mathbabe

I wrote a new Bloomberg View essay about the upcoming elections:

Let’s Send Facebook Some Election Observers

My other Bloomberg columns are listed here.

This is a guest post by Julia Evans, a programmer who blogs and tweets.

What’s a zine?

A zine is a short, usually self-published booklet. Most people who are familiar with zines probably know them from punk zines, art zines, literary zines, feminist zines, or anarchist zines. I love zines like that, but I’ve been doing something a little different — for the last 3 years, I’ve been writing zines about programming concepts!

To get an idea of what I’m talking about in this post: I have a bunch of zines you can read for free at https://jvns.ca/zines. If you love those you can buy my latest Linux zine at http://gum.co/bite-size-linux.

Here’s one page from the current zine I’m working on, which explains 18 important Linux command line tools in 24 pages. This is a quick introduction to grep.

The amazing thing to me about this comic, and other comics like it, is how many people told me that they learned new important facts about grep (you can grep with regular expressions! You can grep recursively!) by reading this tiny comic.

So suddenly comics aren’t just for fun– they’re a tool that you can use to teach new ideas!

Why use zines to teach programming ideas?

Zines and comics are fun, but more importantly I think they’re actually an incredibly efficient way to teach busy professionals new ideas. It turns out that most people don’t have time to read long programming books. And a lot of useful ideas can be explained really quickly!

Fun, accessible content works. People understand it. In the zine “Linux debugging tools you’ll love” (https://jvns.ca/debugging-zine.pdf), I explain netstat, netcat, ngrep, tcpdump, wireshark, strace, eBPF, dstat, and perf and a bunch of its subcommands. This is a lot of material, and it’s material that folks often find intimidating. But because it’s presented in an adorable illustrated 24-page zine people are like “oh how interesting and cute!” and don’t hesitate to pick it up, read it on their commute to work, and learn something.

What I end up finding is that people will read my zines who I wouldn’t expect. Even though they often have pretty advanced content, people will read them even if they’re new to programming or new to Linux! And they’ll often learn something and tell me “yeah, sure, I didn’t understand 100% of it but a lot of it made sense!” To me this is a HUGE WIN.

Printing out hundreds of zines is easy!

The other magical thing about zines is that because they’re so cheap to print (I can get 500 zines printed & stapled at my local print shop for about $300), you can distribute a lot of them easily. Every time I speak at a tech conference these days, I’ll ask the conference to print 500 to 2000 of my zines (usually related to the talk I’m giving) to give out to attendees.

This is amazing because it gives people something fun & useful that they can take home after the talk and give to their friends!

You don’t need to know how to draw to draw comics

If you think this format is cool and you’d like to draw comics to teach people, drawing skills aren’t that necessary! I’ve self-published 7 zines and printed and sold thousands of them, and these are literally all the things I know how to draw.

So you could do it too! When trying to teach, information content and organization is a lot more important than drawing skills.

Fast Company’s Katharine Schwab wrote up ORCAA and it’s seal of approval:

This logo is like an “organic” sticker for algorithms

The food we eat has quality certifications. Why shouldn’t the algorithms that shape our world?

Here’s the picture of the seal of approval, designed by our friends at GoodGoodWork:

I’ve got a new post up in Bloomberg Opinion, inspired by the New York Times analysis on pot arrests that came out recently:

Let’s Not Forget How Wrong Our Crime Data Are

When marijuana is legalized, we’ll lose our only reliable barometer of bias in arrests.

There’s no complete list right now of all my Bloomberg columns, because it’s transitioning from Bloomberg View to Bloomberg Opinion. It will be fixed in a manner of a few days or weeks.

MIT’s Technology Review has a feature called the “Download” and subtitled “What’s up in emerging technology” that featured my company, ORCAA last week:

This company audits algorithms to see how biased they are

This and the Wired piece last week have led to a bunch of inquiries for ORCAA, which is super exciting! Fingers crossed.

I’m psyched to announce that my algorithmic auditing company, ORCAA, has been written up in Wired by Jessi Hempel, in an article that talks about how we audited Rentlogic, our first customer. Take a look!

WANT TO PROVE YOUR BUSINESS IS FAIR? AUDIT YOUR ALGORITHM

Hey I was on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning talking with Laurel Wamsley about an alternative to Facebook:

Would We Be Better Off If We Didn’t Rely On 1 Social Network?

This is a guest post by Allison Pacelli, a Professor of Mathematics at Williams College. She got her Ph.D. in Algebraic Number Theory at Brown University in 2003, and has been at Williams ever since.  Allison is an award-winning teacher, and author of numerous research papers in mathematics as well as the book Mathematics and Politics: Strategy, Voting, Power, and Proof with Alan Taylor of Union College. Allison is the founder and director of Williams College Math Camp (WCMC), a camp aimed at mathematically talented high school students. She is also the co-founder and director of PZ Math, an organization aimed at promoting mathematical literacy. She also does work in K-12 Math Education, working with elementary and high school teachers.

