Cathy O’Neil on Weapons of Math Destruction
Cathy&#x27;s use of &#x27;problematic&#x27; seems to paper over any need to actually go into an analysis of cost and benefits of using statistics and statistical learning in sentencing, personal banking etc.<p>In the business of making credit decisions (specifically, who to extend credit to, and at what rates), preventing banks from using better information only harms people who would have been the subjects of erroneous decisions in their favour, and the ability of the bank to consistently make better judgements means they can also offer lower rates and fees to people they choose to extend credit to.<p>This is in contrast to sentencing, where you prefer (in theory, at least) to bias judgements in favour of leniency (in the spirit of Blackstone&#x27;s formulation), and you might even to prefer to make mistakes, if making the right decisions alienates people who interact with the justice system.