In my 19th book review of 2020, I welcome you to peek into the dark side of Big Data. Cathy O’Neil earned a Ph.D. in math from Harvard, was a postdoc at the MIT math department, and a professor at Barnard College where she published a number of research papers in arithmetic algebraic geometry. She then worked as a quant for the hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the middle of the credit crisis. She left finance in 2011 to work as a data scientist. Evolving from academic mathematician to quant to blogger, O’Neil has accumulated an unusual set of experiences and expertise and she has all the creds. This is the Big Data economy, and it promises spectacular gains.
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