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SUMMARY:Weapons of Math Destruction - Dr Cathy O'Neil
DTSTART:20160927T113000Z
DTEND:20160927T130000Z
UID:TALK67658@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Lucian Stephenson
DESCRIPTION:Cathy  O'Neil is the author of the blog mathbabe.org. She was 
 the former Director of the Lede Program in Data Practices at Columbia Univ
 ersity Graduate School of Journalism\, Tow Center and was employed as Data
  Science Consultant at Johnson Research Labs.\nShe has just published a ne
 w book _Weapons of Math Destruction_ and her other recent books are _Doing
  Data Science: Straight Talk from the Frontline_ and _On Being a Data Skep
 tic_.\n\nShe earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard and taught at Barn
 ard College before moving to the private sector\, where she worked for the
  hedge fund D. E. Shaw. She then worked as a data scientist at various sta
 rt-ups\, building models that predict people's purchases and clicks. O'Nei
 l started the Lede Program in Data Journalism at Columbia and is the autho
 r of Doing Data Science. She appears weekly on the Slate Money podcast.\n\
 nHer work was recently reported in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.co
 m/science/2016/sep/01/how-algorithms-rule-our-working-lives\n\nand on Radi
 o 4 programme More or less 4th September edition\nhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/pro
 grammes/b07qc93b\n\nA former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the math
 ematical models that pervade modern life and threaten to rip apart our soc
 ial fabric \nWe live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly\, the decis
 ions that affect our lives where we go to school\, whether we get a car lo
 an\, how much we pay for health insurance are being made not by humans\, b
 ut by mathematical models. In theory\, this should lead to greater fairnes
 s: Everyone is judged according to the same rules\, and bias is eliminated
 .\n \nBut as Cathy O Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book\, the 
 opposite is true.\n\n
LOCATION:Faculty of Education\, 184 Hills Road\, Cambridge\, CB2 8PQ\, DMB
 \, Room GS5
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