Weapons of Math Destruction

How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

hardcover, 272 pages

Published Sept. 6, 2016 by Crown Publishing Group NY, Crown.

ISBN:
978-0-553-41881-1
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4 stars (66 reviews)

A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern life — and threaten to rip apart our social fabric

We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives—where we go to school, whether we get a car loan, how much we pay for health insurance—are being made not by humans, but by mathematical models. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules, and bias is eliminated.

But as Cathy O’Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination: If a poor student can’t get a loan because a lending model deems him too risky (by virtue of his zip code), he’s then cut off from the kind of …

12 editions

An absolut must-read for a world emprisoned in a golden cage

5 stars

If you wish to understand better what is at stakes with the algorithms and the global digital maze we seem to be prisoner of, then, this is a must read. Cathy O'Neil very clearly unravel the intricate technical, philosophical, political and socioeconomic logic at play. She shows how they work together to force an even more violent neoliberalism in every area of our daily lives, whether social, cultural, professional, judiciary, educational or political and economic. It is both quite scary and at the same time empowering, as it gives us the basics to look for collective ways to progressively get out of the maze we've lost ourselves in. As the say goes, knowledge is power, and I believe it has never been more true than today.

I would recommend to read it along Shoshana Zuboff's (bookwyrm.social/author/39159/s/shoshana-zuboff) "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (bookwyrm.social/book/260163/s/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism). They nicely complement each …

Suit up for Combat!

5 stars

This was an exceptional book. It's not heavy into statistics but gives the rationale for what is a WMD (Weapon of Math Destruction) and WMDs maybe a new term but we have been under the exploitation of WMDs well before we think. It's not a new phenomenon but it is one that we should be aware of.

Take a read and learn how about them so that we can all do better to combat them and use math to not only help describe the world but make it a better place to live in.

Review of 'Weapons of Math Destruction' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

My greatest Twitter achievement is that I raved about this book in a tweet and Cathy O'Neil liked it. Maybe I was easily persuaded by O'Neil's writing because I'm an aspiring data scientist hell bent on working for social good. Maybe it's because I've spent years in social justice activism. Or maybe it's because this is just a damn good book. O'Neil walks us through several algorithms wreaking havoc on society -- from hiring to scheduling to performance evaluations. Even if you, like me, were craving more technical material, O'Neil name drops the algorithms and you can simply do a quick Google search on them. This is the kind of popular data science book we need.

Review of 'Weapons of Math Destruction' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A WMD, Weapon of Math Destruction, is an algorithm that is a block box (opaque), used at scale, and damages the lives of people, generally poor minorities. Cathy O'Neil goes through a lot of detail describing several of these WMDs and how they are ruining people's lives. Hate Clopening? (working at Closing and then Opening up the next morning). It's likely an algorithm created that schedule. Hate the fact that employers now use opaque personality tests to look for mental illness while you're applying for a job? Another WMD.

This book is important, and I think it should be read by anyone concerned about how Big Data can be used to harm us all. As someone whose future career depends upon algorithmic learning, statistics, and mathematics, I can say this book was eye opening. I'm used to hearing about the power of algorithms and modeling, but really, a model is …

Review of 'Weapons of Math Destruction' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Lots of good examples of the horrible nature of "big data". The writing is a bit too pop/magazine-styled for my taste (e.g., I cannot stand the phrase "If you think about it"), but the many examples and the author's observations are substantial and detailed enough for the purpose of making people aware. With such weapons being used to perpetuate and exacerbate society's inequities, this is yet more evidence that capitalism, and its supporting states, need to be replaced.

Review of 'Weapons of Math Destruction' on 'LibraryThing'

No rating

So often when someone starts a Twitter message with the label “Must read” I get defensive. You’re not my teacher. I’m a grown up. I get to decide what I’m going to read, thank you very much. But I’m really tempted to start this post with “Must read” because Cathy O’Neil’s book, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy is important and covers issues everyone should care about. Bonus points: it’s accessible, compelling, and – something I wasn’t expecting – really fun to read.returnreturnO’Neil is a data scientist who taught at Barnard before being seduced by the excitement of applying mathematics to finance, working for a Wall Street hedge fund before the crash of 2008. One of the things she quickly learned was different from academic mathematics was that employees were treated like members of an Al Qaida cell: the amount of information they could …

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