Keynote

Friday, February 21
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m

The Ethical Statistician and Data Scientist

I had the honor of moderating a panel session on ethics at the 2019 Conference on Statistical Practice. This was an eye-opening experience. It reinforced for me that as statisticians and data scientists we must be intentional in our application of the Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice. Throughout our careers, we must confront issues such as company privileged information, biases in algorithms and models, data ownership, and more. Our analyses always start with data, so we will focus more on data ethics in this presentation. I will begin by offering my definition of data ethics and will then provide some real-world examples where ethical concerns arose. I will conclude the discussion by exploring case studies with you, which will help all of us think through some of the issues and prepare us to be ethical data scientists in the future.

Wendy Martinez is the director of the Mathematical Statistics Research Center at the Office of Survey Methods Research in the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. She will also serve as the 115th president of the American Statistical Association beginning on January 1, 2020.