Posts Tagged "science"
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Error bands, or why models will be models (of the mathematical variety)
In response to our article on the Social Progress Index (SPI) and prediction markets, the Social Progress Index folks asked why we didn’t just stop at optimizing the SPI. Two reasons, we said: (1) There’s an unfortunate tendency of people to believe (math) models are reality. They’re just models with error bands. (2) There’s going to be politically-motivated suspicion of any model (as well as political-motivated attempts to manipulate models and their interpretation). [For our readers coming over from our fashion design section, or our earlier article on virtual reality fashion models and modeling, we are talking about mathematical models here.] So how do models go bad? Let’s use the Social Progress Index as an example. We talked elsewhere about the tension between things like freedom of press and national security in a model like this. (In general, such tension will exist in an useful economic or financial model. If the tension did not exist, there would be nothing interesting to optimize, and so need for such a model in the first place.)… Read the restMH17 and big data: preventing the tragedy?
This might be a good time to take a break from our usual Internet of Things and Predictive Analytics technological musings and take a quick look at current events. Can big data be applied to the tragic recent shoot-down of MH17? Could a country-scale analytics dashboard (or lessons derived from analytics) have prevented this tragedy? We think so. In an earlier blog article (before the tragedy), we discussed possible frameworks for country-wide analytics dashboards. For any such dashboards to be successful, it needs to be as apolitical as possible. For this to work, these models need first to be accepted by stakeholders (e.g., politicians, corporations, voters, citizens, tax-payers, oligarchs, dictators). There needs to be a general consensus that the models’ predictions are based on sound social science. Even if the models are not perfectly accurately, there should be an understanding that they are at least directionally correction in terms of connecting input parameters with future outputs.… Read the restOh send in the trolls. Oh where are the trolls? There aren’t any trolls….
Send in the trolls…. Oh where are the trolls…. (With apologies to Stephen Sondheim) Our Miley Cyrus SQL Server Hadoop article got trolled on Twitter today. And we thought ‘yes! Finally! A troll.’ Then it turned out he had no Twitter readership. We admit there was a problem with the article. We didn’t list the fact that some people think Miley Cyrus and using SQL Server together with Hadoop are both somewhat messed up. Mea culpa. (Also, we did not come down nearly hard enough on Microsoft. The article goes on endlessly with its tepid praise for SQL Server. If you can’t afford Oracle and need an top-of-line SQL solution it is actually quite a cost effective solution. If you can afford the risk of running Windows, that is. Mainly we attack MySQL. We thought that we’d at least get some MySQL fans trolling us. No, some random Microsoft type apparently thought their honor had been grievously offended with our insufficient praise of Redmond.)… Read the rest14 Surprising Ways Miley Cyrus is like SQL Server Hadoop Analytics
14 Ways Miley Cyrus is like SQL Server Hadoop Analytics?!?! Yup, you read that article title right. We’ve done past articles on how computers were now writing newspaper articles automatically. When we learned there was software to “auto-generate” blog content, we were exhilarated. We can just let software write this blog and hit the beach! Unfortunately, the software is only first-generation. It doesn’t actually write the blog article, just suggests a title. So, we asked this first-generation system for a computer-generated blog title for this article about Microsoft’s continuing embrace-and-extend gambit for generating Microsoft SQL Server licensing fees from Hadoop users. This is what the all-knowing automatic blog content generator came up with for a title. Apparently, the software has a thing for Miley Cyrus. You’re probably thinking, Miley Cyrus doesn’t seem to have a whole lot in common with SQL Server Hadoop Analytics. So… is it even possible for us or anyone to come up with … count ’em ….… Read the restRecent Posts
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