with the rise of Islamic State of “colossal importance for the future of the world”. He argued that the taboo surrounding “supposed ‘Islamophobia’” must be brought to an end.

“Why can’t we debate Islam?” he said. “It is possible to respect individuals, to protect them from intolerance, while being sceptical about their ideas, even criticising them ferociously.”

Salman Rushdie on Islam: ‘We have learned the wrong lessons’ | Books | The Guardian.

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After 600 Days of ‘With Flowers,’ Ai Weiwei Has His Passport Back

2015/07/24 Leave a comment

As a fan of Ai Weiwei’s work, enjoyed this profile and the news that he has his passport back:

On Wednesday morning, as he has every day for the past year and a half, Ai Weiwei placed a bouquet of flowers in the basket of a bicycle that stands outside his studio in Beijing. The selection included carnations and baby’s breath. The day before, he’d picked sunflowers. He started the week with lilies.

For more than a year and a half, China’s infamous dissident artist has arranged his blooms in a daily demonstration against the confiscation of his passport. Titled With Flowers, the work is part-protest, part-performance art. But no longer: After four years, the artist announced via Instagram on Wednesday that the Chinese government had returned his passport. Since 2011, after Ai was arrested on charges of tax evasion, jailed for 81 days, and then released, the government had kept it confiscated, and refused him any other travel papers.

With Flowers endured for about 600 days. Ai started the performance on November 13, 2013, more than two years into his confinement. The demonstration serves as an extraordinary record of his confinement: He placed the flowers outside the aquamarine door at 258 Caochangdi, home to his art studio as well as his design and architecture firm, FAKE Design. They were mighty arrangements, rarely modest, all formally documented on Flickr. Ai is both active and savvy on social media (which is part of what prompted his trouble with the authorities), and his flowers traveled far beyond the plastic basket on his black Giant bike via posts on Flickr, Instagram, and Twitter.

After 600 Days of ‘With Flowers,’ Ai Weiwei Has His Passport Back – The Atlantic.

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