Weapons of Math Destruction- 10.30

Math "Controls" All

It’s really cool to read about all the ways in which math can really mess with things in life and the downside of how it can have a horrible effect on things too. I think the most interesting thing I read was about the feedback loop and the effects it had on the U.S. News ranking of colleges- or at least the concept that goes behind what happened after the magazine ranked all these colleges. (Hoping to get this right):

What I found interesting was that there was an initial model kinda just “thrown out there” and told to the public “this is what it is” but then as time went on, colleges soon began to manipulate the model. By using attributes that were used to describe Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford as a means to create the model, other colleges sunk in rates but then were able to later create their own feedback loops by improving their rank  over time (right?). Like the TCU, as my example, they raised extra money to improve their facilities and make their appearances more appealing to incoming students, then they moved up, and started to begin weighing students’ applications differently and soon that led to them being able to change the way they conducted the acceptance rates, and the test scores that they publish online or send around to potential college students. This, in turn, gets fed back to the algorithm and pushes their rankings up (or ideally) and then the college is able to create more constraints or features to their school that makes them more appealing and pulls their ranking up. The opposite effect occurred to the inmates that O’Neil discussed. And (if I got this right) the feedback loop seems like a really interesting thing to be able to manipulate.

I liked that O’Neil touched on the difference- or pointed out that there is even a difference- between an informal, internal model and an external, formal model to doing or thinking about certain things. I very much related to her example for cooking. I have a very picky husband (and he was basically raised with that being ok, he has 6 siblings so if it got to it, it’d all be a ‘fend-for- yourself, anything is ok’ sort of thing) but when I cook on my nights, it’s sometimes like pulling teeth. We’re both really busy and picky, so we sometimes can’t agree, therefore our “menu” at home is very narrow. I consider a lot of informal details also to create my model and figure out what to get at the store every time I go shopping. Like “do I actually buy veggies this time or do I get it next time so that we don’t end up throwing it away because he ends up not wanting tacos on the scheduled night”. Or “I should make stew tonight” because it’s one of my favorite recipes and because it’s winter-time and during school time so I can just toss it all in the crock-pot and call it good until 5. Everything works out...we just eat a lot of spaghetti and chicken soup, and he eats a lot of Starbursts, pizza and sugary-cereal. (jk!)

** Another thing: I am not sure I understand what scale means this book… **

🤔