Mini Essay

We have done well as a humanity to fulfill the needs for enhanced capital and freedoms through measures taken in the policies of the nation, but this is not true for everyone. In the Gettysburg address, Lincoln expresses his sentiments towards the people who have sacrificed their lives to fight in the war in an effort to preserve the Union of all states in America. Furthermore, he gives a speech about the importance of equality being bestowed on all men and that they are created equal. Although Lincoln did not support the idea of extending citizenship to enslaved persons, he referred to the emancipation proclamation which intended to free some slaves in the rebellious states during the Civil War. Therefore, Lincoln was able to reinforce the idea of freedom among people who were more similar to him in socioeconomic status rather than extend this notion of equality to women and people of color.

Data science does in fact have a role in ushering in a new era of support to the people of this world. This field helps institutions across the world develop policy initiatives to combat crises like famine, poverty, and quality of education by pinpointing regions of the world that may be suffering from them. Examples of this would be using satellite images to investigate a region that may have gone through a natural disaster or the collection of cell phone data to identify trends in migratory patterns. However, it is also essential that customization becomes an integral part of this field as many scholars may still possess preconceived notions about certain areas of the world. This is the main problem of using data that takes the average of the value being analyzed because it does not account for a country’s individual needs and will thus cause mass confusion for scholars in the field.

Complexity is what makes global development a tough task to measure growth. It can tempt scholars to place regions in certain categories of development that are solely based on their position in the global hierarchy rather than a regional one, which deprives the new generation of scholars, such as the Swedish students that Rosling taught, of real data that is not just based on the representative heuristic. If scholars take into account the social context of a region, more accurate data can be shared and can lead to less misinformation across the globe. If we monitor a region’s own progress in mortality rates and GDP in its own dimension of development, people will be able to focus on its needs rather than just what it needs to catch up to other nations.

I believe that a new integrated paradigm will be needed to assess the ongoing challenges in global development, one that requires more than just knowledge in the domains of computer science and statistics. According to Blumenstock, there needs to be a new generation of people in these fields that are able to perform more than an algorithm, which can be arguably biased by privileging one group in society over the other. Data scientists will need to pursue humanitarian agendas while also carrying out these duties in order to foster true regional development. This relates to the concept of customization, which accounts for the development of a specific region in the world that has its own ineptitude and vulnerabilities to deal with a crisis. Moreover, these scientists should also collaborate with government officials in order to integrate policy with data collection that best fits the needs of those who are being governed.

The track to efficient development may be unforeseeable in some regions, but according to Amartya Sen, there are instrumental freedoms that regions must be made available to their citizens through social arrangements for change to happen. Some of these freedoms consist of an increased rate of political participation and dissent in the policy world, which can be attributed to a region’s low mortality rate depending on the leaders of institutions in the region. As we saw with Emperor Sellasie of Ethiopia, pushes for policy change were void due to the arbitrary governing body that suppressed the freedoms of citizens to come forward and share their thoughts on the country’s living conditions. This is a testament to how much reform is needed in the public sector, which will provide a region with the backbone it needs to be more than self-sustaining and more generative of development that accommodates the citizens more.