In chapter 9 of “Weapons of Math Destruction (WMD),” Cathy O’Neil addresses how erroneous data is used to evaluate an individual’s insurance value. She focuses on the car insurance industry because every person who drives is required to have one. As mentioned in previous chapters, the prevalent characteristic embedded in the WMD that evaluates insurance is its opacity. The WMD sorts individuals into subgroups that is dependent on specific data inputs. The problem with the data inputs is that it is not based on the person’s ability to drive. Instead, it is based on personal data such as credit scores…

In chapter 8 of “Weapons of Math Destruction (WMD),” by Cathy O’Neil, she addresses how mathematical model are incorporated in banking and finance, and how it is causing harm to our society. She points out how credit scores are evaluated through e-scores, which an unregulated and unfair mathematical model does. E-scores consist of various data such as zip codes and internet activities as input to the model. Financial institutes use E-scores to form a hierarchy of potential customers who visit their website, such as the case for Capital One.

The e-score evaluator is opaque and lacks transparency because most individuals…

In chapter 7 of Cathy O’Neil’s “Weapons of Math Destruction,” O’Neil exposes the adverse effects of WMDs in the workforce, specifically, minimum-wage workers who work for major companies such as McDonald’s and Starbucks. The major problem that the WMD is causing within the workforce is treating workers as mere resources to optimize revenue instead of treating them as human beings. Companies like maximizing their revenue, and one way to achieve this is by cutting down on the number of working staff. Additional staff members are only called during busy hours; otherwise, the number of working staff is kept at a…

Entering the workforce is already hard enough as it is for a lot of people. To make the process even more complicated, Weapons of Math Destructions (WMD) are weeding out groups of people through personality tests. Chapter 6 of “Weapons of Math Destruction,” by Cathy O’Neil, addresses how big corporations are using WMDs to lessen the workload during the hiring process using WMDs. One such example is the software developed by Kronos. We will refer to this software as a WMD due to the harm it causes to our society. One of the characteristics that this WMD possesses is that…

In this blog, we will be focusing on Chapter 5 of Cathy O’Neil’s work, “Weapons of Math Destruction” (WMD). In Chapter 1, O’Neil brought up the recidivism model used as the sentencing guidelines for each inmate. In Chapter 5, another WMD that is involved with the justice system is addressed. This WMD was a predictive program created by PredPol that measures the likelihood of crimes occurring in certain areas of a town/city. Low-income areas do not have enough resources to support a large police force. Therefore, predictive models such as PredPol’s are used to maximize a small police force’s utility.

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Consider this, Christmas is only a week away, and you still have not yet brought a gift for your 5-year-old niece. You then browse through the online marketplace, searching for the perfect toy to give as a gift. After some rounds of searching for the perfect toy, you have finally found it, and you proceed to purchase it. Then, you continue browsing the internet and found yourself aimlessly watching YouTube videos. However, you notice that every YouTube ad is about children’s toys. At this point, the algorithm behind the scenes has already built you a personalized advertisement. …

For high school students looking forward to attending college in their near future, the first step of the process is determining which college to attend. There are several colleges in the United States, which offer students various options on which one they should attend. It is common for students to have the desire to attend a college that is ranked best among other colleges in the nation. However, how are these colleges ranked against one another?

According to Cathy O’Neil’s work, “Weapons of Math Destruction (WMD),” one of the threats that WMDs present is their scalability. She addresses this issue…

The book “Weapons of Math Destruction” by Cathy O’Neil was the product of her journey of disillusionment with big data. It is worth addressing the root of her disillusionment because it opens up our mind to our surroundings, and to think and observe like a quant, so that we may come to realize the different effects that big data has on our society, whether it’d be good or bad. …