Data science combines multiple fields, including statistics, scientific methods, artificial intelligence, and data analysis, to extract value from data. Those who practice data science are called data scientists, and they combine a range of skills to analyze data collected from the web, smartphones, customers, sensors, and other sources to derive actionable insights.
Data science encompasses preparing data for analysis, including cleansing, aggregating, and manipulating the data to perform advanced data analysis. Analytic applications and data scientists can then review the results to uncover patterns and enable business leaders to draw informed insights.
Dr. Mordecai participated in a panel entitled Discrimination in Healthcare and Law, moderated by Sendhil Mullainathan, Roman Family University Professor of Computation and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago. His fellow panelists were the following:
Marcella Alsan, Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School,
Kate Baicker, Dean and Emmett Dedmon Professor, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago, and
Ziad Obermeyer, Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professor at the Berkeley School of Public Health.
About Risk Economics Risk Economics provides advisory services at the intersection of commercial business-process engineering and risk engineering with a particular focus on coupling commercial reinsurance and financial technology, through the rigorous application of agent-based, demographic, and statistical methodologies to microeconomic and macroeconomic analytics.
Compass Lexecon has announced that Dr. David K.A. Mordecai is reaffiliating with Compass Lexecon. In the email announcement circulated today, Daniel R. Fischel, Chairman and President at Compass Lexecon commented, “We are thrilled to welcome David back to the firm. With nearly four decades of direct industry experience across a range of commercial sectors and capital markets, Dr. Mordecai will add tremendous value to our firm.”
Dr. Mordecai added, “I am elated to be affiliating with Compass Lexecon again, re-engaging with valued colleagues and further contributing my experience and technical capabilities to best-in-class teams of experts at the forefront of industrial economics, finance, and engineering disciplines.”
Dr. Mordecai is President and co-founder of Risk Economics, a New York City based advisory firm, which specializes in the application of computational economics to the proprietary development and scalable implementation of robust modeling and data analytic frameworks for valuation, strategic and systemic risk analysis, and dynamic asset-liability management.
A Visiting Scholar at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences NYU and Adjunct Professor at NYU, Dr. Mordecai advises research activities at RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics @ Courant Institute since its founding in 2011. Since November 2013, Dr. Mordecai has served as the Scientist-in-Residence at FinTech Innovation Lab sponsored by the Partnership Fund for NYC. In 2014, he was appointed the Course Director to lead the NYU Center for Data Science Capstone graduate applied research program in its inaugural year. He has also been associated with the NYU interdisciplinary collaboration that researches the relationships between social media and political behavior. Dr. Mordecai serves on the Board of Governors for the New York Academy of Sciences, and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Risk Finance a quarterly peer-reviewed research periodical (ca. 1999), addressing topics in financial risk intermediation.
In 2020, he was formally commissioned by the Office of the Attorney General for the State of Colorado for the SB-217 pattern and practice investigation of the Aurora Police Department (APD) and related entities, as technical advisor pro bono, in order to conduct extensive statistical and empirical analyses of data retrieved from the Aurora Police Department related to police interactions, arrests and uses of force. In his respective capacity as a Visiting Scholar at Courant Institute, working closely with a Compass Lexecon team and Risk Economics® co-founder and fellow Courant Visiting Scholar Samantha Kappagoda, Dr. Mordecai participated in the methodological aspects of the analysis as research in the public interest being conducted at RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics @ Courant.
Dr. Mordecai actively conducts applied research at the intersection of risk engineering and industrial economics, as a former senior executive at global banks and diversified financial institutions with nearly forty years of direct industry experience across a range of commercial sectors and capital markets. His expertise includes forensic financial and economic analysis, financial engineering, the valuation of fixed income securities and structured products, including over-the-counter derivatives, complex insurance and reinsurance liabilities, M&A successor liability, operational risk, reliability and warranty-indemnity analysis, and asset-liability and risk management models and practices. He has advised and provided technical oversight for pattern and practice investigations, internal regulatory investigations, insurance investigations for state regulators, as well as stress-testing for global financial institutions. Having testified extensively at deposition, trial, arbitration, and international arbitration, he has been admitted as an expert in federal, state and county courts, and cited favorably in court decisions.
