Cathy O'Neil: Former analyst, D.E. Shaw & Co.; Occupy Wall Street
Cathy O’Neil taught mathematics at Barnard College before working as an analyst for the hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. Disillusioned, she joined Occupy Wall Street and Occupy the SEC, where she hopes to devise an alternative banking system. She created the blog Mathbabe to explain and demystify terminology and practices in the financial system. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted by producer Martin Smith on Jan. 18, 2012.
"One of the reasons I liked math was the idea that it was either right or wrong"
Let's start with just talking about your background, your educational background and your journey to where you are today.
Sure. So when I was a kid, I wanted to be a mathematician. Essentially one of the reasons I liked math was I liked the idea that it was either right or wrong, that a question could be clean; the answer could be clean.
And I entered mathematics partly because I just love that feeling of knowing it was the right thing, right answer. I fell in love with number theory in college, and I went to grad school and got a Ph.D. in number theory. I was a postdoc. And then I even became an assistant professor at Barnard College. Once I got there --
... Where [did] you [do] your undergraduate?
... I went to UC Berkeley as an undergrad. I loved that place. I went to Harvard for grad school. And then I was a postdoc for five years at MIT. So then I went to Barnard, and I had sort of been thinking, been striving to become a math professor essentially since I was 13 or 14. And when I finally became that math professor, I looked around and I said, "You know, is this really what I want?" There were various aspects of the job that just didn't suit my personality, and one of them was the feedback was very slow, and it was also very mixed.
I started realizing that the idea that you could be valued for your ideas, for your theorems was kind of naive; that in fact people -- and this is a general truth about the world -- people sort of take you on your face value, like, do they like you? Do they think your field is important? Questions like that --
So you're teaching --
I'm teaching, uh-huh.
-- at Barnard, and then you start to think--
Yeah. I just realize I'd like -- I want to go back to that place where you're being measured by something that you can point to, that you understand. And then I thought, I also want more feedback. I want to be part of the world. I really like New York. I like the energy. So I wanted to be in business, and I wanted to be measured by something I understood.
So I applied to work at a hedge fund
,
D. E. Shaw, and I got the job. And I thought this was great. I mean,
here is a hedge fund; the bottom line is money, and I will know -- I
will sort of understand things in terms of this metric. And I kind of
wanted to hold onto that. So I went to work there at D. E. Shaw.
Sure. So when I was a kid, I wanted to be a mathematician. Essentially one of the reasons I liked math was I liked the idea that it was either right or wrong, that a question could be clean; the answer could be clean.
And I entered mathematics partly because I just love that feeling of knowing it was the right thing, right answer. I fell in love with number theory in college, and I went to grad school and got a Ph.D. in number theory. I was a postdoc. And then I even became an assistant professor at Barnard College. Once I got there --
... Where [did] you [do] your undergraduate?
... I went to UC Berkeley as an undergrad. I loved that place. I went to Harvard for grad school. And then I was a postdoc for five years at MIT. So then I went to Barnard, and I had sort of been thinking, been striving to become a math professor essentially since I was 13 or 14. And when I finally became that math professor, I looked around and I said, "You know, is this really what I want?" There were various aspects of the job that just didn't suit my personality, and one of them was the feedback was very slow, and it was also very mixed.
I started realizing that the idea that you could be valued for your ideas, for your theorems was kind of naive; that in fact people -- and this is a general truth about the world -- people sort of take you on your face value, like, do they like you? Do they think your field is important? Questions like that --
So you're teaching --
I'm teaching, uh-huh.
-- at Barnard, and then you start to think--
Yeah. I just realize I'd like -- I want to go back to that place where you're being measured by something that you can point to, that you understand. And then I thought, I also want more feedback. I want to be part of the world. I really like New York. I like the energy. So I wanted to be in business, and I wanted to be measured by something I understood.
So I applied to work at a hedge fund
,
D. E. Shaw, and I got the job. And I thought this was great. I mean,
here is a hedge fund; the bottom line is money, and I will know -- I
will sort of understand things in terms of this metric. And I kind of
wanted to hold onto that. So I went to work there at D. E. Shaw.Link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/oral-history/financial-crisis/cathy-oneil/
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