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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Why do biases exist? We tend to form biases towards something for particular reasons we believe are right or correct. We categorize new information we obtain to either be positive or negative. This happens through our experiences or from additional information we have gathered from our surroundings, such as news…