[Applause]
by Oh what the border agent looks at me
a confused look on his face it’s 2009
I’m at the Canadian border crossing back
into Michigan from Ontario biostatistics
I repeat calmly it’s the application of
statistics to medicine and public health
that’s a bit above my paygrade he
chuckles and I laugh nervously moments
later my car is surrounded by heavily
armed agents all dressed in black I feel
like I’m Jason Bourne Jason Bourne
biostatistician they asked me to hand
over my keys and tell me I’m being
detained why did you go to Pakistan last
year they asked me um to visit my
grandfather how long have you been in
the US my whole life what were you doing
in Canada I was curious about what was
north of Michigan so I went for her
drive what’s in Northern Ontario who
goes there yeah it’s a white river so
now white river might sound scenic but
to be fair it’s the middle of nowhere
there’s nothing in white river there
isn’t even an actual river you can
here’s a map to give you some context
the agents tell me that my this is yeah
no it’s literally nowhere the middle of
nowhere but there’s another slide that
actually shows you all right good job
I’m glad I rehearsed this like a hundred
times including with the technical
difficulty okay so the agents tell me
that my pattern of behavior resembles
that of a drug trafficker who’s also
would be a biostatistics grad student
what a perfect cover so they’re going to
search my car so I wait ten minutes 20
minutes 30 minutes finally an hour has
passed I go back up to the counter how
long is this going to take I ask why
don’t you take a seat says one of the
officers only it doesn’t sound like he’s
asking me I’m sorry is that an order I
asked two other officers have now joined
him why don’t you take a seat he repeats
a little more menacingly suddenly I
remember something I had read on a sign
on the wall if you feel you are not
being treated professionally ask to
speak with the supervisor I’d like to
speak with the supervisor I announce
immediately the men step back a nice
older woman steps up in their place she
listens to my grievances a few minutes
later they return with my passport
you’ve been cleared they tell me so I
Drive back to Ann Arbor I’m hanging out
with a friend you know having lunch on
campus
he asked me you know what did you do
last weekend so no I hate this question
because I never have a good answer to
this question but now I do so I tell him
the story beginning to end and he’s just
like wow that’s so cool and he says you
have to write about this because if it’s
happening to you it’s happening to other
people who don’t have the same privilege
the same opportunities the same ability
to communicate you have and maybe you
can help those people by writing your
story and my initial reaction is to roll
my eyes I mean I’m a grad student in
biostatistics I’m not a journalist but
he’s insistent and my curiosity gets the
better of me
so I write up my account I title it
dramatically white rivers brown skin and
black deeds into the rabbit hole of
border detentions and racial profiling
that’s the article and if you want to
buy the movie rights talk to me
afterwards I would like to play myself
Jason Bourne is uh it doesn’t quite have
my melanin and I write this article I
send it to an editor at The Huffington
Post and it gets published the next day
this is my first time ever published in
a national outlet and I’m ecstatic and I
feel really good but I want you to
understand that I also felt a little
uncomfortable because I felt as if I was
on a brink because I hear I am grad
student in biostatistics and I thought
what am i doing writing articles and
doing journalism and I think this is
where too often we pursue the path of
least resistance
we’re not thoughtful enough about what
we want to do in our lives what are the
questions were deeply curious about now
Bulleh Shah is a Punjabi Sufi poet who
lived in the 18th century and he says
para para el MTF alleluia
Takada apnaa apnaa para a he says you
have read so many books and you became a
scholar but you never read the book of
your own life
you never read your own self and in that
moment as I read myself with this
experience I almost felt as if I were a
caterpillar I was a caterpillar I had
always been safe in a cocoon a cocoon of
