Title of Lecture: “What Is an Accountable Algorithm?” – Saturday, June 29 – 12:30 to 1:30 pm
Cathy O’Neil is an American mathematician and the author of the blog mathbabe.org and several books on data science, including Weapons of Math Destruction. She was the former Director of the Lede Program in Data Practices at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Tow Center and was employed as Data Science Consultant at Johnson Research Labs.
She has held positions in the mathematics departments of MIT and Barnard College, doing research in arithmetic algebraic geometry. She left academia in 2007, and worked for four years in the finance industry, including two years at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw. After becoming disenchanted with the world of finance, O’Neil became involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement, participating in its Alternative Banking Group. In 2016, her book Weapons of Math Destruction was published and long-listed for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
The New Yorker Article: Bluegrass and Big Data