Cambridge Analytica’s wholesale scraping of Facebook user data is big news now, and people are shocked that personal data is being shared and traded on a massive scale on the internet. But the real issue with social media is not harming to individual users whose information was shared, but sophisticated and sometimes subtle mass manipulationContinue reading “The Real Facebook Controversy”
Category Archives: Machine Learning
Kidney Donations – Optimizing Them
Did you know that there is a country in which kidneys can be legally bought and sold? That country is Iran, and there are actually two models for payment. In one part of the country, donors receive a flat fee, and in the other part of the country prices are negotiated. This point wasContinue reading “Kidney Donations – Optimizing Them”
Big Data and Clinical Trials in Medicine
There was an interesting article a couple of weeks ago in the New York Times magazine section on the role that Big Data can play in treating patients — discovering things that clinical trials are too slow, too expensive, and too blunt to find. The story was about a very particular set of lupus symptoms,Continue reading “Big Data and Clinical Trials in Medicine”
Internet of Things
Boston, August 3 2014: Bill Ruh, GE Software Center, says that the Internet of Things, 30 billion machines talking to one another, will dwarf the impact of the consumer internet. Speaking at the Joint Statistical Meetings today, Ruh predicted that the marriage of the IoT and analytics will yield $1 trillion in savings or productivityContinue reading “Internet of Things”
Predictive Modeling and Typhoon Relief
The devastation wrought by Super-Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines is the biggest test yet for the nascent technology of “artificial intelligence disaster response,” a phrase used by Patrick Meier, a pioneer in the field. When disaster strikes, a flood of social media posts and tweets ensues. There is useful information in the data flood, butContinue reading “Predictive Modeling and Typhoon Relief”