academia a cocoon where I had an
identity
I felt as if I were emerging from this
cocoon I was becoming a butterfly and it
was hard in the beginning because part
of me was tugged into this you know I
was a biostatistician next slide
you can see yes so yeah that’s literally
a screenshot for one of my final exams
for survival analysis so on one side I
was a biostatistician doing proofs
proving theorems learning about survival
analysis on the other hand I was in
Detroit investigating the murder of any
mom who had been killed in an FBI raid
and I sort of lived this double life and
I felt like a butterfly so now I had
these two wings but they weren’t really
in harmony it was just like I’d be a
statistician in class and then I’d be a
journalist and I felt like this it was
attention it was attention but I also
feel like it was an opportunity because
now all of a sudden I didn’t have one
identity one title I had to cling to I
could be more than one thing and I had
faith that as long as I stayed the
course with both of my passions I would
eventually find my calling and as I
heard the other speaker said I feel like
this is what the brink is the brink is
where our life experiences intersect and
it’s where we’re able to truly do
something different and make a
difference thank you so fast forward
seven years seven years one time yeah I
look really young but it’s uh it’s 2016
I’m sitting at home in Queens I’m eating
a pint of haagen-dazs pistachio ice
cream and a lot has happened in my life
in the past few years I finished my
master’s at Michigan I spent a year at
the University of Chicago as a PhD
student I worked on Ron Paul’s campaign
libertarians in the house No okay a few
it’s okay we can still be friends I
worked at a startup called Groff science
I worked at Facebook which is a big
social networking site and i I’ve done a
lot of things so I’m sitting at home I’m
scrolling through my newsfeed and all of
a sudden breaks it happens and like most
of us I get my news through secondhand
through Facebook so bricks a brexit and
I’m like all my friends are talking
about it and then I come across an
article which really catches my eye it’s
called the world’s reaction to brexit an
emoji now short pause I am fascinated by
emojis I always have been
when I first got a smartphone
I had a friend who would text me you
know just these emojis and I was like
does it literally mean you’re crying and
while you’re laughing like that’s so
cool like can I study that and I was
like what is the difference between a
tiger emoji and a lion emoji and like
what is the difference between a red
heart and a green heart like does it
mean she likes me I don’t know it’s so
complicated and I think at this point my
brain was still siloed off I had a
journalist side I had a data scientist
side high decide that liked emojis and I
was never able to bring them and I
decided like pistachio ice cream
obviously and I wasn’t able to bring
them together but I think when I saw
this article I was like okay this is
awesome like they actually did what I’ve
always wanted to do they’re using data
science to study the world’s reaction to
emojis um and then I clicked through to
the article and this is what I found so
the article itself is you know francois
hollande sad emoji Angela Merkel angry
emoji Donald Trump hands praying emoji
that’s the whole article and I was like
actually this is kind of lame and I was
about to complain about it you know it’s
like okay what a lame article in court
so I’m never gonna wear their watches
again it’s a joke it’s a bad joke so
it’s a publication and it’s a watch
company okay cool
so and I was going to complain about it
but then I remembered something my
sister tells me which he says don’t
complain about the media become the
media and Here I am I’m a journalist I’m
a data scientist
I love emojis I can actually do
something about it and when I think
about that journalism data science
liking emojis I was kind of like a
triple threat and I was a butterfly so I
I locked myself in my room and I engaged
in a one-man 72-hour hackathon I learned
how to use the Twitter API I downloaded
a hundred thousand tweets about brexit I
learned how to extract emojis from those
tweets and I wrote a thousand word
article called the emojis of brexit I
emailed it to an editor advice at 8 p.m.
