Propublica Machine Bias markdown notebooks

Key concepts: Logistic Regression, Cox model

Propublica has been kind enough to publish markdown notebooks and a detailed description of their analysis of the COMPAS recidivism tool using data from Broward County, FL. This was no doubt an arduous task, due to the fact that they had to find the actual recidivism outcomes for individual people, and use that to test the "decile" scores. (Scores of risk of reoffending.) They used a Cox model to find predictive accuracy and the results were, well, dismal. We're talking AUC's of 0.60 to 0.68, or about enough to place 1,000,000,000th in the world's most depressing Kaggle competition. They also found that, "Black defendants who do not recidivate were nearly twice as likely to be classified by COMPAS as higher risk compared to their white counterparts (45 percent vs. 23 percent)". In the push for public accountability, it's going to take a Herculean effort to make sure that companies like Northpointe, (makers of COMPAS) are held accountable for their predictive accuracy. Coming soon on my Github page, I will use a random forest to see what kinds of variable importance plots come out of the Broward county dataset.

Tech favorites from AERA pt. 1

There's a lot of chaffe at AERA, the nation's largest education research conference, but your boy is here to find you the wheat.

The first "Oh snap" moment I had was during a presentation involving a tool called "Datasketch"

Behind that simple interface lies a beast of a tool. Students can upload .csv files (From Excel or Google Sheets), draw sketches or animations via a tablet, and then click on individual elements of that drawing. When they click, they can link elements of the drawing to parts of the spreadsheet. This tool can be used for middle school to college if the need be. The project is available through the above link via Github, and the documentation is clear.

There was a researcher from Teacher's College (Douglas Ready) who measured the effects of a program called Teach to one math. 

During a recent TED talk, the cofounder of Air Bnb said something about design that has resonated with me throughout my first year back in school. "Any time you see duct tape, there is an opportunity for design." As a teacher in a 1:1 school I consistently used 4-5 separate technological tools in the classroom. Teach to one ties the functionality of several systems in to one. The picture above is of a student generated concept map that teachers might have used Lucidcharts for in the past. The program also includes assessments, online tutorials and skill building programs, and extensive teacher dashboards to monitor student learning. They currently only do Middle school products, but hopefully more grades will come soon. It seems as if many of these systems are based on the work being done by Rocketship and Summit prep schools in the Bay Area. Also of note: to implement this system to fidelity a school must have 2-3 math teachers and additional par educators free each period to handle the movement of students and small groups, which might focus on building skills or group problem solving. This is a definite administrative hurdle, but it holds promise. The initial research results have been encouraging.

The Physics of Super Mario Run

When I first started messing around with game engines I was always fascinated by the physics of game objects, namely how the user defined them and how the engines were constructed. This article shows how you can use Vernier Video Physics (one of my favorite IOS apps) to track the trajectory of any video game sprite.

Alternative voting systems

This activity from NCTM Illuminations explores the mathematics behind alternative voting models. (Because, you know, ours sucks.) This would go well in either an Algebra 1 or Algebra 2 classroom, but would segue way nicer in a class that has seen permutations, combinations, basic statistics and probability.

This article from Illuminations includes a simulation exercise that explores alternative voting systems that can be done with students as early as Algebra 1.

Oh for christ's sake

Now that I'm done curling up into the fetal position and sobbing, I'm going to start looking for resources for teachers who can help students understand some of the mathematics behind how a bigoted oligarch got elected president.

 A big one....... gerrymandering 

The presidential race was a big deal, but the Democratic minority in House and Senate will be what helps Trump hammer his policies through. This NCTM activity is a very rich task. It has students apply different geometric tests to determine how gerrymandered districts are. General students will have had very little exposure to this topic by the time they take Geometry. Luckily there is some background information provided. A good case to study is Michigan, which recently had 9/14 Representatives elected despite Democrats outnumbering Republicans by a large margin. I love the idea of introducing students to different indices used in social science. This would be best for Geometry students. A good extension would be to have students listen to the Politically Reactive podcast on redistricting. It's chock full of offensive language, but they discuss some of the data collection methods that informs redistricting in great detail. Maybe give them a NSFW warning. The message needs to be clear at some point though, that this practice effectively marginalized minority communities all over the U.S. in the last election.

The Electoral College

This.

       For those of you teaching Algebra 2, skip to 14:29. There's a great problem in there. Namely, if you recruited 5 people and they recruited five people, how many cycles would it take for everyone on Earth to be a distributor of Herbalife? This would lead be a prime example of a good task to require students to use the 4-fold method of representing the phenomena.
       The follow-up segment on the toll Herbalife has taken on Latino families offers a prime opportunity to make this problem real to many of our students.

Tiggly Wiggly

Tiggly manipulatives

Tiggly had one of the most promising products that I saw at this year's Edsurge conference in Austin. These digital manipulative exist for elementary subjects, to include alphabet letters. You press the correct manipulative on the screen and your iPad can register whether or not the correct block was placed. I would love to see some high school and middle school applications, which they currently have no plans for. They have a patent for this technology.  As an Instructional Design student I've often been troubled by the lack accommodations for IEPs with 99.9% of the products I see, but it appears there may be usable tech on the horizon. It will be interesting to see what this company does next. (Also available on Android, and thus soon touchscreen Chromebooks)