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To The Point: predictive policing
December 14, 2015
Last Friday I was interviewed for a live NPR show called To The Point, hosted by Warren Olney and broadcast by KCRW in Santa Barbara, California.
The topic of the show was predictive policing; specifically, whether “Big Data” can prevent crime. I was definitely the most skeptical of the four guests. Along with me were Mic.com journalist Jack Smith IV, techno-futurist Daniel Burrus, and Tom Casady, the Public Safety Director from Lincoln, Nebraska.
You can listen to the podcast here.
Categories: Uncategorized
mathbabe 
Could “Big Data” identify and help people before they commit crimes? Now, that would be cool:
Police: Excuse me, skynet said you need a hug. Is everything ok?
Unsettled teen: Wha? I thought no body cared.
Police: Don’t be silly. Our silicon master loves all of its carbon-based random number generators, err, data creators, err subjects, err…
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Why net predictive convictions? maybe predictive life sentences, predictive executions?
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Ooh, what a well-timed post! I visited your blog tonight because I have a data science project due tomorrow where I was tasked to develop a model for–you guessed it–crime classification… Definitely including your points in my write-up!
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Interesting. If you don’t mind, can you tell me where the class is? Does the professor discuss ethical considerations?
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I’ll be vague and say it’s at a liberal arts college in CA with a big math department. The class is new and kind of experimental, and to be fair to my professor, it was the other members of my group that chose to do crime classification–the assignment itself was open ended! Ethics didn’t come up, but that’ll be a good suggestion for next semester.
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