Sendhil Mullainathan is an economist who led a study between 20082013 in which a computer program was created to assess the records of 500,000 defendants tried in New York State. The program then determined which 400,000 of the defendants were least likely to commit a crime if released on bail. The results of the study determined that the computer program was better at assessing which defendants were less likely to commit a crime than a human judge. Gladwell presents Mullainathan’s study as evidence that humans are fundamentally bad at reading strangers.
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Sendhil Mullainathan Character Timeline in Talking to Strangers
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Chapter Two: Getting to Know der Führer
...question, Gladwell consults a study conducted between 2008 and 2013 by a Harvard economist named Sendhil Mullainathan . Mullainathan and his research team assembled the records for over 500,000 defendants tried in...
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