How can data science be applied / reduce the rate of violent crime / solve mysteries ... if it can?

There's a correlation to race and crime rate in the data. TRUE.

Calling it "racist" suggests that racism is the cause of the correlation. This is where you are wrong.

There's absolutely no way you can prove causation except by throwing more correlations at me. Racism may be a factor. But it is certainly not the factor. The problems are as such

  • You don't have a good definition to "racism" and as such your hypothesis is weak

  • There's no way to prove or disprove that racism was a factor, except, again, showing me correlations.

  • You have no grounds whatsoever that racism is causal

Sorry, science doesn't work on unprovable, unfalsifiable and hypothetical assumptions and outcomes. "More ___ people get arrested", is not proof of racism. Period.

Your ethical and sociological arguments are inconsequential because neither the data nor the logic supports your feelings. It's literally just your opinion

/r/datascience Thread Parent