Top all-time · #592
Cathy O'Neil
Personal blog · mathbabe.orgmathdatapolitics
Cathy O'Neil writes mathbabe, a personal blog at mathbabe.org about math, data and politics. Since 2011, 103 different Hacker News readers have linked it 128 times, most often “Notes on the Oxford Mochizuki Workshop (ABC Conjecture)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 37 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers list Cathy O'Neil's blog among favourite individual blogs and cite her posts on the societal impact of prediction, data bias and Excel-based austerity.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- 'Superb musings' on prediction's societal impact; 'quite enjoyed' one post; 'interesting'; 'of some interest'; a favourite blog.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 37 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Exploring and venting about quantitative issues
Most-linked posts?
- Notes on the Oxford Mochizuki Workshop (ABC Conjecture)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-12-16
- The ABC Conjecture has not been proved4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-11-16
- Dirty Rant About the Human Brain Project4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-10-20
- Thoughts on the future of math education2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-07-31
- Weapons of Math Destruction2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-09-06
- Bill Gates is naive, data is not objective2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-01-29
- Microfinance Is Mostly a Scam (2015)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-06-27
- Donald Trump is like a biased machine learning algorithm2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-08-25
- If it's hocus pocus then it's not math2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-21
- P-values and power in statistical tests2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-04-25
What Hacker News says?
Also the post-2008 financial crisis austerity programs based on Excel analysis. https://mathbabe.org/2013/04/17/global-move-to-austerity-bas...
Comment linking /2013/04/17/global-move-to-austerity-based-on-mistake-in-excel/
on “Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel”Submitted Nate Silver confuses cause and effect, ends up defending corruption as a story · 232 points
HN discussionMaria Popova https://www.brainpickings.org/ Tom Murphy https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/ Cathy O'Neil https://mathbabe.org/ Peter Woit (Not Even Wrong) https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/ Autumn Gearhart Rain https://rainintheforecast.wordpress.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Microfinance Is Mostly a Scam (2015) as a story · 156 points
HN discussionA blog post which writes about someone who interviewed with the NSA: http://mathbabe.org/2012/08/25/nsa-mathematicians/ Choice quote: ‘Out of the 6 or 7 people I met, everyone but one person responded along the lines, “I believe everything the United States Government does is good.”’
Comment linking /2012/08/25/nsa-mathematicians/
on “It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?”Submitted Telling people to leave finance as a story · 115 points
HN discussionAs a normal human I naturally typed in "fuck" in a new search engine and it led me to this article https://mathbabe.org/2015/06/22/fuck-trigonometry/ which I quite enjoyed!
Comment linking /2015/06/22/fuck-trigonometry/
on “Show HN: I'm building a non-profit search engine”Submitted Does mathematics have a place in higher education? as a story · 70 points
HN discussionThere's good reason to be skeptical of AI as it is. Here's a couple of reasons Racial bias in facial recognition: "Error rates up to 34% higher on dark-skinned women than for lighter-skinned males. "Default camera settings are often not optimized to capture darker skin tones, resulting in lower-quality database images of Black Americans" https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/racial-discriminatio... Chicago’s “Heat…
Comment linking /2016/08/18/chicagos-heat-list-predicts-arrests-doesnt-protect-people-or-deter-crime/
on “Past Performance is Not Indicative of Future Results (2020)”Submitted On the making of a girl nerd as a story · 64 points
HN discussionHere is the author's guest post providing background for this plugin - https://mathbabe.org/2017/03/31/guest-post-make-your-browsin...
