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Latest Read: Weapons of Math Destruction

Cathy O’Neil has written Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Cathy holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard. She taught at MIT and Barnard College. After four years Cathy departed for Wall Street. Learning first hand how big data is manipulated, she departed disappointed.

weapons of math destruction

Cathy turned to applying large data sets to understand how big data reinforces old stereotypes of wealth and race.

Just as Wall Street and society were embracing big data, the subprime mortgage collapse arrived. Cathy was just starting her career on Wall Street and witnessed the collapse from a close, fresh perspective.

Cathy has insights to that timeframe — and backed by big data. Methods to create big datasets should undergo scrutiny. Cathy reveals errors in several datasets throughout the book. These are referred to as WMDs. The errors are very real and impact American society. To no surprise the largest impacted groups are minorities and the poor.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Flat World Globalization Innovation Network OpenSource Reading Technology

Latest Read: Everybody Lies

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz wrote Everybody Lies Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. Seth holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. He is a former quantitative analyst at Google. Seth also writes for the NYTimes. The stories are similar to Freakonomics but are based upon much larger datasets.

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are

Everybody Lies is able to utilize Google search data that reveals in the opening chapter that we live in a very racist society.

Seth reviews search results from the 2016 Presidential election. Data mining via Google Search revealed hard truths that most would not say in mixed company.

Search at at work or home, Google data clearly indicated racists supported Trump in the 2016 Presidential election.

The outcomes of data mining Google search, Wikipedia, Facebook, Pornhub and Stormfront. The results are somewhat surprising if you simply follow analog driven surveys popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Clearly the mobile revolution and search provides real insights to the sway of the country or just specific sets of groups.

Everybody Lies tackles some interesting topics with vast amounts of data sets:

  • How much sex do people really have?
  • How many Americans are actually racist?
  • What should you say on a first date if you want a second?
  • Is America experiencing a hidden back-alley abortion crisis?
  • Where is the best place to raise kids?
  • Can you game the stock market?
  • Do parents treat sons differently from daughters?
  • How many men are gay?
  • Do violent movies increase violent crime?
  • How many people actually read the books they buy?

Like Freakonomics, the results will surprise you.

One of the more interesting data sets is within chapter three: Bodies as Data and involved a great story of American Pharoah. What makes a great racehorse? Actually the percentile of the left ventricle. Jeff Seder found the way to measure success of a racehorse. A great story is here. Seder, a Harvard trained lawyer took his hedge fund experience and applied it to his love of champion racehorses.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Flat World Globalization Innovation Network OpenSource Reading Technology

Latest Read: The Undoing Project

Michael Lewis wrote The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Change Our Minds. This story is about the lives of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Honestly I am not sure why it took me so long to read this book. Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow was very enjoyable (my review here) and one that I think about often.

Lewis acknowledged this story was a result of his bestseller Moneyball.

He learned the insights to data he was seeking about baseball was already available from Kahneman and Tversky.

Daniel accepted the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work. He acknowledged it should have been a joint award with Amos, who died from cancer eight years earlier.

Kahneman and Tversky focused on behavioral economics known as heuristics in judgment and decision-making. Their unique collaboration proved how unreliable human intuition can be. The results of their research can be staggering. For over twenty years they worked to prove our minds play tricks on us. This is simply based upon inaccurate memories and false stereotypes.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Innovation Network OpenSource Reading Technology

Latest Read: Flash Boys

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis is a remarkable Wall Street story. Lewis lays out a series of interwoven stories that result in flaws around High Frequency Trading (HFT). While not the subject of a SEC investigation, the book’s publication has resulted in fines for companies trading in less-than-honest environments.

Flash Boys begins with the story of Sergey Aleynikov. Sergey is a talented programmer who is key to this story. We meet him as he faces prosecution.

The early chapters involve cutting fiber optic cable runs via Spread Networks from Chicago to New Jersey, This was most appealing to me. There was an understanding that trades could be altered in measurements of just milliseconds. 4 milliseconds is the timeframe trading companies needed in order to gain an advantage against their trading competitors. 4 milliseconds!

Enter the ability for large corporate banking firms to trade within their own dark pools. The practice of front running was taken to a new level with millisecond transfers. It adds up to shifts in profits away from smaller traders to benefit Wall Street banks.

The idea of milliseconds sounded strange at first. It is impressive to learn how trading firms and large banks were pouring money into advanced networks. Yet this resulted in the 2010 Flash Crash. Most could not understand how computers could cause the market to crash. It was just the beginning of questionable trading practices.

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Design Education Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: Think Like a Freak

The authors of Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner publish Think Like a Freak. This is their third, and potentially last book in the Freakonomics platform.

think like a freak

Their idea is to train people to … well, think like they do, like a Freak. For example, the soccer penalty kick. Which way will the kicker try to strike the ball into the net? Go left side, middle or right? Well this is their first lesson to dig into the analytics and the mental thoughts of the kicker and goalie.

The level of attention they pay to the soccer question may be viewed as overthinking. Yet with your legacy riding on the kick, you have to decode a lot of data in a minute. Take this idea further. You will see the book’s insights develop for your life.

They teach readers to boil events down to incentives. Then measure the hell out of it. Yes this is an interesting take on how to change someone’s position. They even address the idea that you are too old to change your ways. The book’s subtitle is their offer to retrain your brain.