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

by Cathy O'Neil

Much of the scheduling technology has its roots in a powerful discipline of applied mathematics called “operations research,” or OR. For centuries, mathematicians used the rudiments of OR to help farmers plan crop plantings and help civil engineers map highways to move people and goods efficiently. But the discipline didn’t really take off until World War II, when the US and British military enlisted teams of mathematicians to optimize their use of resources. The Allies kept track of various forms of an “exchange ratio,” which compared Allied resources spent versus enemy resources destroyed. During Operation Starvation, which took place between March and August 1945, the Twenty-first Bomber Command was tasked with destroying Japanese merchant ships in order to prevent food and other goods from arriving safely on Japanese shores. OR teams worked to minimize the number of mine-laying aircraft for each Japanese merchant ship that was sunk. They managed an “exchange ratio” of over 40 to 1—only 15 aircraft were lost in sinking 606 Japanese ships. This was considered highly efficient, and was due, in part, to the work of the OR team. Following World War II, major companies (as well as the Pentagon) poured enormous resources into OR. The science of logistics radically transformed the way we produce goods and bring them to market. In the 1960s, Japanese auto companies made another major leap, devising a manufacturing system called Just in Time. The idea was that instead of storing...