dsld: A Socially Relevant Tool for Teaching Statistics

Abstract

The growing influence of data science in statistics education requires tools that make key concepts accessible through real-world applications. We introduce "Data Science Looks At Discrimination" (dsld), an R package that provides a comprehensive set of analytical and graphical methods for examining issues of discrimination involving attributes such as race, gender, and age. By positioning fairness analysis as a teaching tool, the package enables instructors to demonstrate confounder effects, model bias, and related topics through applied examples. An accompanying 80-page Quarto book guides students and legal professionals in understanding these principles and applying them to real data. We describe the implementation of the package functions and illustrate their use with examples. Python interfaces are also available.