Home > Events > CLIP colloquium: Ravi Shroff (NYU)
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CLIP colloquium: Ravi Shroff (NYU)

Time: 
Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Location: 
3258 AV Williams Bldg

Simple Rules for Decision Making

Abstract

Doctors, judges and other experts typically rely on experience and intuition rather than statistical models when making decisions, often at the cost of significantly worse outcomes. I'll present a simple and intuitive strategy for creating statistically informed decision rules that are easy to apply, easy to understand, and perform on par with state-of-the art machine learning methods in many settings.  I'll illustrate these rules with two applications to the criminal justice system: investigatory stop decisions and pretrial detention decisions.

Bio

Ravi Shroff is a Senior Research Scientist at New York University's Center for Urban Science and Progress.  His research interests are broadly related to computational social science, and in particular the application of machine learning techniques to a variety of urban issues.  Current projects include the use of interpretable models in public policy, statistical methods to accurately measure gunfire-related crime, and predictive models in child welfare.  Ravi holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from UC San Diego and a M.S. in applied data science and urban informatics from NYU.