on a Tuesday night 17 minutes later she
respond she’s like this was great we’re
gonna run it tomorrow and that’s how I
became an emoji data scientist and it
was published the next day um and I had
so much fun when I was doing this and I
realized if I had approached brexit
purely as a journalist you know I might
have
written about the implications for the
EU or talked to some professors fight
approached it purely as a data scientist
I might have done some research on
currency fluctuations or spot prices
fired approached it as someone who loves
emojis I might have gone through my
Twitter feed and looked at people’s
emojis but only by putting on all of my
hats journalists data scientists emoji
enthusiasts was I able to do something
novel was I able to do something
different only by bringing together all
of my unique life experiences and you
know so you can see some of the emojis
of brexit where essentially we found two
things one people use emojis to express
a wide range of emotions on issues they
care about there’s happiness sadness
clapping crying it’s all there and you
also notice that certain emojis
correlate with the hashtags people use
so this is obvious to us but to anyone
older than 35 this is like whoa we
thought emojis were just random and
boring but actually the people who were
happy breaks that happened when they
tweet vote leave their tweeting the
British flag emoji they’re tweeting the
party hat emoji because they’re really
happy it happened yes that’s crazy and
then people who are sodded happened who
were Tooting vote remain not my vote
they’re crying they’re praying that they
do a revote
and stuff that’s like really interesting
like actually yeah emojis are not
completely random there’s actually quite
a bit of interesting signal there so
yeah I had a lot of fun doing that in
case you couldn’t tell more fun that I
had as a biostatistician
and I started an emoji data science lab
called prismo gee and since then I’ve
looked at emojis and the Kanye West
Taylor Swift controversy I’ve looked at
emoji I’ve looked at emoji usage on
Election Day I’ve done a deep dive in
the peach emoji into the peach emoji a
lot of you guys I’m sure are big fans
and I’ve I’ve looked at the I need extra
time in my talk is that slide gets like
a minute of laughter people just can’t
stop laughing and I’ve looked at the
emojis of resistance the last one is
especially personal for me so after the
Muslim ban was announced my sister and I
we went to JFK because everyone was
protesting there a lot of lawyers had
gathered there so my sister works for
the government so she huddled would like
this the city staffers table and she was
make doing useful things I went to the
lawyer’s table and said hey like I like
emojis and I watch Law & Order can I
help you guys and they were like we
don’t know about that and I was like ah
crap okay so I went home but when I went
home I was like oh actually I can look
at emojis people use when they’re using
these hashtags no band no wall no Muslim
ban not my president and what are the
emojis they’re using so I published the
story in emoji pedia it quickly went
viral
basically the fascinating thing we found
is that in the fist is the emoji our
positions as I as I tried to patent it’s
not patented but yeah it’s the fist but
also the American flag because a lot of
protest is motivated by a deep sense of
patriotism people are using the American
flag when they’re saying hey this travel
ban is not in line with our values
people are using the heart emoji because
there’s a lot of love for refugees and
for immigrants and all of that was
really cool
Mashable made this their snapchat story
for that whole day so that’s my my claim
to fame for anyone who is interested
stories aha
what I learned from this always be on
the lookout for the unique contribution
that only you can make and chances are
you’ll find it at the intersection of
all of your life experiences so now I’d
like to give you a teaser of some of my
latest work if you recall initially when
I was a caterpillar I was you know I was
a caterpillar and then I became a
butterfly and then I was like a data
scientist I was a journalist it was like
a mess up butterfly and gradually I was
like okay emoji is like I can I can do
both and it’s fun but now I realize you
know there’s just so much there’s so
many places that that can take there’s
so many opportunities that come my way
when I have this uniform way of looking
at the world so in my latest work I play
data science to journalism to understand
the media so let me give you an example
a few months ago I’m at a hackathon in
Boston eating pistachio ice cream and
this this woman asked me where you from
and I say I’m from Brooklyn she goes hey
Williamsburg and I say no that’s not
where I’m from I don’t know if this ever
happens to you guys I hate it when this
happens to me I saw him from Marine Park
