BOM. Bureau of Mines. However, I’ve come to accept that a more fitting name would be Bureau of Minds. As each day progresses, and I get a glimpse of the figures who populate this building, I am continually awestruck. These doctoral students, given enough time, will truly absolve us of all societal dilemmas. No doubt about it. Their work can only be described as astonishingly diverse and comprehensively sophisticated.
Today, Cole and Cade, a quirky duo with near-literary rapport, showed me the intricacies of supply-chain/flight pattern optimization in the corporate world and computer vision in the sporting realm. Tasked with labeling images, I made real contributions to their project!
Throughout the entire week, having the opportunity to work with so many different types of experts, I was fascinated by how often the idea of ethics in statistics came up. I have no background or demonstrated interest in the arcane mathematics of their research, but I genuinely appreciated the discussions that took a zoomed-out perspective on the impact of their labors. Some snapshots:
- Is it ethical to create clinical trials where some individuals are purposefully given “inferior” treatment?
- Is it ethical to use democratic opposition to certain types of speech in order to censor social media posts?
- Is it ethical to treat medical study participants differently based on the ratio of the whole population with the ailment to that in the sample?
- Is it ethical to abandon statistical standards in fields of business for the sake of manipulating models and predictions?
Big questions, these are, but it is wonderful to see that the most quantitatively-gifted among us are open to partnering with ethicists and humanists to secure a better future for all.