Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (34 page)

“The primary purpose of the test”:
Roland Behm, phone interview by author, April 1, 2015.

Regulators in Rhode Island:
Weber and Dwoskin, “Are Workplace Personality Tests Fair?”

The
Wall Street Journal
asked:
Lauren Weber, “Better to Be Artistic or Responsible? Decoding Workplace Personality Tests,”
Wall Street Journal
, September 29, 2014,
http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/09/29/better-to-be-artistic-or-responsible-decoding-workplace-personality-tests/
.

researchers from the University of Chicago:
Marianne Bertrand, “Racial Bias in Hiring: Are Emily and Brendan More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal?,”
Research Highlights from the Chicago Graduate School of Business
4, no. 4 (2003),
www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/spring03/racialbias.html
.

auditions with the musician hidden:
Curt Rice, “How Blind Auditions Help Orchestras to Eliminate Gender Bias,”
Guardian
, October 14, 2013,
www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias
.

72
percent of résumés are never seen:
Mona Abdel-Halim, “12 Ways to Optimize Your Resume for Applicant Tracking Systems,”
Mashable
, May 27, 2012,
http://mashable.com/2012/05/27/resume-tracking-systems/
.

words the specific job opening is looking for:
Ibid.

St. George’s Hospital Medical School:
Stella Lowry and Gordon MacPherson, “A Blot on the Profession,”
British Medical Journal
296 (March 5, 1988): 657–58.

Replacing a worker earning
$50,000
a year:
Heather Boushey and Sarah Jane Glynn, “There Are Significant Business Costs to Replacing Employees,”
American Progress
, November 16, 2012,
www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/report/2012/11/16/44464/there-are-significant-business-costs-to-replacing-employees/
.

Evolv:
Jessica Leber, “The Machine-Readable Workforce: Companies Are Analyzing More Data to Guide How They Hire, Recruit, and Promote Their Employees,”
MIT Technology Review
, May 27, 2013,
www.technologyreview.com/news/514901/the-machine-readable-workforce/
.

A pioneer in this field is Gild:
Jeanne Meister, “2015: Social HR Becomes A Reality,”
Forbes
, January 5, 2015,
www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2015/01/05/2015-social-hr-becomes-a-reality/
.

Vivienne Ming, Gild’s chief scientist:
Don Peck, “They’re Watching You at Work,”
Atlantic Monthly
, December 2013,
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/12/theyre-watching-you-at-work/354681/
.

CHAPTER 7

the
New York Times
ran a story:
Jodi Kantor, “Working Anything but 9 to 5: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents with Hours of Chaos,”
New York Times
, August 13, 2014,
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/starbucks-workers-scheduling-hours.html?_r=0
.

Within weeks of the article’s publication:
Jodi Kantor, “Starbucks to Revise Policies to End Irregular Schedules for Its 130,000 Baristas,”
New York Times
, August 14, 2014,
www.nytimes.com/2014/08/15/us/starbucks-to-revise-work-scheduling-policies.html
.

Starbucks was failing to meet these targets:
Justine Hofherr, “Starbucks Employees Still Face ‘Clopening,’ Understaffing, and Irregular Workweeks,”
Boston.com
, September 24, 2015,
www.boston.com/jobs/news/2015/09/24/starbucks-employees-still-face-clopening-understaffing-and-irregular-workweeks/FgdhbalfQqC2p1WLaQm2SK/story.html
.

The Allies kept track:
William Ferguson Story, “A Short History of Operations Research in the United States Navy,” master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, December 1968,
https://archive.org/details/shorthistoryofop00stor
.

Following World War II:
US Congress, Offices of Technology Assessment,
A History of the Department of Defense Federally FundedResearch and Development Centers
, OTA-BP-ISS-157 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, June 1995),
www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk1/1995/9501/9501.PDF
.

In the
1960
s, Japanese auto companies:
John Holusha, “ ‘Just-In-Time’ System Cuts Japan’s Auto Costs,”
New York Times
, March 25, 1983,
www.nytimes.com/1983/03/25/business/just-in-time-system-cuts-japan-s-auto-costs.html
.

the Economic Policy Institute:
Leila Morsy and Richard Rothstein, “Parents’ Non-standard Work Schedules Make Adequate Childrearing Difficult,” Economic Policy Institute, August 6, 2015,
www.epi.org/publication/parents-non-standard-work-schedules-make-adequate-childrearing-difficult-reforming-labor-market-practices-can-improve-childrens-cognitive-and-behavioral-outcomes/
.

