Book in Progress

Counting Lives

A political history of how states have measured poverty — from Quetelet's statistical imagination to algorithmic welfare systems, and the counter-mathematics that resists them.

Introduction Introduction: The Arithmetic of Power Drafting
Mathematical Interlude · MM1 The Normal Distribution The invention of the average and the construction of normality as a standard. Drafting

Part I — The State Learns to Count

  1. Part I Chapter 1 The Statistician's Stomach Drafting
  2. Part I Chapter 2 The Eugenic Ledger Drafting
  3. Part I Chapter 3 From Poor Law to Social Insurance Drafting
  4. UK Interlude The Respectable Calculus Drafting
  5. Part I Chapter 4 The Grocery List as Resistance Drafting
Mathematical Interlude · MM2 Correlation and Regression Correlation, regression, and the threshold as the bridge into the computational turn. Drafting

Part II — The Ideology of Optimisation

  1. Part II Chapter 5 Cybernetics and Control Drafting
  2. Part II Chapter 6 The RAND Corporation's Poor Drafting
  3. Mathematical Interlude The Cost Function Drafting
  4. Part II Chapter 7 PayPal's Philosophers Drafting
  5. Part II Chapter 8 Effective Altruism's Cold Equations Drafting
  6. Part II Chapter 9 Venture Capital's Ledger Drafting
Mathematical Interlude · MM3 Logistic Regression and Classification From scales to scores: eligibility thresholds and risk classification. Drafting

Part III — The Automated Poorhouse

  1. Part III Chapter 10 Risk Scores and Redlining Drafting
  2. Part III Chapter 11 Palantir's Panopticon Drafting
  3. Part III Chapter 12 The Credit Score Society Drafting
  4. Part III Chapter 13 The Respectable Calculus Drafting
Mathematical Interlude · MM4 Neural Networks and the Black Box From logistic regression to neural nets — why feature choice, training data, and loss functions encode values. Drafting

Part IV — Counter-Mathematics

  1. Part IV Chapter 14 The Mathematics of Solidarity Drafting
  2. Part IV Chapter 15 Participatory Statistics and Data Justice Drafting
  3. Part IV Chapter 16 Orshansky's Children Drafting
  4. Part IV Chapter 17 Toward an Ethics of Measurement Drafting
Conclusion Conclusion — The Reckoning Drafting