Venus Carew
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The need to question data analysis and how to draw sensible conclusions from data? ...
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Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy,
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Zach
It's a primer on the development and consequences of using algorithms to make complex decisions. I don't think the author would necessarily disagree with the data analysis or conclusions as it applies to the observed data. I think she would, however, question the validity of relying on those conclusions as the primary decision making criterion. Succinctly, solid data analysis with sensible conclusions can become a WMD when turned into a predictive algorithm. WMDs can be innocently wrong (eg someone who is a low-risk borrower might have a low credit score because they were sent to collections for a parking ticket they didn't know they had because they moved cross-country... not that I'm bitter), WMDs can be gamed (eg the collateralized debt obligations that crashed the economy in 2008 are largely due to bundling higher-risk loans in a way that the algorithms thought they were lower-risk), and WMDs can have consequences that most of us don't like (eg social media feed algorithms sensibly conclude from the data that people engage longer with content that induces negative emotions, which makes them $$ but makes us unhappy).
Sharon
Not exactly - certainly some of the WMDs Cathy writes about draw incorrect or at least untested assumptions and inferences, but many of them do exactly what they are meant to do - drive profitability without regard for who might get hurt in the process.
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