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.
Weapons of Math Destruction reveals datasets are indeed flawed. Are data scientists manipulating scripts to alter data results? Several examples that alone make her book a wise investment of your time.
Michelle Rhee‘s failure to determine why respected, strong teachers in Washington DC were begin fired for low IMPACT scores. Sarah Wysocki, a great teacher was fired by an error in their data. Some teachers were altering the scores of their students to save their jobs. Rhee lost her job too. Sarah quickly found a teaching job at a well respected high school. In the end a WMD only proved to help Washington DC lost a good teacher. Cathy filed a freedom of information request on behalf of Sarah to see the algorithm. She was denied due to a secret licensing agreement. Students lost a valuable teacher. The district lost the ability to even ‘see’ the algorithm that resulted in Sarah’s firing. Wow.
Every consider how US News and World Report ranked colleges across the nation? Cathy reveals how this began as a project to help USNews, a second tier news magazine from shutting their doors. The market however, exploded with their new published report. This WMD shows how USNews began the ranking by simply asking college presidents how they felt their school ranked. No data surveys, just opinions. Somehow the report became a runaway success for USNews. Best outcome? Colleges cheated at the rankings. Many colleges shifted their efforts to score better on the 15 scoring categories introduced by USNews. Baylor paid students to retake SAT test to raise their ranking. Bucknell, Claremont McKenna, and Iona College have all admitted to lying. Yet Iona jumped from 50th to 30th for colleges ranked in the Northeast.
Book website: https://weaponsofmathdestructionbook.com/