A review by lindy_b
Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil
3.0
Weapons of Math Destruction is a quick read about the social impacts of mathematical modeling. O'Neil's writing is engaging and you don't really have to know anything about math/statistics to understand it.
With accessibility there's a loss of detail, though. It's all very surface level, and most of the case studies will probably be familiar to you if you have read tech news with any regularity within the last five years.
At one point O'Neil quips that political speeches are often boring because they're trying to be appealing to basically everyone, and that is how I feel about this book. O'Neil shies away from the logical conclusion (critique of capitalism, because capitalism necessitates the sort of inequalities driven by WMDs that O'Neil calls out in the text). The conclusions she does offer up aren't all that well-formed or compelling.
With accessibility there's a loss of detail, though. It's all very surface level, and most of the case studies will probably be familiar to you if you have read tech news with any regularity within the last five years.
At one point O'Neil quips that political speeches are often boring because they're trying to be appealing to basically everyone, and that is how I feel about this book. O'Neil shies away from the logical conclusion (critique of capitalism, because capitalism necessitates the sort of inequalities driven by WMDs that O'Neil calls out in the text). The conclusions she does offer up aren't all that well-formed or compelling.