I met Cathy at UC Berkeley in the summer of 1996. I had just finished my junior year of college, and I was accepted into this 6-week summer program for women in math. Cathy was the TA for my course in elliptic curves, a branch of number theory, which I absolutely loved. I’m now an algebraic number theorist at Williams College. One of the things I remember most about Cathy was how honest and open she was about math being hard, and how other grad students she knew at Harvard pretended they knew what was going on when, in fact, they did not.

Math is hard. Very hard! No matter how intelligent someone is or how amazing their past accomplishments, math eventually becomes difficult for anyone. This should not be a surprise, but it is to most people I know. It’s perfectly acceptable for someone in society to say, “oh I’m not a math person.” Personally, I think, that with the right teacher or materials, everyone can enjoy and be successful with math.

What I most love about math is how useful it is. Yes, of course math is useful in engineering, building, accounting, etc. but that’s not what I mean. Math makes you smarter. It makes you a better problem solver. It makes you better at persevering and trying new ideas until you find a solution. It even makes you a better writer in your English or political science courses. Learning how to approach mathematical problems improves your logical and reasoning abilities. When one method doesn’t work, you try another. You start to build up an arsenal of methods for approaching a difficult situation, in any field. Mathematical thinking also requires that we be very precise and clear. This precision and clarity translates into better arguments in any paper or debate.

So why doesn’t everyone love math? Unfortunately, far too often, math is taught in schools as a bunch of formulas to memorize and rules to use. When I first took Calculus in high school, I did very well and got a 5 on the AP exam. But I didn’t truly understand it. I was just good at knowing which rules to use when, and I was good at algebraic manipulations. When I teach Calculus now, either at Williams or the PZ Math Calculus Prep Camp that I run, I spend a lot of time helping my students actually understand calculus.

What is a derivative? What does it mean? How do you find it? What is it good for?

In a one week camp, we can’t teach our students all of calculus of course. But we do give them all the big ideas and an understanding of what the subject is about, including the Fundamental Theorem. We also delve into the details of the first third of the course material, as well as strengthen students’ algebra and trig skills that are so critical for calculus success. The result is that students know what to expect when they begin their Calculus courses in the fall. The pace of the course doesn’t feel so rushed. They understand the ideas, and they have time to hone their skills with the calculations that do come their way. Most importantly, students feel more confident in their problem solving abilities and are ready to take on challenges, not just in their calculus courses, but with any obstacles that confront them.

My newest Bloomberg View article just came out:

Congress Is Missing the Point on Facebook

Americans need a data bill of rights.

See all my Bloomberg View pieces here.

I was interviewed by Tom Upchurch of Wired UK on a Hippocratic Oath for data science and ethics of AI (it’s long!):

To work for society, data scientists need a hippocratic oath with teeth

My newest Bloomberg View piece just came out:

Don’t Worry About the Ethics of Self-Driving Cars

Road deaths create an incentive to care that is woefully lacking elsewhere.

To read all of my Bloomberg View pieces, go here.

My newest Bloomberg View piece just came out:

How to Teach a Computer What ‘Fair’ Means

If we’re going to rely on algorithms, we’ll have to figure it out.

To read all of my Bloomberg View pieces, go here.

Hey all! I told you I’m boring now, so here’s proof. I ran my second 5K race this morning.

My first one was in early February, and I ran with my buddy Elizabeth (who you might remember as my yarn whisperer) and my husband Johan:

They gave us hot cocoa and bagels afterwards, which was nice because it was 17 degrees.

This morning my husband watched me run the same route but without cocoa:

This morning it was a balmy 33 degrees at race time.

My goal is always simply to finish the race without stopping, which I’m happy to report I did both times. I run really slow, though, so it always becomes this thing where I’m near the very back, with people who run by me and then stop to walk, and then I slowly pass them, and then they run by me again. By the end of the race I’m kind of the last always-runner and ahead of most of the sometimes-walkers.

I’m happy to report that this second race was easier to complete (I never felt like I wouldn’t be able to, whereas in the first race there were definitely moments I was forcing myself to keep going) AND my time went down! From 39:00 to 38:55, so a full five seconds. For those interested, that’s 0.21% faster. Did I mention that I’m a slow runner? I’m also a very consistently slow runner.

I’ve signed up for a triathlon at Lake Welch in May. It’s a sprint triathlon, so the running part of it is a 5K, which is by far the hardest part for me. So I’m well on my way to training. For the next two months I’ll be doing lots of biking and running and trying to sometimes do two in a day, to build up stamina. The swimming is super easy so I barely need to practice that, but I will anyway because it’s nice sometimes to do something easy instead of forcing yourself to do something hard. Having said that, I’ve really been enjoying the running, it gets out a good portion of my urban aggression. Also I honestly enjoy being that slow runner whom everyone passes, because it makes them feel really fast, and I’m happy for them, and I don’t mind at all being slow. I’m just grateful to be healthy.

OK, sorry to bore everyone with all of this, but if you’re doing similar stuff, feel free to sign up for the same triathlon as I am and I’ll see you there!