know by a show of hands who here has
ever heard of Marine Park six people and
three of them are in my family so
who here has ever heard of Williamsburg
almost everyone in the room so now this
might seem like a coincidence to you but
as you know so I actually went to the
census and I said how many people live
in these neighborhoods and Marine Park
actually has more people than
Williamsburg Williamsburg has 120,000
Marine Park has 170,000 so okay these
are two equally sized neighborhoods that
are not being covered similarly so then
I looked at news articles mentioning
each of these neighborhoods
I found a hundred and fifty thousand
articles mentioning Williamsburg and
only five thousand mentioning Marine
Park that’s a fifty to one disparity
which is kind of crazy and then so
people talk about food deserts
I love pistachio ice cream so obviously
I think about food deserts because
sometimes it’s the only thing they have
at the corner store but I think we can
also think about news deserts and news
deserts are huge swathes of New York
City in Brooklyn and Queens and Staten
Island that just are not covered in the
news so we took a deeper dive during
this hackathon I was at and we looked at
the headlines the top words and
headlines and articles mentioning Marine
Park and the top words we found our old
man and arrested now this would make
sense of Marine Park was a really like
dangerous neighborhood but it’s not it’s
a very safe irish-italian neighborhood
if you go there I encourage you to check
out Frank’s pizzeria and if you look at
Williamsburg articles about Williamsburg
the top words are new man and bar and
this is something really I don’t think
it’s it’s conscious it’s I don’t think
these newspapers are consciously doing
this but I think it just happens
these are unconscious biases that
replicate themselves in broader society
and I think this is such a powerful
example for me of if I had approached
this news deserts problem as a
journalist you know I would have written
articles about it if I had approached it
as a community activist I would have
held rallies and said you know Marine
Park is not a place where old men get
arrested if I was just the data
scientist I would have written some
machine learning algorithm but I’m not
just one of these things I’m all of
these things so I brought together all
of my hats I did this analysis where we
are applying for some grants so stay
stay stay tuned to see what happens with
this but I think what I really learned
from this is when we combine our life
experiences when we truly read ourselves
as bullish Shaw says that’s when we’ll
figure out what are the unique
contributions we can make
so as you leave today I encourage you to
go through your life experiences figure
out what are the unique things that make
you who you are and how can you combine
those together to really satisfy your
curiosity to make an impact to do things
that you’re proud of go as you go out I
encourage you to become your inner
butterfly and then go out and fly thank
you
[Applause]
by Oh what the border agent looks at me
a confused look on his face it’s 2009
I’m at the Canadian border crossing back
into Michigan from Ontario biostatistics
I repeat calmly it’s the application of
statistics to medicine and public health
that’s a bit above my paygrade he
chuckles and I laugh nervously moments
later my car is surrounded by heavily
armed agents all dressed in black I feel
like I’m Jason Bourne Jason Bourne
biostatistician they asked me to hand
over my keys and tell me I’m being
detained why did you go to Pakistan last
year they asked me um to visit my
grandfather how long have you been in
the US my whole life what were you doing
in Canada I was curious about what was
north of Michigan so I went for her
drive what’s in Northern Ontario who
goes there yeah it’s a white river so
now white river might sound scenic but
to be fair it’s the middle of nowhere
there’s nothing in white river there
isn’t even an actual river you can
here’s a map to give you some context
the agents tell me that my this is yeah
no it’s literally nowhere the middle of
nowhere but there’s another slide that
actually shows you all right good job
I’m glad I rehearsed this like a hundred
times including with the technical
difficulty okay so the agents tell me
that my pattern of behavior resembles
that of a drug trafficker who’s also
would be a biostatistics grad student
what a perfect cover so they’re going to
search my car so I wait ten minutes 20
minutes 30 minutes finally an hour has
passed I go back up to the counter how
long is this going to take I ask why
don’t you take a seat says one of the
officers only it doesn’t sound like he’s
asking me I’m sorry is that an order I
asked two other officers have now joined
him why don’t you take a seat he repeats
a little more menacingly suddenly I
remember something I had read on a sign
on the wall if you feel you are not
