Becoming a JEDI statistician

Abstract

AbstractJEDI stands for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. JEDI is a global movement, with networks connecting academic, business and grass roots organizations. A definition of ‘JEDI statistics’ and ‘impermissible inequality’ is proposed and illustrated with stories from government work, university teaching and academic research regarding race, ethics and social justice in statistics. I recently had the pleasure of discussing these ideas on a panel with Wendy Martinez, Safiya Umoja Noble, Donna LaLonde and participants in a plenary session of SDSS 2021, ‘Equitable and Inclusive Data and Technology’. I thank them for their comments, and Wendy Martinez, notably (https://ww2.amstat.org/meetings/sdss/2021/onlineprogram/AbstractDetails.cfm?AbstractID=309823). There are in front of us unlimited possibilities for good by exploring the Venn diagram‐overlaps of JEDI philosophy and statistics, JEDI and economic statistics, JEDI and department culture; JEDI medicine, JEDI coding, JEDI wealth and ownership, JEDI history and the historians of statistics, and so forth, striding towards our future for an antiracist and inclusive statistics and society. (To explain a little more, in 1996, I earned a PhD Certificate in the Rhetoric of the Human Sciences at the same time I completed the PhD in Economics. I teach Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, too, and since 2007, I have taught annually a course on ‘Theories of Justice in Economics and Philosophy’ to PhD, MA and BA students at Roosevelt University and in short courses at several universities in Europe.)