Dr. Mordecai earned a PhD with concentrations in Econometrics/Mathematical Statistics and Economics/Industrial Organization from the University of Chicago, and an MBA in Finance from the NYU Stern School of Business.
Risk Economics, Inc. is pleased to announce that Dr. David K.A. Mordecai is reaffiliating with Compass Lexecon. Dr. Mordecai is President and co-founder of Risk Economics, a New York City based advisory firm, which specializes in the application of computational economics to the proprietary development and scalable implementation of robust modeling and data analytic frameworks for valuation, strategic and systemic risk analysis, and dynamic asset-liability management.
A Visiting Scholar at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences NYU and Adjunct Professor at NYU, he advises research activities at RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics @ Courant Institute since its founding in 2011. Since November 2013, Dr. Mordecai has served as the Scientist-in-Residence at FinTech Innovation Lab sponsored by the Partnership Fund for NYC. In 2014, he was appointed the Course Director to lead the NYU Center for Data Science Capstone graduate applied research program in its inaugural year. He has also been associated with the NYU interdisciplinary collaboration that researches the relationships between social media and political behavior. Dr. Mordecai serves on the Board of Governors for the New York Academy of Sciences, and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Risk Finance a quarterly peer-reviewed research periodical (ca. 1999), addressing topics in financial risk intermediation.
In 2020, he was formally commissioned by the Office of the Attorney General for the State of Colorado for the SB-217 pattern and practice investigation of the Aurora Police Department (APD) and related entities, as technical advisor pro bono, in order to conduct extensive statistical and empirical analyses of data retrieved from the Aurora Police Department related to police interactions, arrests and uses of force. In his respective capacity as a Visiting Scholar at Courant Institute, working closely with a Compass Lexecon team and Risk Economics® co-founder and fellow Courant Visiting Scholar Samantha Kappagoda, Dr. Mordecai participated in the methodological aspects of the analysis as research in the public interest being conducted at RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics @ Courant.
Dr. Mordecai actively conducts applied research at the intersection of risk engineering and industrial economics, as a former senior executive at global banks and diversified financial institutions with nearly forty years of direct industry experience across a range of commercial sectors and capital markets. His expertise includes forensic financial and economic analysis, financial engineering, the valuation of fixed income securities and structured products, including over-the-counter derivatives, complex insurance and reinsurance liabilities, M&A successor liability, operational risk, reliability and warranty-indemnity analysis, and asset-liability and risk management models and practices. He has advised and provided technical oversight for pattern and practice investigations, internal regulatory investigations, insurance investigations for state regulators, as well as stress-testing for global financial institutions. Having testified extensively at deposition, trial, arbitration, and international arbitration, he has been admitted as an expert in federal, state and county courts, and cited favorably in court decisions.
Dr. Mordecai earned a PhD with concentrations in Econometrics/Mathematical Statistics and Economics/Industrial Organization from the University of Chicago, and an MBA in Finance from the NYU Stern School of Business.
About Risk Economics
Risk Economics provides advisory services at the intersection of commercial business-process engineering and risk engineering with a particular focus on coupling commercial reinsurance and financial technology, through the rigorous application of agent-based, demographic, and statistical methodologies to microeconomic and macroeconomic analytics.
The Risk Economics® client roster is diverse and includes governmental and quasi-governmental agencies, global insurance and reinsurance firms, leading law firms, technology firms, global banking institutions, asset management firms, multinational corporations with interests in natural resources, commodities and energy, as well as government agencies and regulators.
In 2020, the Attorney General of Colorado (AG), Philip J. Weiser, appointed a team to investigate whether the Aurora Police Department and Aurora Fire Rescue had exhibited a pattern and practice of violating state and federal law. The investigation, the first of its kind under Senate Bill 217 (a law enforcement accountability bill enacted in the summer of 2020 in the wake of large-scale protests against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer), focused on police stops, arrests, uses of force, and possible discrimination in enforcement activities conducted by the Aurora Police Department and Aurora Fire Rescue.
