Weapons of Math Destruction

Cathy O'Neil is a data scientist and blogger at mathbabe.org. She graduated from Harvard with a Ph.D. in mathematics and taught at Barnard College before moving to the private sector, where she worked for the hedge fund D. E. Shaw. She later worked as a data scientist at several start-ups, developing models to anticipate people's purchases and clicks. O'Neil founded Columbia's Lede Program in Data Journalism and is the author of Doing Data Science.

We live in the algorithm era. Decisions that affect our lives—where we go to school, whether we can obtain a job or a loan, how much we pay for health insurance—are increasingly being decided by machines rather than humans. In theory, this should lead to more fairness because everyone is judged by the same set of norms.

However, as mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil demonstrates, today's mathematical models are unregulated and uncontestable, even when they are incorrect. Worryingly, they encourage discrimination by rewarding the fortunate, punishing the oppressed, and undermining our democracy in the process. Weapons of Math Destruction is one of the best books on databases and big data. Hello and welcome to the dark side of Big Data.

Author: Cathy O'Neil

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Math-Destruction-Increases-Inequality/dp/0553418831/

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