This class asks two big questions: what can mathematics offer social justice movements, and what does a social justice perspective have to say about mathematics? Almost every social issue, from environmental justice to gerrymandering to police brutality, has a quantitative aspect: the first main thread of the course investigates the mathematical tools and ideas that are necessary to understand, critique, and make progress on these issues. From another angle, mathematics is often portrayed as objective, value-neutral, and apolitical–but as a human endeavor, it is also culturally specific, requires choice and judgment, and can actively contribute to systemic racism and other chronic injustices. As a W course, we will also focus on communicating mathematical ideas to a variety of audiences through writing, with an emphasis on the feedback-revision cycle.
Prerequisite: Credit for or placement out of either Math 15 or Stat 11.
By the end of this course, you will be able to...
Articulate the ways in which the collection, analysis, and display of even very simple data requires human choice and judgment.
Apply mathematical tools to analyze and take action on personally relevant issues in social justice.
Examine what it means to do mathematically ethically in a range of contexts (as a journalist, a “pure” mathematician, a developer of “big data” algorithms).
Analyze the ways that quantitative arguments are used in public life, and identify and critique the assumptions and ideologies underlying quantitative arguments.
Explain the key role that attention to the audience plays in writing and create documents aimed at a range of target audiences.
Produce arguments that rely on both mathematical and social justice perspectives, and refine this work through iterative feedback and revision.
Weapons of Math Destruction, O'Neil
Mathematics as Propaganda, Koblitz
Lies, calculations, and constructions: Beyond How to Lie with Statistics, Best
“Ethics in Mathematics”, Ernest
“The ideology of certainty in mathematics education”, Borba and Skovmose
“The Need to Rehumanize Mathematics”, Gutierrez
“The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work”, Rogaway
“Mathematics beyond secrecy and surveillance”, Just Mathematics Collective
“CAT(0) geometry, robots, and society”, Ardila
“Governing an algorithm in the wild”, Robinson for Databites Podcast
“Abolish Big Data”, Milner.