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

by Cathy O'Neil

We had about fifty quants in total. In the early days, it was entirely men, except for me. Most of them were foreign born. Many of them had come from abstract math or physics; a few, like me, had come from number theory. I didn’t get much of a chance to talk shop with them, though. Since our ideas and algorithms were the foundation of the hedge fund’s business, it was clear that we quants also represented a risk: if we walked away, we could quickly use our knowledge to fuel a fierce competitor. To keep this from happening on a large, firm-threatening scale, Shaw mostly prohibited us from talking to colleagues in other groups—or sometimes even our own office mates—about what we were doing. In a sense, information was cloistered in a networked cell structure, not unlike that of Al Qaeda. That way, if one cell collapsed—if one of us hightailed it to Bridgewater or J.P. Morgan, or set off on our own—we’d take with us only our own knowledge. The rest of Shaw’s business would carry on unaffected. As you can imagine, this wasn’t terrific for camaraderie.