Browsing by Subject "Bias"
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Item Open Access Conservative treatment of evidence(Cambridge University Press, 2022-09-07) Fatollahi, AlirezaThis paper discusses two conservative ways of treating evidence. (I) Closing inquiry involves discounting evidence bearing on one's belief unless it is particularly strong evidence; (II) biased assimilation involves dedicating more investigative resources to scrutinizing disconfirming evidence (than confirming evidence), thereby increasing the chances of finding reasons to dismiss it. It is natural to worry that these practices lead to irrational biases in favor of one's existing beliefs, and that they make one's epistemic condition significantly path-sensitive by giving a bigger role to batches of evidence obtained earlier in the course of inquiry compared with those subsequently acquired. However, I argue that both practices are demanded by considerations of practical rationality. I also argue that, contrary to initial appearances, there is little reason to worry about the effects of these practices on the dynamics of one's beliefs.Item Open Access Could there be a male commitment skepticism bias and a female sexual overperception bias? novel hypotheses based on error management theory(Springer, 2016) Al-Shawaf, L.Error management theory is an important and fruitful scientific theory. However, it might be useful to revisit the way we conceptualize the commitment skepticism bias and the sexual overperception bias to improve their consistency with the core logic of the theory. In this paper, I advance a novel view that allows for the possibility of a male commitment skepticism bias and a female sexual overperception bias. Discussion focuses on the new hypotheses this alternative conceptualization yields, the hidden assumptions it relies on, and the conceptual and empirical benefits it may offer.Item Open Access Environmental effects on interferometric fiber optic gyroscope performance(2021-02) Osunluk, BerkToday main performance limitations for fiber optic gyroscope technology are its sensitivity to temperature fluctuations and vibration. Shupe error is the main error source for both disturbances. We propose an approach to reduce the thermal sensitivity by controlling the strain inhomogeneity through the fiber coil. The approach is based on advanced fiber coil modeling, which is verified by a series of experiments. Vibration is often a neglected disturbance by the researchers as it highly depends on the integrated platform. We propose a model for bias error formation due to optical power fluctuations under vibration. Model is composed of power fluctuation characteristics, spurious rotation rate formation due to mechanical Shupe error, and the suppression of the rotation rate by the closed-loop operation. Lastly, we introduce the concept of angle random walk performance degradation under vibration due to interferogram nonlinearity.Item Open Access Exploring impact of absent students on scale properties of student ratings of instruction in Turkey(Sciedu Press, 2019) Kalender, IlkerIn the present study comparability or ranking of instructors based on student ratings were investigated under the effect of absenteeism. To this end, invariance of scale properties of student ratings was examined via multigroup confirmatory analysis. Using randomly selected 2098 classes, equality of factorial structure, factor loadings, intercepts and residuals were tested. Results indicated that absent and regularly attending groups have developed the same conceptual meaning for the term instructional effectiveness. Also, ratings in the both groups of classes had a common unit, which makes within-class comparisons of instructors separately for attending and absent groups possible. However instructors who teach classes with absent students systematically receive lower ratings, indicating a bias between the two groups. Student ratings were adjusted against absenteeism to lessen the effect of bias. Results showed significant differences in the rankings of top-rated instructors both before and after the adjustment. Biased ratings pose a serious threat in comparability between instructors who teach absent and attending classes. Thus decisions involving instructors should be supported by other assessment mechanisms.Item Open Access Gender bias in legal corpora and debiasing it(Cambridge University Press, 2022-03-30) Koç, Aykut; Sevim, Nurullah; Şahinuç, FurkanWord embeddings have become important building blocks that are used profoundly in natural language processing (NLP). Despite their several advantages, word embeddings can unintentionally accommodate some gender- and ethnicity-based biases that are present within the corpora they are trained on. Therefore, ethical concerns have been raised since word embeddings are extensively used in several high-level algorithms. Studying such biases and debiasing them have recently become an important research endeavor. Various studies have been conducted to measure the extent of bias that word embeddings capture and to eradicate them. Concurrently, as another subfield that has started to gain traction recently, the applications of NLP in the field of law have started to increase and develop rapidly. As law has a direct and utmost effect on people’s lives, the issues of bias for NLP applications in legal domain are certainly important. However, to the best of our knowledge, bias issues have not yet been studied in the context of legal corpora. In this article, we approach the gender bias problem from the scope of legal text processing domain. Word embedding models that are trained on corpora composed by legal documents and legislation from different countries have been utilized to measure and eliminate gender bias in legal documents. Several methods have been employed to reveal the degree of gender bias and observe its variations over countries. Moreover, a debiasing method has been used to neutralize unwanted bias. The preservation of semantic coherence of the debiased vector space has also been demonstrated by using high-level tasks. Finally, overall results and their implications have been discussed in the scope of NLP in legal domain.Item Embargo Gender segregation in parliamentary committees of Turkey: intermediary spaces of women's political representation(Elsevier, 2023-02-15) Uçaray-Mangıtlı, Burcu; Yıldırım, SenemDo the Turkish parliamentary committees exhibit gendered appointment practices? If so, what are the driving factors behind women's limited representation in some committees? Previous studies find a division of labor in committees based on the perceived gender roles: women legislators are over-represented in low-prestige committees with “feminine” themes such as family, health, and education, whereas they are under-represented in strategically key policymaking committees. These studies —mostly on Western democracies— explain this gender bias with the appointment practices of the conservative right-wing parties. Using an original dataset of appointments between 2002 and 2020, this paper examines the partisan effects on the under- and over-representation of women on certain committees in the Turkish context. We find that all parties except the small left-wing Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) perform in a similarly biased way. We argue that parliamentary committees are gendered institutional spaces greatly affected by the institutional culture of political parties. Even though institutional culture is mostly shaped by ideological stances, political parties are still among institutional spaces where ideologies of masculinity are effectively shaping power relations. We conclude that institutionalizing mechanisms that enhance agential capacities and practices at the party level are vital for gender equality within the political sphere.