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

Cathy O´neil

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Description for Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy Paperback. Num Pages: 272 pages. BIC Classification: JPF; JPHV; KCHS; PDR; PDZM; UMB; UYQM. Category: (G) General (US: Trade); (P) Professional & Vocational; (U) Tertiary Education (US: College). Dimension: 198 x 129. .
New York Times Bestseller 'Fascinating and deeply disturbing' - Yuval Noah Harari, Guardian Books of the Year 'A manual for the 21st-century citizen... accessible, refreshingly critical, relevant and urgent' - Federica Cocco, Financial Times A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern life - and threaten to rip apart our social fabric We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives - where we go to school, whether we get a loan, how ... Read more

Product Details

Format

Paperback

Publication date

2017

Publisher

Penguin Books Ltd

Condition

New

Number of Pages

272

Place of Publication

London, United Kingdom

ISBN

9780141985411

SKU

9780141985411

Shipping Time

Usually ships in 2 to 4 working days

Ref

99-1

About Cathy O´neil

Cathy O'Neil is a data scientist and author of the blog mathbabe.org. She earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard and taught at Barnard College before moving to the private sector, where she worked for the hedge fund D. E. Shaw. She then worked as a data scientist at various start-ups, building models that predict people's purchases and clicks. O'Neil ... Read more

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

O'Neil is an ideal person to write this book... She is one of the strongest voices speaking out for limiting the ways we allow algorithms to influence our lives and against the notion that an algorithm, because it is implemented by an unemotional machine, cannot perpetrate bias or injustice... While Weapons of Math Destruction is full of hard truths and ... Read moregrim statistics, it is also accessible and even entertaining. O'Neil's writing is direct and easy to read - I devoured it in an afternoon
Evelyn Lamb
Scientific American
Not math heavy, but written in an exceedingly accessible, almost literary style; her fascinating case studies of WMDs fit neatly into the genre of dystopian literature. There's a little Philip K. Dick, a little Orwell, a little Kafka in her portrait of powerful bureaucracies ceding control of the most intimate decisions of our lives to hyper-empowered computer models riddled with all of our unresolved, atavistic human biases
Chris Jackson
Paris Review
In today's world, if you want to change your fate you've got to pray at the altar of the algorithm... As math guru Cathy O'Neil argues in her newest book, these models are just the latest way America's institutions perpetuate bias and prejudice to reward the rich and keep the poor, well, poor. It's a nuanced reminder that big data is only as good as the people wielding it
Wired
Often we don't even know where to look for those important algorithms, because by definition the most dangerous ones are also the most secretive. That's why the catalogue of case studies in O'Neil's book are so important; she's telling us where to look
Guardian
Weapons of Math Destruction is a fantastic, plainspoken call to arms. Cathy O'Neil's book is important precisely because she believes in data science. It's a vital crash course in why we must interrogate the systems around us and demand better
Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother and co-editor of Boing Boing Cathy O'Neil has seen Big Data from the inside, and the picture isn't pretty. Weapons of Math Destruction opens the curtain on algorithms that exploit people and distort the truth while posing as neutral mathematical tools. This book is wise, fierce, and desperately necessary
Jordan Ellenberg, author of How Not To Be Wrong O'Neil has become a whistle-blower for the world of Big Data... Her work makes particularly disturbing points about how being on the wrong side of an algorithmic decision can snowball in incredibly destructive ways
Time
Well-written, entertaining and very valuable
Danny Dorling
Times Higher Education
This is a manual for the 21st-century citizen, and it succeeds where other big data accounts have failed - it is accessible, refreshingly critical and feels relevant and urgent
Federica Cocco
Financial Times
Fascinating and deeply disturbing
Yuval Noah Harari
Guardian Books of the Year
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Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

Cathy O´neil

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