Truthful Numbers . . . Or Not
WMD (Weapons of Math Destruction) has found its way into vocabulary after reading the article by Cathy O’Neil. The numbers are not giving its users the proper results. They are lacking the whole truth. This is when it come to data that they use to collect stats on greater scales.
Hearing the story from the author of her spending her childhood loving numbers was a great intro. They always seemed to prove her right. Her seeing them differently now as she takes an in-depth look into more political and societal matters. She soon learned that “Big Data economy” seemed promising to big corporations and government. It provided the numbers that told they basically they were right, but without telling the whole truth. The numbers only showed one side of the story as opposed to the people these numbers are leaving behind in the process.
Lacking Proper Results
The numbers do show progression for businesses in the profits aspect, and even in the education realm, but it leaves those working at the short end of the stick. Cathy gave the explore of how some jobs use credit scores to determine if someone should be hired for the job. Yes, in some forms it is true if they pay bills on time more then likely they are consistent in work because that makes their income. The whole story isn’t being told. That person could have experienced a hardship and may be looking to get back other feet, but now their credit score is affecting them and that’s what they are trying to fix. The numbers are not giving its users the proper results.
Even looking through the example of the teachers, yes it looks like on paper the teachers with the lower scores from students should be fired, but have we been able to observe them in the classroom and give them a proper evaluation. Through these examples the biggest thing is that once the person doesn’t get the job or the teacher loses their job the system still isn’t “fixed”. It’s lacking the truth, so their for it continues to give false numbers and false good results.
Understanding The Lack of Proper Results
Stats have never been in favor of minorities or those who are considered poor within society. The hope would be to change the way the computers give us the numbers driving these big data companies. By educating the machines behind the wok is best to get better results, and more fair results. As humans we are complex, and therefore are more than just numbers being looked at by a machine. This connects to my overall all feelings of us being constantly watched and monitored closely throughout society.
Being watched either digitally or mathematically is leading us as a society to false positives and wishful thinking. This
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