About this item
How much is a human life worth? Individuals, families, companies, and governments routinely place a price on human life. The calculations that underlie these price tags are often buried in technical language, yet they influence our economy, laws, behaviors, policies, health, and safety. These price tags are often unfair, infused as they are with gender, racial, national, and cultural biases that often result in valuing the lives of the young more than the old, the rich more than the poor, whites more than blacks, Americans more than foreigners, and relatives more than strangers. This is critical since undervalued lives are left less-protected and more exposed to risk.Howard Steven Friedman explains in simple terms how economists and data scientists at corporations, regulatory agencies, and insurance companies develop and use these price tags and points a spotlight at their logical flaws and limitations.
About the Author
Howard Steven Friedman is a data scientist, health economist, and writer who has worked in the public sector, private sector and academia for decades. He teaches at Columbia University courses in Statistics, Data Science, Program Evaluation and Health Economics including courses on Machine Learning in R and Python.Friedman took a position as a director at Capital One where he led teams of data scientists, statisticians, analysts and programmers in various areas of operations and marketing. He later formed companies that provided consulting services in areas of designing, developing and modeling data. He has authored/co-authored about 100 scientific articles and book chapters in areas of data science, statistics, health economics and politics.Friedman received his Bachelor's degree from Binghamton University in Applied Physics. He earned a Masters in Statistics and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.In June 2012, Prometheus Books released his book Measure of a Nation. This book focuses on how to improve America by first comparing its performance with thirteen competitive industrial nations, then identifying the best practices found throughout the world that can be adopted here in the United States. Measure of a Nation was named by Jared Diamond as the best book of 2012 in an interview published in the New York Times.Please note that all publications reflect the opinions of the author and not those of the United Nations or Columbia University