being treated professionally ask to
speak with the supervisor I’d like to
speak with the supervisor I announce
immediately the men step back a nice
older woman steps up in their place she
listens to my grievances a few minutes
later they return with my passport
you’ve been cleared they tell me so I
Drive back to Ann Arbor I’m hanging out
with a friend you know having lunch on
campus
he asked me you know what did you do
last weekend so no I hate this question
because I never have a good answer to
this question but now I do so I tell him
the story beginning to end and he’s just
like wow that’s so cool and he says you
have to write about this because if it’s
happening to you it’s happening to other
people who don’t have the same privilege
the same opportunities the same ability
to communicate you have and maybe you
can help those people by writing your
story and my initial reaction is to roll
my eyes I mean I’m a grad student in
biostatistics I’m not a journalist but
he’s insistent and my curiosity gets the
better of me
so I write up my account I title it
dramatically white rivers brown skin and
black deeds into the rabbit hole of
border detentions and racial profiling
that’s the article and if you want to
buy the movie rights talk to me
afterwards I would like to play myself
Jason Bourne is uh it doesn’t quite have
my melanin and I write this article I
send it to an editor at The Huffington
Post and it gets published the next day
this is my first time ever published in
a national outlet and I’m ecstatic and I
feel really good but I want you to
understand that I also felt a little
uncomfortable because I felt as if I was
on a brink because I hear I am grad
student in biostatistics and I thought
what am i doing writing articles and
doing journalism and I think this is
where too often we pursue the path of
least resistance
we’re not thoughtful enough about what
we want to do in our lives what are the
questions were deeply curious about now
Bulleh Shah is a Punjabi Sufi poet who
lived in the 18th century and he says
para para el MTF alleluia
Takada apnaa apnaa para a he says you
have read so many books and you became a
scholar but you never read the book of
your own life
you never read your own self and in that
moment as I read myself with this
experience I almost felt as if I were a
caterpillar I was a caterpillar I had
always been safe in a cocoon a cocoon of
academia a cocoon where I had an
identity
I felt as if I were emerging from this
cocoon I was becoming a butterfly and it
was hard in the beginning because part
of me was tugged into this you know I
was a biostatistician next slide
you can see yes so yeah that’s literally
a screenshot for one of my final exams
for survival analysis so on one side I
was a biostatistician doing proofs
proving theorems learning about survival
analysis on the other hand I was in
Detroit investigating the murder of any
mom who had been killed in an FBI raid
and I sort of lived this double life and
I felt like a butterfly so now I had
these two wings but they weren’t really
in harmony it was just like I’d be a
statistician in class and then I’d be a
journalist and I felt like this it was
attention it was attention but I also
feel like it was an opportunity because
now all of a sudden I didn’t have one
identity one title I had to cling to I
could be more than one thing and I had
faith that as long as I stayed the
course with both of my passions I would
eventually find my calling and as I
heard the other speaker said I feel like
this is what the brink is the brink is
where our life experiences intersect and
it’s where we’re able to truly do
something different and make a
difference thank you so fast forward
seven years seven years one time yeah I
look really young but it’s uh it’s 2016
I’m sitting at home in Queens I’m eating
a pint of haagen-dazs pistachio ice
cream and a lot has happened in my life
in the past few years I finished my
master’s at Michigan I spent a year at
the University of Chicago as a PhD
student I worked on Ron Paul’s campaign
libertarians in the house No okay a few
it’s okay we can still be friends I
worked at a startup called Groff science
I worked at Facebook which is a big
social networking site and i I’ve done a
lot of things so I’m sitting at home I’m
scrolling through my newsfeed and all of
a sudden breaks it happens and like most
of us I get my news through secondhand
through Facebook so bricks a brexit and
I’m like all my friends are talking
about it and then I come across an
article which really catches my eye it’s
called the world’s reaction to brexit an
emoji now short pause I am fascinated by
emojis I always have been
when I first got a smartphone
I had a friend who would text me you
know just these emojis and I was like
does it literally mean you’re crying and
while you’re laughing like that’s so
cool like can I study that and I was
