On Being a Data Skeptic

Cathy O’Neil earned a Ph.D. in math from Harvard, was postdoc at the MIT math department, and a professor at Barnard College where she published a number of research papers in arithmetic algebraic geometry. She then chucked it and switched over to the private sector. She worked as a quant for the hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the middle of the credit crisis, and then for RiskMetrics, a risk software company that assesses risk for the holdings of hedge funds and banks. She is currently a data scientist at Johnson Research Labs, writes a blog at mathbabe.org, and is involved with the Alternative Banking group (http://altbanking.net/) of Occupy Wall Street.