Summary of Cathy O'Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The Indians’ manager, Lou Boudreau, used statistical analysis to turn Ted Williams’s hits into outs. Today, every player is treated like Ted Williams, and teams analyze every variable they can quantify and attach a value to.
#2 The term Moneyball is now used to describe any statistical approach in domains long ruled by the gut. Baseball is a good example of a transparent model, as everyone can access the stats and understand how they’re interpreted.
#3 The model I use to manage my family’s food is a simplified version of the real world’s complexity. It is always making mistakes, because it is, by its very nature, a simplification.
#4 Models are created to simplify a complex world into a simple version that can be easily understood and from which important facts and actions can be inferred. They are opinions embedded in mathematics.

Sujets

• Public policy
• Général

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 23 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669359104
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Cathy O’Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Indians’ manager, Lou Boudreau, used statistical analysis to turn Ted Williams’s hits into outs. Today, every player is treated like Ted Williams, and teams analyze every variable they can quantify and attach a value to.

#2

The term Moneyball is now used to describe any statistical approach in domains long ruled by the gut. Baseball is a good example of a transparent model, as everyone can access the stats and understand how they’re interpreted.

#3

The model I use to manage my family’s food is a simplified version of the real world’s complexity. It is always making mistakes, because it is, by its very nature, a simplification.

#4

Models are created to simplify a complex world into a simple version that can be easily understood and from which important facts and actions can be inferred. They are opinions embedded in mathematics.

#5

The most common model for detecting fires in a home or office weighs only one strongly correlated variable, the presence of smoke. But modelers run into problems when they focus on simple models like a smoke alarm on their fellow humans.

#6

The use of computerized risk models in courts has helped judges sentence more evenly, but the questions used in these models are often rooted in human prejudice.

#7

The LSI-R questionnaire has been given to thousands of inmates since its invention in 1995. It has been used to determine whether inmates are high, medium, or low risk for recidivism. But the questionnaire includes circumstances of a criminal’s birth and upbringing, which should not be relevant to a criminal case or sentencing.

#8

The recidivism model is an example of a WMD that is highly transparent, but also highly toxic. It helps to sustain a vicious cycle, as it contributes to the cycle by giving criminals a higher chance of returning to prison.

#9

The WMDs that judge people by their circumstances are inherently unfair. They lead to suffering for others as they are constantly judging people based on their circumstances, which they cannot control.

#10

The three elements of a WMD are Opacity, Scale, and Damage. All of these will be present in the examples we’ll be covering. The world of finance provides a cautionary tale of how WMDs can spread from one field to another.