Chris Wiggins recently gave a series of talks on “What should future statisticians, CEOs, and senators know about the history and ethics of data?”at Princeton’s Summer Institute in Computational Social Science, at Facebook, and at the University of California, Berkeley. Wiggins, a founding member of the executive committee of the Data Science Institute (DSI), recounted the lessons he learned from teaching “Data: Past, Present, and Future,” a new course at Columbia. The course traces intellectual technical advances from the 18th century to the present and explores the interplay among data science, ethics and product development.

You can view his slideshow here: https://www.slideshare.net/chrishwiggins/history-and-ethics-of-data

or watch a video of his presentation:

Wiggins is also the Chief Data Scientist at The New York Times and Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics and Systems Biology at Columbia. Outside of Columbia, he co-founded hackNY, a non-profit that organizes student hackathons. He also founded the hackNY Fellows Program, a summer internship program that pairs students with NYC startups such as Tumblr, Buzzfeed, etc. Additionally, he’s a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has received Columbia University’s Avanessians Diversity Award.

— Robert Florida