the pigeon in the haystack - design before and after the fact

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The pigeon in the haystack

Dietmar Offenhuber Public Policy and Urban Affairs Northeastern University d.offenhuber@neu.edu

What do we talk about when we talk about bias?

“Petabytes allow us to say: "Correlation is enough." We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.” !Chris Anderson. 2008. “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete.” Wired Magazine, June 27.

Quantitative models as a way to make society legible (= impose legibility)

!James C. Scott, 1999, Seeing Like a State

Source: spurious correlations, www.tylervigen.com

Drawing on the most recent neuroscience research, his own research and inventions in artificial

intelligence, and compelling thought experiments, he describes his new theory of how the neocortex (the thinking part of the brain) works: as a self-organizing hierarchical system of pattern

recognizers

“A decade-old toasted cheese sandwich said to bear an image of the Virgin Mary has sold on the eBay auction website for $28,000.”

BBC news, Nov. 23, 2004

Burrhus Frederic Skinner. 1947. “Superstition in the Pigeon.” Journal of Experimental Psychology (38)

“there is a close relationship between pattern discovery and superstition since humans and animals alike excel at finding structures

where there are none.” — Alexander Riegler

Truth and Bias

Bias as a pattern of systematic error

Case Study Boston

• Two different Interfaces (Citizens Connect and SeeClickFix), integrated with the same CRM and 4+ years of data

Opacity  through  transparency

Urban Entropy (2015), Dietmar Offenhuber, Ars Electronica Center

When we talk about bias, we actually mean implicit assumptions

Eric Schmidt: Every 2 Days We Create As Much Information As We Did Up To 2003

Sorting out CitiesNational Museum of Science, Tokyo collaboration w/ Ars Electronica Futurelab

NASA Night lights composite

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/NightLights/

Implicit assumptions are shaped by design

P. Morville

interfaces regulate spatial behavior

Dodge, Martin, and Rob Kitchin. 2004. “Flying through Code/space: The Real Virtuality of Air Travel.” Environment and Planning A 36 (2): 195–212.

Infrastructure legibility

Kevin Lynch – the Perceptual Form of the City 1954-59