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Quantitative Approaches to Social Justice (Prof. Chad Topaz)
September 22, 2021 @ 4:30 pm - 5:45 pm
Title: Quantitative Approaches to Social Justice
Prof. Chad Topaz (he/him/his)
Co-Founder and Executive Director of Research, QSIDE Institute
Professor of Mathematics, Williams College
Abstract: Civil rights leader, educator, and investigative journalist Ida B. Wells said that “the way to right wrongs is to shine the light of truth upon them.” This talk will demonstrate how quantitative and computational approaches can shine a light on social injustices and help build solutions to remedy them. We will present quantitative social justice projects on topics ranging from diversity in art museums to equity in criminal sentencing to affirmative action, health care access, and other fields. The tools engaged include crowdsourcing, data cleaning, clustering, hypothesis testing, statistical modeling, Markov chains, data visualization, and much more. I hope that this talk leaves you informed about the breadth of social justice applications that one can tackle using mathematical and data science tools in careful collaboration with other scholars and activists.
Prof. Chad Topaz (he/him/his) is the co-Founder and Executive Director of Research at the QSIDE Institute which promote the quantitative study of inclusion, diversity, and equity. He is also a Professor of Mathematics, Williams College.
This colloquium will be virtual and a Zoom link will be distributed via the CCMS Email list.