Meet Rachel Thomas: Bias and Ethics in Data Science
Greetings my fellow Pythonistas, we only have five more days until PyBay2019. Come join us! Take a look at amazing set of speakers we have arranged for you!
Here is Rachel Thomas.
What are you going to be speaking about at PyBay 2018, and why are you excited to give this talk?
I will be speaking on bias and ethics in data science. There are many concerning problems in this area, such as facial recognition that performs significantly worse on images of Black women compared with other groups, or online ads that falsely suggested that people with traditionally Black names have criminal records. I’m passionate about helping to draw attention to issues of bias and sharing steps towards addressing it.
How did you get into programming and Python?
I first got into programming 20 years ago when I took two years of C/C++ in high school. My teacher had been a professional programmer decades earlier and was teaching as a 2nd career. This inspired me to minor in computer science in college. After college, I earned a PhD in math and worked in energy trading. I got interested in Python 7 years ago, when I first started working in the tech industry.
What’s one of the features about Python you like the best?
I love that Python is such a versatile language and can be used for so many different things: data science, backend development, creating APIs, deep learning, and more. Currently, Python is the go-to language for deep learning, a very active area of AI. For people interested in AI, learning Python is pretty much required.
What’s your favorite Python library (core or third-party), and why?
I love our fastai library, built on top of PyTorch, which makes deep learning easier to use (often with higher accuracy), encodes commonly used methods, and includes state-of-the-art research. (I’m co-founder of fast.ai, so I may be biased). I’m also a big fan of PyTorch, a deep learning framework developed by Facebook’s AI team, which is easier to debug and faster compared with TensorFlow.
What can you be found doing when you’re not writing code?
I like blogging, speaking at conferences, doing yoga, weight-lifting, and being outside. Most of all, I enjoy spending time with my 3-year old daughter (she is super creative, imaginative, and energetic!)