My newest Bloomberg View piece just went up:

Big Data Alone Can’t Fix a Broken Bail System

Philadelphia should think twice about its risk-assessment algorithm.

For all of my Bloomberg View pieces, go here.

Did you hear that Palantir, the big data company founded by Peter Thiel, has been secretly building predictive policing algorithms for New Orleans?

Well, when my buddy Ernie Davis found out, he decided to write a poem. He’s generously allowed me to reproduce it here:

Six years ago, one of the world’s most secretive and powerful tech firms developed a contentious intelligence product in a city that has served as a neoliberal laboratory for everything from charter schools to radical housing reform since Hurricane Katrina. Because the program was never public, important questions about its basic functioning, risk for bias, and overall propriety were never answered.— Palantir has secretly been using New Orleans to test its predictive policing technology, Ali Winston, The Verge, Feb. 27, 2018.

In Eldamar, so long before
Our time, that none can tell the count in years,
The elven craftsman Féanor
Devised the seeing stones, the Palantirs.

The men of old, in seven towers,
Installed the stones that Féanor had wrought
And used their extrasensory powers
To see far off and to converse in thought.

But using a device whose might
Exceeds your wisdom risks a fearful fall.
The fates of Saruman the White
And Steward Denethor are known to all.

********************************************

The enterprising Peter Thiel
Built Paypal and became a billionaire.
A man of business nonpareil
But arrogant as Féanor the Fair.

He scorned the college education
That piles useless knowledge in your head,
And so established a foundation
So youths could start up businesses instead.

He scorned the privileged elite,
Self-righteous, over-educated, smug,
And thus endorsed the loathsome cheat
Who honors every autocratic thug.

Since folks online are always willing
To publish on the web all they can tell
Thiel saw that he could make a killing
By mining it for content he can sell.

His team of workers then designed
The mightiest program they could engineer
To sift the data to be mined.
He named the company “The Palantir”.

The palantirs of Féanor
Could show what was long past and far away.
Thiel’s Palantir sees vastly more:
It knows right now what men will do some day.

It studies billions of relations
‘Twixt men as they develop over time.
And finds the key configurations
That augur the committing of a crime.

********************************************

To prove, past reasonable doubt,
Who’s guilty of specific criminal acts
Requires reasoning about
An awful lot of pesky little facts.

Who was where and when and why?
What show the footprints, blood stains, DNA?
An inconvenient alibi
Can ruin any prosecutor’s day.

A human being is still needed
To comprehend these kinds of evidence
No AI program has succeeded
In mastering the basic common sense.

But building an AI detector
For criminal propensity’s no sweat.
You map a person to a vector
And classify it with a neural net.

********************************************

New Orleans, fair but troubled Queen
Has not in full recovered from the blow
Dealt by Hurricane Katrine
In storm and flood, a dozen years ago.

Gangs that trafficked in the sale
Of heroin and methampetamines
Fought turf wars, and they left a trail
Of murder on the streets of New Orleans

James Carville, famed politico,
Lived in New Orleans and held it dear
And Carville also chanced to know
About the products built at Palantir.

Carville convinced the company
(He was a paid advisor at the time)
To share their software, all for free
To help N.O.P.D. to combat crime.

An altogether secret deal:
Only N.O.P.D. and the mayor,
The folks at Palantir and Thiel
Were any time informed or made aware.

“Fool!” Thus Saruman was named
For secret hid from Council long ago.
And should not those be likewise shamed
Who thought the city council need not know?

Policing with predictive code
The guardians of security delights,
But leads us on a risky road
Toward bias and ignoring civil rights.

Matalin, James Carville’s wife
Assures us all that we will be OK
As long as, in the course of life,
No cousin or acquaintance goes astray.

So Palantir in place remains
And now that we have heard of it, we must
Conclude that those who hold the reins
Of power have betrayed the public trust.

This is part of the collection Verses for the Information Age by Ernest Davis

I wrote a Bloomberg View piece about something Facebook could probably do to determine if the Russian ads made a difference in the 2016 election:

Facebook Could Do a Lot More on Trump-Russia

The company could probably measure the effect of election-meddling if it wanted to.

For my complete list of Bloomberg View pieces, go here.

I’m off of Twitter and Facebook, so my blog is starting to become my go-to rant spot once again.

This morning it’s Jane Brody that’s got me ranty, with her unbelievably incoherent take on exercise and diets:

More Fitness, Less Fatness

Let me give you my snarky summary of this piece:

1. Diets don’t work.
2. People are beginning to understand this.
3. They’re starting to accept their bodies as they are and go on with their lives.
4. This makes Jane Brody feel bad for them, because they really should feel bad for themselves.
5. Turns out people should exercise instead of diet to be healthier.
6. But Jane Brody suggests they should diet too, even though it doesn’t work.
7. Jane Brody concludes by entitling the piece to imply exercise makes people lose weight even though there’s plenty of evidence that it doesn’t.

My newest Bloomberg View piece is out:

Are You Poor? Here’s Your Virtual Hamster Cage

Technology could erase the limits of inequality.

See more of my Bloomberg View pieces here.