like what is the difference between a
tiger emoji and a lion emoji and like
what is the difference between a red
heart and a green heart like does it
mean she likes me I don’t know it’s so
complicated and I think at this point my
brain was still siloed off I had a
journalist side I had a data scientist
side high decide that liked emojis and I
was never able to bring them and I
decided like pistachio ice cream
obviously and I wasn’t able to bring
them together but I think when I saw
this article I was like okay this is
awesome like they actually did what I’ve
always wanted to do they’re using data
science to study the world’s reaction to
emojis um and then I clicked through to
the article and this is what I found so
the article itself is you know francois
hollande sad emoji Angela Merkel angry
emoji Donald Trump hands praying emoji
that’s the whole article and I was like
actually this is kind of lame and I was
about to complain about it you know it’s
like okay what a lame article in court
so I’m never gonna wear their watches
again it’s a joke it’s a bad joke so
it’s a publication and it’s a watch
company okay cool
so and I was going to complain about it
but then I remembered something my
sister tells me which he says don’t
complain about the media become the
media and Here I am I’m a journalist I’m
a data scientist
I love emojis I can actually do
something about it and when I think
about that journalism data science
liking emojis I was kind of like a
triple threat and I was a butterfly so I
I locked myself in my room and I engaged
in a one-man 72-hour hackathon I learned
how to use the Twitter API I downloaded
a hundred thousand tweets about brexit I
learned how to extract emojis from those
tweets and I wrote a thousand word
article called the emojis of brexit I
emailed it to an editor advice at 8 p.m.
on a Tuesday night 17 minutes later she
respond she’s like this was great we’re
gonna run it tomorrow and that’s how I
became an emoji data scientist and it
was published the next day um and I had
so much fun when I was doing this and I
realized if I had approached brexit
purely as a journalist you know I might
have
written about the implications for the
EU or talked to some professors fight
approached it purely as a data scientist
I might have done some research on
currency fluctuations or spot prices
fired approached it as someone who loves
emojis I might have gone through my
Twitter feed and looked at people’s
emojis but only by putting on all of my
hats journalists data scientists emoji
enthusiasts was I able to do something
novel was I able to do something
different only by bringing together all
of my unique life experiences and you
know so you can see some of the emojis
of brexit where essentially we found two
things one people use emojis to express
a wide range of emotions on issues they
care about there’s happiness sadness
clapping crying it’s all there and you
also notice that certain emojis
correlate with the hashtags people use
so this is obvious to us but to anyone
older than 35 this is like whoa we
thought emojis were just random and
boring but actually the people who were
happy breaks that happened when they
tweet vote leave their tweeting the
British flag emoji they’re tweeting the
party hat emoji because they’re really
happy it happened yes that’s crazy and
then people who are sodded happened who
were Tooting vote remain not my vote
they’re crying they’re praying that they
do a revote
and stuff that’s like really interesting
like actually yeah emojis are not
completely random there’s actually quite
a bit of interesting signal there so
yeah I had a lot of fun doing that in
case you couldn’t tell more fun that I
had as a biostatistician
and I started an emoji data science lab
called prismo gee and since then I’ve
looked at emojis and the Kanye West
Taylor Swift controversy I’ve looked at
emoji I’ve looked at emoji usage on
Election Day I’ve done a deep dive in
the peach emoji into the peach emoji a
lot of you guys I’m sure are big fans
and I’ve I’ve looked at the I need extra
time in my talk is that slide gets like
a minute of laughter people just can’t
stop laughing and I’ve looked at the
emojis of resistance the last one is
especially personal for me so after the
Muslim ban was announced my sister and I
we went to JFK because everyone was
protesting there a lot of lawyers had
gathered there so my sister works for
the government so she huddled would like
this the city staffers table and she was
make doing useful things I went to the
lawyer’s table and said hey like I like
emojis and I watch Law & Order can I
help you guys and they were like we
don’t know about that and I was like ah
crap okay so I went home but when I went
home I was like oh actually I can look
at emojis people use when they’re using
these hashtags no band no wall no Muslim
ban not my president and what are the
emojis they’re using so I published the
