Cathy O’Neil Biography

Cathy O’Neil (born 1972) is an American mathematician and data scientist. After earning a PhD in mathematics from Harvard University, O’Neil became a professor at Barnard College before working as a quantitative analyst at hedge fund D. E. Shaw. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, she started the blog Math Babe to communicate the risks of poorly constructed and naively deployed mathematical models in public life. After subsequent stints in risk management and e-commerce, O’Neil founded an independent consultancy, ORCAA, that audits Big Data algorithms for fairness and effectiveness.

Weapons of Math Destruction (2016), O’Neil’s first book written for a general readership, was widely praised upon publication, making annual best-book lists at Wired, Fortune, Kirkus Reviews, and Nature. O’Neil is also the coauthor, with Rachel Schutt, of Doing Data Science: Straight Talk from the Frontline (2013) and the author of The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation (2022). The former is a technical guide for practitioners; the latter, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, takes up the “weaponization” of shame in areas as diverse as school lunches and national politics.