[Theory] New course - TTIC 44010 People, Society, and Algorithms

[Brandie Jones via Theory]

Dear all,

I am teaching a new special-topics course at TTIC on People, Society, and
Algorithms (Tu/Th 3:30-4:50pm). The course explores a number of topics
around an emerging line of research on high-stakes evaluation problems
(e.g., grading, hiring, peer review, model evaluation). We will discuss
methodological foundations for modeling, collecting, and aggregating human
evaluation data. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

Best,
Jingyan

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*Course Description:* This course considers designing and analyzing
algorithms with a focus on explicitly taking consideration of people and
society. The course covers selected topics in this area such as data
elicitation, crowdsourcing, causal inference, etc., including recent
research. The course will put an emphasis on theoretical principles
underlying problems in these domains, including derivations and proofs of
theoretical guarantees. Some application-specific considerations and
directions will also be discussed as case studies. As this is an
interdisciplinary field, we will also touch upon literature in psychology
and economics that study the behavior of people.

*Prerequisites:* Knowledge of basic probability and linear algebra.

*Topics include:*
- *Incentives:* strictly proper scoring rules, Bayesian truth serum
- *Crowdsourcing:* learning from pairwise comparisons, crowdsourced
labeling, parametric and non-parametric models and their relations,
message-passing algorithms
- *Experimentation:* randomized controlled trials, interference, switchback
experiments, Simpson’s paradox
- *Applications:* recommendation systems, peer review


*Expected outcomes:*- Awareness of various societal considerations in the
development and analysis of algorithms
- Ability to critique modeling assumptions and choices, and understand the
tradeoffs they induce
- Ability to apply mathematical tools and techniques to analyze algorithms
and establish theoretical guarantees
- Ability to critically read and present research papers


*Brandie Jones *
*Executive **Administrative Assistant*
*Outreach Administrator *
Toyota Technological Institute
6045 S. Kenwood Avenue
Chicago, IL  60637
www.ttic.edu
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