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.
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.