ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the ways in which some uses of probability and statistics serve to reproduce and reinforce disparities in the quality of life that different sorts of people can hope to enjoy. It examines the ways in which public policy and private action shapes the design of a variety of games that we may or may not see as fair. The book provides an analysis of tendencies within the media that ironically serve to reinforce hardship and suffering in the lives of people that many investigative journalists had intended to lend a helping hand. It reviews that the use of discriminatory technologies contributes to the social, economic and political disparities that continue to assign African Americans and other poor people of colour to the fringes of society, and condemns many of them to a life of extreme relative deprivation.