Dr. David K. A. Mordecai and Samantha Kappagoda of Risk Economics worked closely with a team from Compass Lexecon which included Michael Kwak, Mihir Gokhale, Noah Mathews, and Peter Horvath, and conducted extensive statistical and empirical analyses of data retrieved from the Aurora Police Department related to police interactions, arrests and uses of force. The technical appendix prepared by the Risk Economics/Compass Lexecon analytics team presented statistical evidence of disproportionate and disparate police interactions, arrests, and uses of force incidents involving people of color, and particularly Black people, relative to white people in the City of Aurora. Based on this work, the Colorado AG investigation team concluded that “[They] observed statistically significant racial disparities — especially with respect to Black individuals — in nearly every important type of police contact with the community, from interactions to arrests to uses of force,” and that “[t]hese disparities persisted across income, gender and geographic boundaries.” This evidence played a critical role in supporting the findings of the AG investigation that Aurora Police engages in racially biased policing, treating people of color (and Black people in particular) differently from their white counterparts.
As a result of these findings, Attorney General Philip J. Weiser is pursuing a legally binding consent decree with the Aurora Police Department and Aurora Fire Rescue outlining the steps his office believes necessary to remediate and mitigate deficiencies uncovered by the investigation.
The statement by the Colorado AG to the press on September 15, 2021 can be viewed here.
The related press release and a link to the investigative report and technical appendix can be accessed here.
David Mordecai is President and Co-Founder of Risk Economics, and Visiting Scholar at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences NYU, advising research activities at RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics @ Courant Institute. Samantha Kappagoda is Chief Economist and Co-Founder of Risk Economics, and Visiting Scholar at Courant Institute, co-advising research activities at RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics @ Courant Institute.
About Risk Economics Risk Economics provides advisory services at the intersection of commercial business-process engineering and risk engineering with a particular focus on coupling commercial reinsurance and financial technology, through the rigorous application of agent-based, demographic, and statistical methodologies to microeconomic and macroeconomic analytics.
In 2020, the Attorney General of Colorado (AG), Philip J. Weiser, appointed a team to investigate whether the Aurora Police Department and Aurora Fire Rescue had exhibited a pattern and practice of violating state and federal law. The investigation, the first of its kind under Senate Bill 217 (a law enforcement accountability bill enacted in the summer of 2020 in the wake of large-scale protests against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer), focused on police stops, arrests, uses of force, and possible discrimination in enforcement activities conducted by the Aurora Police Department and Aurora Fire Rescue.
Dr. David K. A. Mordecai and Samantha Kappagoda of Risk Economics worked closely with a team from Compass Lexecon which included Michael Kwak, Mihir Gokhale, Noah Mathews, and Peter Horvath, and conducted extensive statistical and empirical analyses of data retrieved from the Aurora Police Department related to police interactions, arrests and uses of force. The technical appendix prepared by the Risk Economics/Compass Lexecon analytics team presented statistical evidence of disproportionate and disparate police interactions, arrests, and uses of force incidents involving people of color, and particularly Black people, relative to white people in the City of Aurora. Based on this work, the Colorado AG investigation team concluded that “[They] observed statistically significant racial disparities — especially with respect to Black individuals — in nearly every important type of police contact with the community, from interactions to arrests to uses of force,” and that “[t]hese disparities persisted across income, gender and geographic boundaries.” This evidence played a critical role in supporting the findings of the AG investigation that Aurora Police engages in racially biased policing, treating people of color (and Black people in particular) differently from their white counterparts.
As a result of these findings, Attorney General Philip J. Weiser is pursuing a legally binding consent decree with the Aurora Police Department and Aurora Fire Rescue outlining the steps his office believes necessary to remediate and mitigate deficiencies uncovered by the investigation.
About Risk Economics Risk Economics provides advisory services at the intersection of commercial business-process engineering and risk engineering with a particular focus on coupling commercial reinsurance and financial technology, through the rigorous application of agent-based, demographic, and statistical methodologies to microeconomic and macroeconomic analytics.
IDAS was established in September 2019, and is a multidisciplinary initiative in data science. The IDAS mission is the following:
Provide a central hub for high quality research in artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics
Seed opportunities for interdisciplinary research across faculty within the University, and collaboratively with external partners
Focus data science expertise to engage with specific needs for industrial growth in North-East England and beyond
Establish a credible, strong, multi-disciplinary umbrella structure supporting large-scale projects, at a national and international level
About Durham University Durham University is based in Durham, England, and was founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charter in 1837. The university is a member of the Russell Group of British research universities. For more information, visit: https://www.durham.ac.uk/homepage/.
