Opportunity 2

“Diversity and Bias”


The main idea around the project is that  the notion of bias is intimately connected with the notion of  diversity. Someone says that there is bias in something, e.g., a document or a statement, if what is expressed is  positioned in a place different from the origin in a feature space where the different axes represent the dimensions over which diversity is measured.


Given the above main idea the goals of the project are: 
  1. Validate the above hypothesis analysing the diversity dimensions, and specific definitions of bias which are present in the papers in the repository built in WP3, as part of the project.
  2. Assuming that the above hypothesis turns out to be correct, provide a quantitative analysis of the role of the different diversity dimensions and also of how they impact the notion of bias.
  3. Based on the above results see whether it is possible to organize the notion of bias in a set of disjoint subtypes of bias, which connect diversity dimensions and solutions proposed.

Proposed Activities (Working with a group of students): 
  1. Provide a definition of bias/ diversity/ diversity dimensions (done before the start of the work by the project coordinators).
  2. Presentation/ discussion/ brainstorming of the ideas in 1-2-3 lectures. Validation of the ideas by the students in a set of case studies (one paper per group).
  3. Work by the students: the papers get split in groups and students are asked to position the papers in the diversity space. This work will be validated by cross-group validation and by final discussion.
  4. Proposal of a model connecting diversity dimensions and type of bias solutions.
  5. Validation of the model by the groups on a set of papers (to be decided whether they are the same or different from the papers from the previous step).
  6. Presentation of the final results in a final talk plus brainstorming.

Guidelines: 
  • A particular deliverable should result, e.g., a research paper, a white paper, a demonstration, etc.
  • If travelling is allowed, CyCAT will support (via STSE) the travelling costs of the researcher to travel to Cyprus from Trento or from Cyprus to Trento for presenting the research results at a CyCAT meeting. If travelling will not be allowed, due to the COVID-19 restrictions, the collaboration and the presentation of the results will be done remotely.