Chad M. Topaz
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View article: Sufficiency in Teacher–Student Race Matching
Sufficiency in Teacher–Student Race Matching Open
Same-race teachers are linked to better academic outcomes for minoritized students, yet most students never encounter a teacher who shares their racial background. Prior work underscores the benefits of race-matched instruction but focuses…
View article: Quantifying Fair Chance Policy Implementation and Employer Engagement
Quantifying Fair Chance Policy Implementation and Employer Engagement Open
Fair-chance hiring policies aim to expand employment opportunities for individuals with criminal records by reducing legal and systemic barriers to work. These policies include Ban-the-Box, occupational licensing reforms, record-sealing, c…
View article: A structured dataset of the federalist society’s public engagements
A structured dataset of the federalist society’s public engagements Open
Background The Federalist Society, a leading conservative legal organization, has played a significant role in shaping the American judiciary for decades. Despite its influence, comprehensive empirical data on the organization remains scar…
View article: Presidential Appointments, Sentencing Discretion, and Ethnoracial Disparities in U.S. Federal Courts
Presidential Appointments, Sentencing Discretion, and Ethnoracial Disparities in U.S. Federal Courts Open
Presidentially-appointed federal district court judges exercise broad discretion in determining criminal sentences, directly affecting individuals and communities in the United States. Against a backdrop of longstanding ethnoracial inequit…
View article: Correction: Impacts of California Proposition 47 on crime in Santa Monica, California
Correction: Impacts of California Proposition 47 on crime in Santa Monica, California Open
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0251199.].
View article: Using Data Science for Social Good: Mapping Opportunity Youth
Using Data Science for Social Good: Mapping Opportunity Youth Open
Opportunity youth—individuals aged 16 to 24 who are disconnected from education and employment due to significant barriers—constitute a sizable yet underserved demographic whose marginalization leads to substantial social and economic cost…
View article: Race and Superfund site remediation
Race and Superfund site remediation Open
Superfund is a federal program established in 1980 to manage the cleanup of hazardous waste sites across the United States. Given the health and economic costs borne by people living near these sites, any demographic disparities within the…
View article: A computational topology-based spatiotemporal analysis technique for honeybee aggregation
A computational topology-based spatiotemporal analysis technique for honeybee aggregation Open
A primary challenge in understanding collective behavior is characterizing the spatiotemporal dynamics of the group. We employ topological data analysis to explore the structure of honeybee aggregations that form during trophallaxis, which…
View article: News Media Coverage of Gun Violence: A Systematic Review
News Media Coverage of Gun Violence: A Systematic Review Open
We provide a targeted review of research on gun violence and the news media in the United States. Starting with an initial search yielding 923 potential sources, we apply the PRISMA protocol to refine our focus to 80 peer-reviewed, empiric…
View article: Race and Superfund site remediation
Race and Superfund site remediation Open
Superfund is a federal program established in 1980 to manage the cleanup of hazardous waste sites across the United States. Given the health and economic costs borne by people living near these sites, any demographic disparities within the…
View article: Correction: Federal criminal sentencing: race-based disparate impact and differential treatment in judicial districts
Correction: Federal criminal sentencing: race-based disparate impact and differential treatment in judicial districts Open
Owing to the incorrect versions being used, Figures 3 and4 contained some minor errors.In the original paper, Figure 3, contained the correct numerical results and the district names, but the district abbreviations on the horizontal axis d…
View article: A Computational Topology-based Spatiotemporal Analysis Technique for Honeybee Aggregation
A Computational Topology-based Spatiotemporal Analysis Technique for Honeybee Aggregation Open
A primary challenge in understanding collective behavior is characterizing the spatiotemporal dynamics of the group. We employ topological data analysis to explore the structure of honeybee aggregations that form during trophallaxis, which…
View article: Federal criminal sentencing: race-based disparate impact and differential treatment in judicial districts
Federal criminal sentencing: race-based disparate impact and differential treatment in judicial districts Open
Race-based inequity in federal criminal sentencing is widely acknowledged, and yet our understanding of it is far from complete. Inequity may arise from several sources, including direct bias of courtroom actors and structural bias that pr…
View article: Diversity, Identity, and Data
Diversity, Identity, and Data Open
While quantitative approaches cannot replace disciplinary insights from the social sciences and humanities, they can sometimes provide new perspectives. Building upon research from psychology and organizational theory that demonstrates how…
View article: Temporal dynamics of faculty hiring in mathematics
Temporal dynamics of faculty hiring in mathematics Open
University faculty hiring networks are known to be hierarchical and to exacerbate various types of inequity. Still, a detailed, historical understanding of hiring dynamics lacks in many academic fields. We focus on the field of mathematics…
View article: Algorithms in Judges' Hands: Incarceration and Inequity in Broward County, Florida
Algorithms in Judges' Hands: Incarceration and Inequity in Broward County, Florida Open
Judicial and corrections systems increasingly use criminal risk assessment algorithms to make decisions that affect individual freedoms. While the accuracy, fairness, and legality of these algorithms have come under scrutiny, their tangibl…
View article: disparate-impact-differential-treatment-in-judicial-districts
disparate-impact-differential-treatment-in-judicial-districts Open
Code and data for manuscript "Federal Criminal Sentencing: Race-Based Disparate Impact and Differential Treatment in Judicial Districts." Data is derived from United States Sentencing Commission Individual Offender Files, 2006 – 2020.
