Matchmaking in the days of big data

 

I was once in a meeting with a wanna be big shot from a Utah Senator's office who was making fun of Latin people for having a lot of names. The meeting was about using names to match governmental data sets. Because Utah health care forms only allowed for two or three names (first, last and an optional middle name) groups of people with different naming structures had a hard time with the forms and were consequently hard to match. For example, a Brazilian with a last name from each parent might have a hard time filling out the forms that don't specify which last name. When the forms don't work as intended, groups of people become hard to match. The hard-to-match groups aren't represented in research as well as the easy-to-match groups. This is a clear and simple example of racism, but it doesn't have to be this way. The medical forms in Brazil accept many names. It's functional and fun. Carol and I practice our vowel sounds in waiting rooms by reading the names on the screens. When a good one pops up, we point it out and are glad that Luiz Filipe Oliveira Coelho da Silva is every bit as likely to be included in a study as Carol Swenson is.