Weapons of Math Destruction
A review of

Weapons of Math Destruction

How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

Cathy O'Neil • Crown • 2016

Beware the Black Box

by David Meyer

Math professor Cathy O’Neil explores how algorithms affect much of your daily life and reveals corrupt practices that algorithms sustain.

Math professor and quant Cathy O’Neil details how algorithms influence every area of life. In this detailed overview – which was long-listed for the 2016 United States National Book Award for Nonfiction – O’Neil explains the pernicious impact of these models in simple language that reveals the inner workings of the black-box mathematics that increasingly define your future. O’Neil is a moralist, and writes with a strong sense of right, wrong and injustice. Her anger at how algorithms undermine humanity in pursuit of profit fuels her reportage, but her wit and light touch will draw you into the crucial issues she describes.

Black Box

Models based on mathematical algorithms depend on large amounts of data. They use available information to predict outcomes. Bad models, or what O’Neil dubs “Weapons of Math Destruction” (WMDs), derive from lack of data and use of “proxies.” For example, someone’s zip code might become a proxy for his or her ability to repay a loan.

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