Hannah Fry quotes - page 2

There's actually an awful lot of mathematics that goes into designing a railway, keeping it running, making sure everything runs optimally. Every time you need something to be optimal there's going to be some mathematics at play. (Hannah Fry)
When designing algorithms as a business owner, your incentive is your profit, something for your business, it's not an incentive to maximise something for the individual.
Hannah Fry
Imagine life without any algorithms at all, you wouldn't be able to do anything. This is already completely encompassing. We have a habit of over-trusting what mathematics or computer scientists tell us to do, without questioning it, too much faith in the magical power of analysis.
Hannah Fry
Algorithms and data should support the human decision, not replace it.
Hannah Fry
Once you see the problems that algorithms can introduce, people can be quick to want to throw them away altogether and think the situation would be resolved by sticking to human decisions until the algorithms are better.
Hannah Fry
Every criminal-justice system has to find some kind of balance between protecting the rights of innocent people falsely accused of crimes and protecting the victims of crimes.
Hannah Fry
I don't like the algorithms that don't do what they claim they do.
Hannah Fry
Human emotion isn't neatly ordered and rational and easily predictable.
Hannah Fry
We literally hand over our most private data, our DNA, but we're not just consenting for ourselves, we are consenting for our children, and our children's children. Maybe we don't live in a world where people are genetically discriminated against now, but who's to say in 100 years that we won't?
Hannah Fry
In our urge to automate, in our eagerness to adopt the latest innovations, we appear to have developed a habit of unthinkingly handing over power to machines.
Hannah Fry
Because, ultimately, we can't just think of algorithms in isolation. We have to think of the failings of the people who design them - and the danger to those they are supposedly designed to serve. (Hannah Fry)
The weather doesn't respect political or geographic boundaries: we're all living under the same sky. And so weather prediction has been a marvel not only of technology but also of international cooeperation.
Hannah Fry
Our long-range predictions - especially those which anticipate extreme-weather events - rely on an assumption that the future will be similar to the past. Lose that, and we lose the tools that have allowed us to prepare for such eventualities.
Hannah Fry
Whenever we haven't got enough information to make decisions for ourselves, we have a habit of copying the behaviour of those around us.
Hannah Fry
I'm a mathematician. I can trade in facts about false positives and absolute truths about accuracy and statistics with complete confidence.
Hannah Fry
History is littered with examples of objects and inventions with a power beyond their professed purpose. Sometimes it's deliberately and maliciously factored into their design, but at other times, it's a result of thoughtless omissions.
Hannah Fry
Every time you shop online, every time you sign up for a newsletter, or register on a website, or enquire about a new car, or fill out a warranty card, or buy a new home, or register to vote - you are unwittingly handing over a small clue as to who you are and how you behave.
Hannah Fry