The legislation died:
H.R. 5159—Schedules That Work Act, 113th Congress (2013–14), accessed January 10, 2016,
www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/5159
.

a San Francisco company called Cataphora:
Stephen Baker, “Data Mining Moves to Human Resources,” Bloomberg BusinessWeek, March 11, 2009,
www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2009-03-11/data-mining-moves-to-human-resources
.

MIT researchers analyzed the behavior of call center employees:
Joshua Rothman, “Big Data Comes to the Office,”
New Yorker
, June 3, 2014,
www.newyorker.com/books/joshua-rothman/big-data-comes-to-the-office
.

A Nation at Risk
:
National Commission on Excellence in Education,
A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform
(Washington, DC: National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983),
www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html
.

case of Tim Clifford:
Tim Clifford, “Charting the Stages of Teacher Data Report Grief,” WNYC-FM, March 9, 2012,
www.wnyc.org/story/302123-charting-the-stages-of-teacher-data-report-grief/
.

he later told me:
Tim Clifford, e-mail interview by the author, May 13, 2014.

researchers at Sandia National Laboratories:
Tamim Ansary, “Education at Risk: Fallout from a Flawed Report,”
Edutopia
, March 9, 2007,
www.edutopia.org/landmark-education-report-nation-risk
.

Simpson’s paradox:
Clifford Wagner, “Simpson’s Paradox in Real Life,”
American Statistician
36, no. 1 (1982): 46–48.

educator named Gary Rubinstein:
Gary Rubinstein, “Analyzing Released NYC Value-Added Data Part 2,”
Gary Rubinstein’s Blog
, February 28, 2012,
https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/analyzing-released-nyc-value-added-data-part-2/
.

Congress and the White House agreed:
Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “President Obama Signs into Law a Rewrite of No Child Left Behind,”
New York Times
, December 10, 2015,
www.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/us/politics/president-obam-signs-into-law-a-rewrite-of-no-child-left-behind.html
.

Cuomo’s education task force:
Yoav Gonen and Carl Campanile, “Cuomo Vacktracks on Common Core, Wants 4-Year Moratorium,”
New York Post
, December 10, 2015,
http://nypost.com/2015/12/10/cuomo-backtracks-on-common-core-wants-4-year-moratorium/
.

boycott movement had kept
20
percent:
Elizabeth Harris, “20% of New York State Students Opted Out of Standardized Tests This Year,”
New York Times
, August 12, 2015,
www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/nyregion/new-york-state-students-standardized-tests.html
.

Tim Clifford was cheered:
Tim Clifford, e-mail interview by author, December 15, 2015.

a proven tool against teachers’ unions:
Emma Brown, “Education Researchers Caution Against Using Students’ Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers,”
Washington Post
, November 12, 2015,
www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/education-researchers-caution-against-using-value-added-models—ie-test-scores—to-evaluate-teachers/2015/11/12/72b6b45c-8950-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html
.

CHAPTER 8

this banker would probably know:
Dubravka Ritter, “Do We Still Need the Equal Credit Opportunity Act?,” Discussion Paper, Payment Cards Center, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, September 2012,
https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedpdp/12-03.html
.

were routinely locked out:
Ibid.

model they called FICO:
Martha Poon, “Scorecards as Devices for Consumer Credit: The Case of Fair, Isaac & Company Incorporated,”
Sociological Review
55 (October 2007): 284–306, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2007.00740.x.

FICO’s website:
FICO website, accessed January 10, 2016,
www.myfico.com/CreditEducation/ImproveYourScore.aspx
.

you have the legal right to ask:
Free Credit Reports, Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Information, accessed January 10, 2016,
www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0155-free-credit-reports
.

company called Neustar:
Natasha Singer, “Secret E-Scores Chart Consumers’ Buying Power,”
New York Times
, August 18, 2012,
www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/business/electronic-scores-rank-consumers-by-potential-value.html
.