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

Zusatztext 48727325 Informationen zum Autor 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 started the Lede Program in Data Journalism at Columbia and is the author of Doing Data Science . She is currently a columnist for Bloomberg View . Klappentext Longlisted for the National Book Award New York Times Bestseller 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 car loan! how much we pay for health insurance-are being made not by humans! but by mathematical models. In theory! this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules! and bias is eliminated. But as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book! the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque! unregulated! and uncontestable! even when they're wrong. Most troubling! they reinforce discrimination: If a poor student can't get a loan because a lending model deems him too risky (by virtue of his zip code)! he's then cut off from the kind of education that could pull him out of poverty! and a vicious spiral ensues. Models are propping up the lucky and punishing the downtrodden! creating a "toxic cocktail for democracy." Welcome to the dark side of Big Data. Tracing the arc of a person's life! O'Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future! both as individuals and as a society. These "weapons of math destruction" score teachers and students! sort résumés! grant (or deny) loans! evaluate workers! target voters! set parole! and monitor our health. O'Neil calls on modelers to take more responsibility for their algorithms and on policy makers to regulate their use. But in the end! it's up to us to become more savvy about the models that govern our lives. This important book empowers us to ask the tough questions! uncover the truth! and demand change. - Longlist for National Book Award (Non-Fiction) - Goodreads! semi-finalist for the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards (Science and Technology) - Kirkus! Best Books of 2016 - New York Times! 100 Notable Books of 2016 (Non-Fiction) - The Guardian! Best Books of 2016 - WBUR's "On Point!" Best Books of 2016: Staff Picks - Boston Globe! Best Books of 2016! Non-Fiction 1 BOMB PARTS What Is a Model?  It was a hot August afternoon in 1946. Lou Boudreau, the player-manager of the Cleveland Indians, was having a miserable day. In the first game of a doubleheader, Ted Williams had almost single-handedly annihilated his team. Williams, perhaps the game’s greatest hitter at the time, had smashed three home runs and driven home eight. The Indians ended up losing 11 to 10. Boudreau had to take action. So when Williams came up for the first time in the second game, players on the Indians’ side started moving around. Boudreau, the shortstop, jogged over to where the second baseman would usually stand, and the second baseman backed into short right field. The third baseman moved to his left, into the shortstop’s hole. It was clear that Boudreau, perhaps out of desperation, was shifting the entire orientation of his defense in an attempt to turn Ted Williams’s hits into outs. In other words, he was thinking like a data scientist. He had analyzed crude data, most of it observational: Ted Williams usually hit the ball to right field. Then he adjusted. And it worked. Fielders caught more of Williams’s blist...

Product details

• Authors: Cathy Neil, O&apos, Cathy O'Neil
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 06.09.2016
• EAN: 9780451497338
• ISBN: 978-0-451-49733-8
• No. of pages: 258
• Dimensions: 141 mm x 210 mm x 18 mm
• Series: Crown Books
• Subject: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general)