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

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil

Weapons of Math Destruction looks at the fields of Analytics and Big Data in a non-technical manner to provide a basic overview of how statistical models are built and used to predict behavior and improve efficiency. The focus is on showing how well-designed analytical models are built, and how to distinguish them from those that have destructive, but profitable, outcomes. It is an insider's look at the science and practice of Big Data for the benefit of those outside the field. As such, it is a good introductory text to the issues involved. Broad in its sweep, this book looks at Big Data applications in education, criminal justice, the workplace, and politics. It points out how, while promising fairness and efficiency, the uses of Big Data can often punish the poor while rewarding the upper class.
Any book with the word Math in the title can be expected to have formulas full of symbols, or at least graphs, spreadsheets or data. But this book has none of these and can safely be read by the math averse population.
What you can expect to come away with is a sense of how pervasive Big Data have become, how its use may effect your daily life and those who are hurt by it, and how to develop an understanding of ways to determine which uses of Big Data increase inequality and threaten Democracy.
What I felt was its weakest point was when the author talks about solutions. O'Neil sees this as a young field and that the problems pointed out in the book will be seen as the early days before the practitioners learned to bring fairness and accountability to the field. Suggested improvements in the book include teaching ethics to the researchers in the field, and developing a Hippocratic Oath for Big Data similar to the one used in Medicine. However, I think the book itself is a good start towards developing an informed public able to understand the fair and unfair uses of Analytics with a goal towards developing a regulatory structure that allows individuals to see how their data is being used, and to provide the feedback mechanisms to help users actively participate in their profiling.
While this is an overview written for a general audience, and is relatively free of footnotes, there is a 34 page section of Notes at the end of the book showing the sources used for the information discussed throughout the pages of the text. I came away from reading this book with a much better understanding of the impact of Big Data and the analytical tools used to work with it. Much of what I see online has been modified to fit a profile of me created by my past online choices that have put me in a statistical bucket or silo and limits what I see and hear. This reminds me of the parable of the frog in the well. The frog lived in a well where there was all he needed to live and a small patch of blue sky visible at the opening of the well. One day, a turtle came by and told him about the vast sea. The frog replies 'The sea? Hah! It's paradise in here. Nothing can be better than this well." With the Moral being that ignorant people know nothing aside from their own small world. Cathy O'Neil is the turtle offering this book as a way of showing us frogs caught up in our silos of information about the vast Ocean of Big Data that is out there if we can learn to see outside our small computer screen view.
Big Data for the Masses