Date of Submission
Spring 2017
Academic Programs and Concentrations
Philosophy
Project Advisor 1
Kritika Yegnashankaran
Abstract/Artist's Statement
It is becoming increasingly common for institutions to use statistics to inform policy decisions. We should be prepared to ask ourselves what regulatory principles should be imposed on institutions that seek to justify certain policies through deference to a statistical analysis. This paper will examine the difficulties that come with using statistics to justify actions, and argue that certain standards of transparency and verifiability should be expected from any institution that seeks to involve a statistical analysis in the formation of policies. I will first use Market Share Liability, an established use of statistics, to draw out what responsibilities an institution might have regarding the collection and presentation of statistics. Then, I will propose a system that aims to prevent abusive applications of statistics.
Open Access Agreement
Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Shin, Justin, "Problems With Using Statistics to Justify Institutional Policies" (2017). Senior Projects Spring 2017. 224.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2017/224
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