story in emoji pedia it quickly went
viral
basically the fascinating thing we found
is that in the fist is the emoji our
positions as I as I tried to patent it’s
not patented but yeah it’s the fist but
also the American flag because a lot of
protest is motivated by a deep sense of
patriotism people are using the American
flag when they’re saying hey this travel
ban is not in line with our values
people are using the heart emoji because
there’s a lot of love for refugees and
for immigrants and all of that was
really cool
Mashable made this their snapchat story
for that whole day so that’s my my claim
to fame for anyone who is interested
stories aha
what I learned from this always be on
the lookout for the unique contribution
that only you can make and chances are
you’ll find it at the intersection of
all of your life experiences so now I’d
like to give you a teaser of some of my
latest work if you recall initially when
I was a caterpillar I was you know I was
a caterpillar and then I became a
butterfly and then I was like a data
scientist I was a journalist it was like
a mess up butterfly and gradually I was
like okay emoji is like I can I can do
both and it’s fun but now I realize you
know there’s just so much there’s so
many places that that can take there’s
so many opportunities that come my way
when I have this uniform way of looking
at the world so in my latest work I play
data science to journalism to understand
the media so let me give you an example
a few months ago I’m at a hackathon in
Boston eating pistachio ice cream and
this this woman asked me where you from
and I say I’m from Brooklyn she goes hey
Williamsburg and I say no that’s not
where I’m from I don’t know if this ever
happens to you guys I hate it when this
happens to me I saw him from Marine Park
know by a show of hands who here has
ever heard of Marine Park six people and
three of them are in my family so
who here has ever heard of Williamsburg
almost everyone in the room so now this
might seem like a coincidence to you but
as you know so I actually went to the
census and I said how many people live
in these neighborhoods and Marine Park
actually has more people than
Williamsburg Williamsburg has 120,000
Marine Park has 170,000 so okay these
are two equally sized neighborhoods that
are not being covered similarly so then
I looked at news articles mentioning
each of these neighborhoods
I found a hundred and fifty thousand
articles mentioning Williamsburg and
only five thousand mentioning Marine
Park that’s a fifty to one disparity
which is kind of crazy and then so
people talk about food deserts
I love pistachio ice cream so obviously
I think about food deserts because
sometimes it’s the only thing they have
at the corner store but I think we can
also think about news deserts and news
deserts are huge swathes of New York
City in Brooklyn and Queens and Staten
Island that just are not covered in the
news so we took a deeper dive during
this hackathon I was at and we looked at
the headlines the top words and
headlines and articles mentioning Marine
Park and the top words we found our old
man and arrested now this would make
sense of Marine Park was a really like
dangerous neighborhood but it’s not it’s
a very safe irish-italian neighborhood
if you go there I encourage you to check
out Frank’s pizzeria and if you look at
Williamsburg articles about Williamsburg
the top words are new man and bar and
this is something really I don’t think
it’s it’s conscious it’s I don’t think
these newspapers are consciously doing
this but I think it just happens
these are unconscious biases that
replicate themselves in broader society
and I think this is such a powerful
example for me of if I had approached
this news deserts problem as a
journalist you know I would have written
articles about it if I had approached it
as a community activist I would have
held rallies and said you know Marine
Park is not a place where old men get
arrested if I was just the data
scientist I would have written some
machine learning algorithm but I’m not
just one of these things I’m all of
these things so I brought together all
of my hats I did this analysis where we
are applying for some grants so stay
stay stay tuned to see what happens with
this but I think what I really learned
from this is when we combine our life
experiences when we truly read ourselves
as bullish Shaw says that’s when we’ll
figure out what are the unique
contributions we can make
so as you leave today I encourage you to
go through your life experiences figure
out what are the unique things that make
you who you are and how can you combine
those together to really satisfy your
curiosity to make an impact to do things
that you’re proud of go as you go out I
encourage you to become your inner
butterfly and then go out and fly thank
you
[Applause]
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