University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Hello World
A review of

Hello World

Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

Hannah Fry • W.W. Norton • 2018

What Algorithms Do

by David Meyer

Mathematics professor Hannah Fry – who also wrote The Mathematics of Love – provides a worthy, basic overview of algorithms and their interactions with people.

Step by step, computers evaluate your data. Step by step, organizations decide your fate. Together, those steps build algorithms, rational recipes that seem to promise a reasonable world. But that world will never see the light of day, according to Associate Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at University College London (UCL) Hannah Fry – who also wrote The Mathematics of Love and The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus. Fry’s theme is that algorithms work great, up to a point. An effective algorithm, she argues, must welcome human input.

Step by Step

Algorithms guide the behavior of people and machines, for better or for worse.

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