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Daily Archives: December 18, 2016

The Algorithm as a Human Artifact: Implications for Legal [Re]Search

Mart, Susan Nevelow, The Algorithm as a Human Artifact: Implications for Legal {Re}Search (October 26, 2016). Available for download at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2859720
“When legal researchers search in online databases for the information they need to solve a legal problem, they need to remember that the algorithms that are returning results to them were designed by humans. The world of legal research is a human-constructed world, and the biases and assumptions the teams of humans that construct the online world bring to the task are imported into the systems we use for research. This article takes a look at what happens when six different teams of humans set out to solve the same problem: how to return results relevant to a searcher’s query in a case database. When comparing the top ten results for the same search entered into the same jurisdictional case database in Casetext, Fastcase, Google Scholar, Lexis Advance, Ravel, and Westlaw, the results are a remarkable testament to the variability of human problem solving. There is hardly any overlap in the cases that appear in the top ten results returned by each database. An average of forty percent of the cases were unique to one database, and only about 7% of the cases were returned in search results in all six databases. It is fair to say that each different set of engineers brought very different biases and assumptions to the creation of each search algorithm. One of the most surprising results was the clustering among the databases in terms of the percentage of relevant results. The oldest database providers, Westlaw and Lexis, had the highest percentages of relevant results, at 67% and 57%, respectively. The newer legal database providers, Fastcase, Google Scholar, Casetext, and Ravel, were also clustered together at a lower relevance rate, returning approximately 40% relevant results. Legal research has always been an endeavor that required redundancy in searching; one resource does not usually provide a full answer, just as one search will not provide every necessary result. The study clearly demonstrates that the need for redundancy in searches and resources has not faded with the rise of the algorithm. From the law professor seeking to set up a corpus of cases to study, the trial lawyer seeking that one elusive case, the legal research professor showing students the limitations of algorithms, researchers who want full results will need to mine multiple resources with multiple searches. And more accountability about the nature of the algorithms being deployed would allow all researchers to craft searches that would be optimally successful.”

Pew – More voters will have access to non-English ballots in next election cycle

More voters will have access to non-English ballots in the next election cycle – by D’Vera CohnLeave, December 16, 2016. “The federal government has long required election ballots in some U.S. jurisdictions to be printed in languages other than English, based on the number of voting-age citizens who live in those communities and have limited… Continue Reading

McKinsey Report – The Age of Analytics – Competing in a Data-Driven World

The Age of Analytics – Competing in a Data-Driven World, December 2016 – Executive Summary; Full Report; Appendix (PDF) “Data and analytics capabilities have made a leap forward in recent years. The volume of available data has grown exponentially, more sophisticated algorithms have been developed, and computational power and storage have steadily improved. The convergence… Continue Reading

Data Science Central – Great list of resources: data science, visualization, machine learning, big data

Great list of resources: data science, visualization, machine learning, big data Posted by Vincent Granville on December 17, 2016. “Fantastic resource created by Andrea Motosi. I’ve only included the 5 categories that are the most relevant to our audience, though it has 31 categories total, including a few on distributed systems and Hadoop. Click here to view… Continue Reading

Large German research consortium boycotts Elsevier journals seeking open source access

BoingBoing – “Germany’s DEAL project, which includes over 60 major research institutions, has announced that all of its members are canceling their subscriptions to all of Elsevier’s academic and scientific journals, effective January 1, 2017. The boycott is in response to Elsevier’s refusal to adopt “transparent business models” to “make publications more openly accessible.” No… Continue Reading

Tech Giants Partner in Effort to Fight Online Terror Content

News release: “Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube are coming together to help curb the spread of terrorist content online. There is no place for content that promotes terrorism on our hosted consumer services. When alerted, we take swift action against this kind of content in accordance with our respective policies. Starting today, we commit to… Continue Reading

NYT – The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz

The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz, McKenzie Funk, NY Times, Nov. 19, 2016 [Commentary/Op-Ed] “For several years, a data firm eventually hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, has been using Facebook as a tool to build psychological profiles that represent some 230 million adult Americans. A spinoff of a British consulting company and… Continue Reading

CIA Cartography Division 75th Anniversary – Sharing Declassified Maps

National Geographic – See the Historic Maps Declassified by the CIA – A new gallery provides a rare look inside the 75-year history of the agency’s mapping unit: “…in honor of the center’s 75th anniversary this year, the agency has released a remarkable collection of declassified maps that illustrate—and perhaps even played a role in—many… Continue Reading