Cathy O'Neil

DATA SCIENTIST

- Evelyn Lamb

Cathy O’Neil has a PhD in mathematics and works as a data scientist in New York City. Much of her work is about equity and fairness s in data science. When humans program a computer to make decisions, they might think things will automatically be fair. After all, computer programs don’t have emotions or beliefs to interfere in their decisions. But that’s overly simplistic. . In fact, AI can reinforce human biases. In 2016, O’Neil published a book about this problem called Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy.

WHAT IS A DATA SCIENTIST? 

A data scientist is somebody who uses data to find patterns in behavior, often human behavior. It could be things like how often subways break down, or it could be how many people are on each subway. We typically learn enough statistics and problem solving to try to use patterns that happened in the past to predict what will happen in the future with either the subways or the people.

CAN YOU GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF HOW YOU MIGHT FIGURE OUT A PATTERN?