Outnumbered: From Facebook and Google to Fake News and Filter-bubbles - The Algorithms That Control Our Lives

by David Sumpter

Overview

'Fascinating' - Financial Times

Algorithms are running our society, and as the Cambridge Analytica story has revealed, we don't really know what they are up to.

Our increasing reliance on technology and the internet has opened a window for mathematicians and data researchers to gaze through into our lives. Using the data they are constantly collecting about where we travel, where we shop, what we buy and what interests us, they can begin to predict our daily habits. But how reliable is this data? Without understanding what mathematics can and can't do, it is impossible to get a handle on how it is changing our lives.

In this book, David Sumpter takes an algorithm-strewn journey to the dark side of mathematics. He investigates the equations that analyse us, influence us and will (maybe) become like us, answering questions such as:

- Who are Cambridge Analytica? And what are they doing with our data?
- How does Facebook build a 100-dimensional picture of your personality?
- Are Google algorithms racist and sexist?
- Why do election predictions fail so drastically?
- Are algorithms that are designed to find criminals making terrible mistakes?
- What does the future hold as we relinquish our decision-making to machines?

Featuring interviews with those working at the cutting edge of algorithm research, including Alex Kogan from the Cambridge Analytica story, along with a healthy dose of mathematical self-experiment, Outnumbered explains how mathematics and statistics work in the real world, and what we should and shouldn't worry about.

A lot of people feel outnumbered by algorithms – don't be one of them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472947420
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	04/19/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

David Sumpter is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. Originally from London, but growing up in Scotland, he completed his doctorate in Mathematics at Manchester, and held a Royal Society Fellowship at Oxford before heading to Sweden. His scientific research covers everything from the inner workings of fish schools and ant colonies, analysis of the passing networks of football teams, and segregation in society to machine learning and artificial intelligence.

David has written for The Economist, The Telegraph, Current Biology, Mathematics Today and FourFourTwo magazine, amongst others. He has been awarded the IMA's Catherine Richards prize for communicating mathematics to a wider audience. David's first book was Soccermatics: Mathematical Adventures in the Beautiful Game.
David Sumpter is professor of applied mathematics at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, where he runs the Collective Behaviour Research Group. Originally from London, he studied his PhD in Mathematics at Manchester and held academic research positions at both Oxford and Cambridge before heading to Sweden, where he lives with his wife and two children. In his spare time, he trains a successful 9-year old boys' football team, Uppsala IF 2005.

An incomplete list of the applied maths research projects on which David has worked includes pigeons flying in pairs over Oxford; clapping undergraduate students in the north of England; the traffic of Cuban leaf-cutter ants; fish swimming between coral in the Great Barrier Reef; swarms of locusts traveling across the Sahara; disease-spread in Ugandan villages; the gaze of London commuters; dancing honey bees from Sydney; and the tubular structures built by Japanese slime moulds. His research has appeared in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Proceedings of the Royal Society, among many others.

@soccermatics / www.david-sumpter.com

Table of Contents

PART 1: ANALYSING US
Chapter 1: Finding Banksy
Chapter 2: Make Some Noise
Chapter 3: The Principal Components of Friendship
Chapter 4: One Hundred Dimensions of You
Chapter 5: Cambridge Hyperbolytica
Chapter 6: Impossibly Unbiased
Chapter 7: The Data Alchemists

PART 2: INFLUENCING US
Chapter 8: Nate Silver vs the Rest of Us
Chapter 9: We 'Also Liked ' the Internet
Chapter 10: The Popularity Contest
Chapter 11: Bubbling Up
Chapter 12: Football Matters
Chapter 13: Who Reads Fake News?

PART 3: BECOMING US
Chapter 14: Learning to be Sexist
Chapter 15: The Only Thought Between the Decimal
Chapter 16: Kick Your Ass at Space Invaders
Chapter 17: The Bacterial Brain
Chapter 18: Back to Reality

Notes
Acknowledgements
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Ingenious . . . a deliciously insightful, mildly skeptical analysis of internet data manipulation." - Kirkus

"An enlightening book." - Publishers Weekly

"As millions slowly wake up to the pitfalls of handing over their digital lives, Sumpter combines engaging hands-on demonstrations with stories from insiders to shed light on precisely how data alchemists seek to persuade and predict us, and whether their almighty algorithms are all they're hyped up to be." - John Burn-Murdoch, data journalist, Financial Times

"You've heard about these algorithms that run your life and you want to know two things: how exactly do they work? And how much should I worry? With a refreshing mix of in-depth knowledge and personal honesty, David Sumpter answers both those questions." - Timandra Harkness, writer, comedian and broadcaster, and author of Big Data

"A stellar book about the application of mathematics to the real world. Each chapter tells a fascinating story, and David's warm and witty style demonstrates that a mathematician can be so much more than just a machine for turning coffee into theorems. A riveting read." - Kit Yates, Senior Lecturer, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath

From the Publisher