View article: Preface
Preface Open
With the rise of data science as its own area of research and application comes the question of how to best teach and learn data science at all levels.Education research in mathematics, statistics, and computer science offers some insight …
View article: Temporal Dynamics of Faculty Hiring in Mathematics
Temporal Dynamics of Faculty Hiring in Mathematics Open
University faculty hiring networks are known to be hierarchical, and to exacerbate various types of inequity. Still, a detailed, historical understanding of hiring dynamics lacks in many academic fields. We focus on the field of mathematic…
View article: Racial Disparities in Criminal Sentencing Vary Considerably across Federal Judges
Racial Disparities in Criminal Sentencing Vary Considerably across Federal Judges Open
Substantial race-based disparities exist in federal criminal sentencing. We analyze 380,000 recent (2006-2019) sentences in the JUSTFAIR database and show that these disparities are large and vary considerably across judges. Judges assign …
View article: Do introductory courses disproportionately drive minoritized students out of STEM pathways?
Do introductory courses disproportionately drive minoritized students out of STEM pathways? Open
Diversifying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) requires a critical examination of institutional structures at every educational level. In higher education, performance in core introductory courses required for STEM d…
View article: Race- and gender-based under-representation of creative contributors: art, fashion, film, and music
Race- and gender-based under-representation of creative contributors: art, fashion, film, and music Open
Motivated by the well-established benefits to society of artistic creation and of demographic diversity, we investigate the gender and racial/ethnic composition of influential contributors to four creative domains. Women make up 51% of the…
View article: Federal Criminal Sentencing: Race-Based Disparate Impact and Differential Treatment in Judicial Districts
Federal Criminal Sentencing: Race-Based Disparate Impact and Differential Treatment in Judicial Districts Open
Race-based inequity in federal criminal sentencing is widely acknowledged, and yet our understanding of its causes is far from complete. While researchers have regularly interrogated federal sentencing data for evidence of racially differe…
View article: New York City jails: COVID discharge policy, data transparency, and reform
New York City jails: COVID discharge policy, data transparency, and reform Open
During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the release of individuals incarcerated in New York City jails who were at high risk of contracting the disease and at low risk of committing criminal r…
View article: Capturing dynamics of time-varying data via topology
Capturing dynamics of time-varying data via topology Open
One approach to understanding complex data is to study its shape through the lens of algebraic topology. While the early development of topological data analysis focused primarily on static data, in recent years, theoretical and applied st…
View article: Racial Disparities in Criminal Sentencing Vary Considerably across Federal Judges
Racial Disparities in Criminal Sentencing Vary Considerably across Federal Judges Open
Studying 380,000 criminal cases in federal district courts from 2006 to 2019, we replicate previous findings that aggregate, conditional racial disparities in sentence lengths are large. We further show that estimated racial disparities in…
View article: Impacts of California Proposition 47 on crime in Santa Monica, California
Impacts of California Proposition 47 on crime in Santa Monica, California Open
We examine patterns of reported crime in Santa Monica, California before and after the passage of Proposition 47, a 2014 initiative that reclassified some non-violent felonies as misdemeanors. We also investigate impacts of the opening of …
View article: Affirmative action, critical mass, and a predictive model of undergraduate student body demographics
Affirmative action, critical mass, and a predictive model of undergraduate student body demographics Open
Black and Latinx students are underrepresented on most public university campuses. At the same time, affirmative action policies are controversial and legally fraught. The Supreme Court has ruled that affirmative action should help a minor…
View article: Connecting the Dots: Discovering the “Shape” of Data
Connecting the Dots: Discovering the “Shape” of Data Open
Scientists use a mathematical subject called topology to study the shapes of objects. An important part of topology is counting the number of pieces and the number of holes in an object, and researchers use this information to group object…