Robin Hood Math |
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3 September 2025
When an old friend from Nebraska who's a math professor now recommended Noah Giansiracusa's Robin Hood Math, I decided to pick up a copy and give it a whirl. Written with a non-technical audience in mind Giansiracusa lays out in detail how the recommendation algorithms used by big tech companies work. Mostly using Facebook as an example he talks about how the weighted scoring of different interactions with a post determine how it appears in peoples feeds. Interestingly, while Facebook is somewhat cagy about what their actual weights are, Twitter (I just can't call it X) published their's openly. Giansiracusa argues that knowing how the recommendation algorithms are constructed we can start to take more control over them. This doesn't mean that they not still addictive though, and Giansiracusa doesn't suggest that maybe we ought to just avoid social media, Google, or Amazon. In this he falls somewhat short of Jaron Lanier though. Still, Giansiracusa's book could help someone less mathematically inclined understand a little be more about the world we live in.
