Amidst all the conversations of how to best pay for healthcare in the United States, we also need to discuss how to best treat patients for those dollars. As with so many areas of our lives, algorithms trained via machine learning are becoming a part of the treatment process. Machine learning techniques look for patterns in data, even to the point of finding patterns their programmers did not expect or know about. Sadly, one common pattern in many data sets is racial bias. Often when an algorithm is looking to replicate human decision making, it winds up replicating the biases of the humans as well. A recent study revealed exactly this sort of racial bias in an algorithm used to prioritize healthcare delivery such that black patients were getting less care than white patients with equivalent needs.
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Science in Review: Seeing the Random Forest for the Trees
We talk a lot about science here, but science isn’t just talk. I thought maybe we could roll up our sleeves and try a little science. Our options are limited by the blog format, but it’s a pretty good platform for data science and machine learning. Don’t worry, the computer will do all the work; you can just follow along if you don’t want to deal with code.
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Science Corner: We Probably Think This World Is About Us
I found a companion piece to last week’s musing on science from a child’s perspective. Entitled What College Physics Students Can Learn From Little Kids, it’s a revealing look at how fifth graders and college freshmen think about basic physics questions in the same incorrect way. The principles in questions are Newton’s laws of motion. Based on some simple, unguided observations, most students of both ages suppose that constant force is required for constant motion and objects left to their own devices will eventually come to a stop. Newton tells a very different story; constant force is associated with constant acceleration and objects not experiencing external force will keep doing what they are doing indefinitely–either moving with constant velocity or sitting at rest.
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NY Times: Colleges and Evangelicals Collide on Bias Policy
Yesterday, Colleges and Evangelicals Collide on Bias Policy ran on the front page of the NY Times.
For 40 years, evangelicals at Bowdoin College have gathered periodically to study the Bible together, to pray and to worship. They are a tiny minority on the liberal arts college campus, but they have been a part of the school’s community, gathering in the chapel, the dining center, the dorms.
After this summer, the Bowdoin Christian Fellowship will no longer be recognized by the college. Already, the college has disabled the electronic key cards of the group’s longtime volunteer advisers. . . .
Michael Paulson’s insightful piece gives attention to significant Campus Access Concerns faced by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and other campus ministries across the United States.
. . . At Cal State, the nation’s largest university system with nearly 450,000 students on 23 campuses, the chancellor is preparing this summer to withdraw official recognition from evangelical groups that are refusing to pledge not to discriminate on the basis of religion in the selection of their leaders. And at Vanderbilt, more than a dozen groups, most of them evangelical but one of them Catholic, have already lost their official standing over the same issue; one Christian group balked after a university official asked the students to cut the words “personal commitment to Jesus Christ†from their list of qualifications for leadership. . . .
“It’s absurd,†said Alec Hill, the president of InterVarsity, a national association of evangelical student groups, including the Bowdoin Christian Fellowship. “The genius of American culture is that we allow voluntary, self-identified organizations to form, and that’s what our student groups are. . . .
If you have not already done such, I encourage you to take the time to prayerfully consider and discuss Colleges and Evangelicals Collide on Bias Policy. The below material is a distillation of what I have posted on Facebook (InterVarsity Faculty Ministry and InterVarsity Emerging Scholars Network) and received through InterVarsity’s ministry as a whole. Pray for God’s continued granting of discernment. As you have particular prayer concerns, please share below and/or drop me a line. May this article signal “a changing tide in matters of public policy and faith, principled pluralism and freedom of association”. To God be the glory!
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Why I’m (Still) A Christian – Part I
In my last post, I expressed some surprise at the fact that I am still a Christian, and that was genuine. But at the same time, I also find it perfectly reasonable and rational to be a Christian. Which, as you can probably imagine, is pretty important to someone who is scientifically inclined. And so I thought it was worth exploring a bit more of why it is that I am a Christian and how that fits in with my methodical approach to, well, just about everything (as my long-suffering wife can attest).
An important part of any rigorous scientific undertaking is to be aware of your biases. It may be tempting to think that all science is impartial and free of bias, and some might even cultivate that perception. But the reality is that any research, and really the scientific enterprise as a whole, involves some bias or another. Learning may in fact require bias. That doesn’t mean all biases are created equal, or that there is no reason to ever try to reduce bias. But it does mean it cannot be done away with, and so the next best option is to be clear about it.
And so, in the spirit of transparency, I freely acknowledge that my upbringing in a Christian home and in the church certainly contributed to my Christian beliefs. I would even go so far as to allow that it might be reasonable, as some have done, to characterize Christianity as a meme that I have contracted by virtue of interaction with other Christians. I certainly didn’t derive it from a set of indisputable first principles, nor did I come to it by means of some new direct revelation from God to me and me alone. I received it as a whole set of doctrines and practices from others; more correctly, I received various bits of doctrine and practice from a variety of Christians which I synthesized and recombined, and have possibly passed on to new folks. [Read more…] about Why I’m (Still) A Christian – Part I