Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

By Cathy O'Neil

Book Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A former Wall Street quant sounds the alarm on Big Data and the mathematical models that threaten to rip apart our social fabric--with a new afterword

"A manual for the twenty-first-century citizen . . . relevant and urgent."--Financial Times

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST - NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review - Boston Globe - Wired - Fortune - Kirkus Reviews - The Guardian - Nature - On Point

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

But as mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil reveals, the mathematical models being used today are unregulated and uncontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination--propping up the lucky, punishing the downtrodden, and undermining our democracy in the process. Welcome to the dark side of Big Data.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553418831
• ISBN13: 9780553418835
• Release Date: September 2017
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Great read

My favorite book on the subject. Easy to read and informative.

Great book on algorithms and the harm they can cause

I really liked it. It's an in-depth look at some of the algorithms that influence our lives, the assumptions they're based on, and why those assumptions ultimately end up causing harm. We all ought to be a bit more critical of the machines running our lives and Cathy O'Neil does a good job explaining why. Read this if you're interested in Privacy and/or Data Science.