Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (36 page)

Consumer Federation of America:
Don Jergler, “Price Optimization Allegations Challenged, NAIC Investigating Practice,”
Insurance Journal
, December 18, 2014,
www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/12/18/350630.htm
.

Wisconsin Department of Insurance:
“CFA Rips Allstate’s Auto Insurance Pricing,”
Corporate Crime Reporter
, December 16, 2014,
www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/cfa-rips-allstates-auto-insurance-pricing-policy/
.

“Allstate’s insurance pricing has become untethered”:
Ellen Jean Hirst, “Allstate, Other Insurers Accused of Unfairly Pricing Premiums,”
Chicago Tribune
, December 16, 2014,
www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-allstate-insurance-risk-premiums-1217-biz-20141216-story.html
.

“
consistent with industry practices”:
Mitch Lipka, “Watchdog: Allstate Auto Insurance Pricing Scheme Is Unfair,”
Daily Finance
, December 16, 2014,
www.dailyfinance.com/2014/12/16/allstate-auto-insurance-pricing-scheme-unfair/
.

its own Twitter campaign:
“Consumer Reports Digs into Car Insurance Quote Secrecy, Prices Are Rife with Inequities and Unfair Practices,”
Clarksville Online
, August 6, 2015,
www.clarksvilleonline.com/2015/08/06/consumer-reports-digs-into-car-insurance-quote-secrecy-prices-are-rife-with-inequities-and-unfair-practices/
.

Swift Transportation:
David Morris, “There’s Pressure in the Industry to Monitor Truck Drivers—and Drivers Aren’t Happy,”
Fortune
, May 26, 2015,
http://fortune.com/2015/05/26/driver-facing-truck-cameras/
.

About seven hundred truckers die:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Crashes Are the Leading Cause of on-the-Job Death for Truck Drivers in the US,” press release, March 3, 2015,
www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2015/p0303-truck-driver-safety.html
.

The average cost of a fatal crash:
Morris, “There’s Pressure.”

And they use this data:
Karen Levy, “To Fight Trucker Fatigue, Focus on Economics, Not Electronics,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 15, 2014,
www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-levy-trucker-fatigue-20140716-story.html
.

Progressive, State Farm, and Travelers:
Mark Chalon Smith, “State Farm’s In-Drive Discount: What’s the Catch?,”
CarInsurance
, June 12, 2015,
www.carinsurance.com/Articles/state-farm-in-drive-discount.aspx
.

They get rewarded with a discount:
Ibid.

data company called Sense Networks:
Stephen Baker, “Mapping a New, Mobile Internet,”
Bloomberg
, February 25, 2009,
www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2009-02-25/mapping-a-new-mobile-internet
.

“We wouldn’t necessarily recognize”:
Greg Skibiski and Tony Jebara, in-person interview by Stephen Baker, February, 2009.

Sense was sold in
2014
to YP:
Anthony Ha, “In Its First Acquisition, YP Buys Mobile Ad Company Sense Networks,”
TechCrunch
, January 6, 2014,
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/06/yp-acquires-sense-networks/
.

the Internal Revenue Service tweaked the tax code:
Congressional Budget Office, “The Tax Treatment of Employment-Based Health Insurance,” March 1994,
www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/103rd-congress-1993-1994/reports/1994_03_taxtreatmentofinsurance.pdf
.

about
9
percent of American workers:
Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson, “Accidents of History Created U.S. Health System,”
NPR
, October 22, 2009,
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114045132
.

65
percent of Americans:
Ibid.

$
3
trillion per year:
Chad Terhune, “U.S. Health Spending Hits $3 Trillion as Obamacare and Rising Drug Costs Kick In,”
Los Angeles Times
, December 2, 2015,
www.latimes.com/business/healthcare/la-fi-health-spending-increase-20151202-story.html
.

Nearly one dollar of every five:
Scott Thomas, “Nation’s Total Personal Income Approaches $13 Trillion,”
Business Journals
, December 4, 2012,
www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/on-numbers/scott-thomas/2012/12/nations-total-personal-income.html
.

The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare:
US Department of Labor, “The Affordable Care Act and Wellness Programs,” fact sheet, accessed January 9, 2016,
www.dol.gov/ebsa/newsroom/fswellnessprogram.html
.

as high as
50
percent of the cost of coverage:
US Department of Labor, “Affordable Care Act.”

more than half of all organizations:
Soeren Mattke, Hangsheng Liu, John Caloyeras, Christina Huang, Kristin Van Busum, Dmitry Khodyakov, and Victoria Shier, “Workplace Wellness Programs Study,” Rand Corporation Research Report, 2013,
www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR200/RR254/RAND_RR254.sum.pdf
.

the case of Aaron Abrams:
Aaron Abrams, e-mail interview by author, February 28, 2015.

