Weapons of Math Destruction Quotes by Cathy O'Neil

The fact is that, despite its mathematical base, statistics is as much an art as it is a science. A great many manipulations and even distortions are possible within the bounds of propriety.

Doubt is a powerful weapon, and statistics are a vulnerable target.

Fourth, blind data dredging can lead to the perpetuation of obsolete social biases

anyone who is confident of the effectiveness of their algorithm should be happy to demonstrate that effectiveness in a fair and rigorous test.

Simply removing the “protected attribute” is insufficient. As long as the model takes in features that are correlated with, say, gender or race, avoiding explicitly mentioning it will do little good.

We have seen that computers cannot consider causality and cannot concoct counterfactuals. They also cannot conjure up constraints. Algorithms on their own are unable to impose boundaries and limitations.

Computers are very, very fast at making calculations. Moreover, they can be counted on to calculate faithfully—without getting tired or emotional or changing their mode of analysis in midstream. But this does not mean that computers produce perfect forecasts, or even necessarily good ones. The acronym GIGO (“garbage in, garbage out”) sums up this p