Comment linking /2017/03/31/guest-post-make-your-browsing-noiszy/
on “Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data”Submitted Bill Gates is naive, data is not objective as a story · 47 points
HN discussionThis. And since certain companies/industries pose a certain "systemic risk," failing to self-regulate might lead to external regulation later. For example, legislation on AI, predictive models, and facial recognition in policing. Who knows, we could see limits on the use of imperfect models in other areas. After all, there is no "market solution" for ethics. https://mathbabe.org/2013/11/12/there-is-no-market-solutio…
Comment linking /2013/11/12/there-is-no-market-solution-for-ethics/
on “We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google”Submitted Dissolve the SEC as a story · 42 points
HN discussionAlso has a great list of other blogs, most of which are my favorites now too. https://jvns.ca/blog/2016/04/09/some-of-my-favorite-blogs/ here's a copy+pastable list: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/ http://danluu.com/ https://aphyr.com/ http://www.elidedbranches.com/ http://composition.al/blog/2015/03/31/what-isnt-a-key-value-... https://www.harihareswara.net/sumana/2016/03/29/0 http://blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/intro.h…
Comment linking /2016/03/30/apple-vs-fbi-nobody-won/
on “Ask HN: What are your favourite developer blogs?”Submitted Open data is not a panacea as a story · 40 points
HN discussionWow! That was an amazing read! These old articles might be of some interest as well: http://today.uconn.edu/blog/2012/10/the-mochizuki-theorem-wh... http://mathbabe.org/2012/11/14/the-abc-conjecture-has-not-be...
Comment linking /2012/11/14/the-abc-conjecture-has-not-been-proved/
on “The Paradox of the Proof”Submitted The ABC Conjecture has not been proved as a story · 15 points
HN discussionI don't know about these guys, but according to Cathy O'Neil, D. E. Shaw profited by anticipating (c.f. index front-running) pension funds in a way that sickened her to the point of quitting. https://mathbabe.org/2011/06/24/working-with-larry-summers-p...
Comment linking /2011/06/24/working-with-larry-summers-part-2/
on “A Moneymaking Machine Like Few Others”Submitted WTF is happening in Cyprus? as a story · 13 points
HN discussionNot always... Its been found that what most have called charity is actually predatory lending by another name. I’m sure there are some legit players but like most things in life you may need to read the fine print and get a lawyer. Source: https://mathbabe.org/2015/10/13/microfinance-is-mostly-a-sca...
Comment linking /2015/10/13/microfinance-is-mostly-a-scam/
on “Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]”Submitted Interview with Chris Wiggins: don’t send me another $^%& shortcut alias as a story · 11 points
HN discussionPrivacy laws also protect the people who don't think about privacy. Those are the ones most susceptible to being manipulated by people tracking their activities. See http://mathbabe.org/2014/02/26/what-privacy-advocates-get-wr...
Comment linking /2014/02/26/what-privacy-advocates-get-wrong/
on “Privacy Protects Bothersome People (2013)”Submitted In Denial (#OWS) as a story · 8 points
HN discussionInterestingly (on reflection, not surprisingly) since going back to RSS, I've been reading a lot more from sites with expert content, but ugly typography. - Math Babe ( https://mathbabe.org ) + Superb musings and coverage on the societal impact of everything becoming a prediction problem (occasional applied technical discussion) - Tech Dirt ( https://www.techdirt.com/ ) + Lawyers Rule Everything Around Me - Light Bl…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What's on your RSS reader?”Submitted The higher education bubble as a story · 6 points
HN discussionRelated from 2013: https://mathbabe.org/2013/07/30/the-stacks-project-gets-ever... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11054838 , but nothing else there)
Comment linking /2013/07/30/the-stacks-project-gets-ever-awesomer-with-new-viz/
on “The Stacks Project, a new model for organizing and visualizing mathematics”Submitted An interview with someone who left Effective Altruism as a story · 5 points
HN discussion"Mathbabe" is currently working on something similar: http://mathbabe.org/2014/08/28/a-decision-tree-for-decision-... even if she has just started working on this (and she mentions the OP item herself).
Comment linking /2014/08/28/a-decision-tree-for-decision-trees/
on “Machine Learning Cheat Sheet Map”Submitted The bursting of the big data bubble as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