Anthem Insurance, which administers a wellness program:
Washington and Lee Wellness Program, accessed January 9, 2016,
www.wlu.edu/human-resources/wellness/evolve-wellness-program
.

Michelin, the tire company:
Leslie Kwoh, “When Your Boss Makes You Pay for Being Fat,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 5, 2013,
www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324600704578402784123334550
.

CVS announced in
2013: Ibid.

“Attention everyone, everywhere”:
Alissa Fleck, “CVS Drugstore Chain Unveils New Employee Diet Plan: Fat-Shaming and a $600 Fine,”
Bitch Media
, March 21, 2013,
https://bitchmedia.org/post/cvs-drugstore-chain-unveils-new-employee-diet-plan-fat-shaming-and-a-600-fine
.

Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet:
Lily Dayton, “BMI May Not Be the Last Word on Health Risks, Some Experts Say,”
Los Angeles Times
, December 19, 2014,
www.latimes.com/health/la-he-bmi-20141220-story.html
.

Keith Devlin, the mathematician:
Keith Devlin, “Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus,”
NPR
, July 4, 2009,
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268439
.

the $
6
billion wellness industry:
Rand Corporation, “Do Workplace Wellness Programs Save Employers Money?,” Rand Corporation Research Brief, 2013,
www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RB9700/RB9744/RAND_RB9744.pdf
.

“Here are the facts”:
Joshua Love, “4 Steps to Implement a Successful Employee Wellness Program,”
Forbes
, November 28, 2012,
www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2012/11/28/4-steps-to-implement-a-successful-employee-wellness-program/
.

California Health Benefits Review Program:
California Health Benefits Review Program, “Analysis of Senate Bill 189: Health Care Coverage: Wellness Programs,” report to the 2013–14 California Legislature, April 25, 2013,
http://chbrp.ucop.edu/index.php?action=read&bill_id=149&doc_type=3
.

2013
study headed by Jill Horwitz:
Jill Horwitz, Brenna Kelly, and John Dinardo, “Wellness Incentives in the Workplace: Cost Savings Through Cost Shifting to Unhealthy Workers,”
Health Affairs
32, no. 3 (March 2013): 468–76, doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2012.0683.

CHAPTER 10

two-thirds of American adults:
Andrew Perrin, “Social Media Usage: 2005–2015,” Pew Research Center, October 8, 2015,
www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/
.

thirty-nine minutes a day:
Victor Luckerson, “Here’s How Facebook’s News Feed Actually Works,”
Time
, July 9, 2015,
http://time.com/3950525/facebook-news-feed-algorithm/
.

Nearly half of them:
Michael Barthel, Elisa Shearer, Jeffrey Gottfried, and Amy Mitchell, “The Evolving Role of News on Twitter and Facebook,” Pew Research Center, July 14, 2015,
www.journalism.org/2015/07/14/the-evolving-role-of-news-on-twitter-and-facebook/
.

Facebook conducted experiments:
Robert Bond, Christopher Fariss, Jason Jones, Adam Kramer, Cameron Marlow, Jaime Settle, and James Fowler, “A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization,”
Nature
489 (September 13, 2012): 295–98, doi:10.1038/nature11421.

the quiet satisfaction of carrying out a civic duty:
Alan Gerber, Donald Green, and Christopher Larimer, “Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment,”
American Political Science Review
102, no. 1 (February 2008): 33–48, doi:10.1017/S000305540808009X.

inundate Washington with lobbyists:
Derek Willis and Claire Cain Miller, “Tech Firms and Lobbyists: Now Intertwined, but Not Eager to Reveal It,”
New York Times
, September 24, 2014,
www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/upshot/tech-firms-and-lobbyists-now-intertwined-but-not-eager-to-reveal-it.html?_r=0
.

their campaign had increased turnout by
340,000
:
Bond et al., “61-Million-Person Experiment.”

George W. Bush, after all, won in
2000
by a margin:
David Barstow and Don Van Natta Jr., “Examining the Vote; How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote,”
New York Times
, July 15, 2001,
www.nytimes.com/2001/07/15/us/examining-the-vote-how-bush-took-florida-mining-the-overseas-absentee-vote.html
.