Panashe Fundira

A short book about how “WMDs” pose a great threat to society. The book actually makes some good arguments, and its subject is relevant to a thesis I'm writing on the use machine learning in public policy, and I'm actually on board with the author's critique. However, I don't think the critique goes far enough. The problem is not the encroachment of mathematics in our lives, but the existing social and economic inequalities that are amplified by the use of sophisticated mathematical models. The author also offers no alternatives, we can hardly step back from our data-intensive society. I may be overly harsh, however, as the alternatives posed by authors usually range from very useless to less useless.

EDIT: I must admit that I wrote the above before reading the concluding arguments, where the author (mostly adequately) adresses the above concerns. As such, I've revised my rating up to 4 stars. Recommended to all, including the non-technical reader.

This book was pretty thought provoking in its discussion of how we can apply computer science to human problems. The best part of this book is its beginning, with its exposition of the Optimal Stopping problem and exploration/exploitation tradeoffs. I had some political grumbles about some of the authors' choices of examples, but that's not directly relevant to the material so I'll keep my mouth shut.