5. Data ethics

Ethics can be thought of as the shared values which help humanity differentiate right from wrong. The access to big data, coupled with an increased awareness of information technology and data analysis have become an important aspect of the human experience. Consequently, data science has the ability to influence how decisions are made in business, life and health sciences, transportation, and civics. The successful data science student will be able to successfully differentiate between ethical and non-ethical decisions based on data. [OhioDoHEducation21]

A nice overview of Data Ethics appears in Modern Data Science with R [BKH21], Chapter 8 Data science ethics. We will look at parts of this more closely in the following sections.

Further Resources

Other overviews of Data Ethics include:

• Data Ethics, slides by the Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building of the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

• What is Data Ethics? and the following articles in a theme issue on The ethical impact of data science.

• An Introduction to Data Ethics report from BAE Systems.