Predictive Analytics
Google Puts Money on Robots, Using the Man Behind Android
December 7, 2013
In an out-of-the-way Google office, two life-size humanoid robots hang suspended in a corner. If Amazon can imagine delivering books by drones, is it too much to think that Google might be planning to one day have one of the robots hop off an automated Google Car and race to your doorstep to deliver a package? Google executives acknowledge that robotic vision is a “moonshot.” But it appears to be more realistic than Amazon’s proposed drone delivery service, which Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s...
December 7, 2013
In an out-of-the-way Google office, two life-size humanoid robots hang suspended in a corner. If Amazon can imagine delivering books by drones, is it too much to think that Google might be planning to one day have one of the robots hop off an automated Google Car and race to your doorstep to deliver a package? Google executives acknowledge that robotic vision is a “moonshot.” But it appears to be more realistic than Amazon’s proposed drone delivery service, which Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s...
How to Start Thinking Like a Data Scientist
December 7, 2013
Slowly but steadily, data are forcing their way into every nook and cranny of every industry, company, and job. Managers who aren’t data savvy, who can’t conduct basic analyses, interpret more complex ones, and interact with data scientists are already at a disadvantage. Companies without a large and growing cadre of data-savvy managers are similarly disadvantaged. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a data scientist or a Bayesian statistician to tease useful insights from data. This post...
December 7, 2013
Slowly but steadily, data are forcing their way into every nook and cranny of every industry, company, and job. Managers who aren’t data savvy, who can’t conduct basic analyses, interpret more complex ones, and interact with data scientists are already at a disadvantage. Companies without a large and growing cadre of data-savvy managers are similarly disadvantaged. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a data scientist or a Bayesian statistician to tease useful insights from data. This post...
When Algorithms Grow Accustomed to Your Face
December 5, 2013
People often reveal their private emotions in tiny, fleeting facial expressions, visible only to a best friend — or to a skilled poker player. Now, computer software is using frame-by-frame video analysis to read subtle muscular changes that flash across our faces in milliseconds, signaling emotions like happiness, sadness and disgust. With face-reading software, a computer’s webcam might spot the confused expression of an online student and provide extra tutoring. Or computer-based games with...
December 5, 2013
People often reveal their private emotions in tiny, fleeting facial expressions, visible only to a best friend — or to a skilled poker player. Now, computer software is using frame-by-frame video analysis to read subtle muscular changes that flash across our faces in milliseconds, signaling emotions like happiness, sadness and disgust. With face-reading software, a computer’s webcam might spot the confused expression of an online student and provide extra tutoring. Or computer-based games with...
Why Attorneys Love-Hate Data Analytics
December 4, 2013
Die-hard Oakland A's fans were angry with general manager Billy Beane when he used computer-generated analytics to pick his players in 2002. Fans doubted that a computer could out think the scouts and experts in the stands. So their trip to the playoffs that season, as well as the following year, shocked the baseball world–—and convinced other teams there might just be something valuable in crunching numbers. Well, that was baseball. Legal professionals, on the other hand, still need some...
December 4, 2013
Die-hard Oakland A's fans were angry with general manager Billy Beane when he used computer-generated analytics to pick his players in 2002. Fans doubted that a computer could out think the scouts and experts in the stands. So their trip to the playoffs that season, as well as the following year, shocked the baseball world–—and convinced other teams there might just be something valuable in crunching numbers. Well, that was baseball. Legal professionals, on the other hand, still need some...
Doug Noll’s Advanced Legal Negotiation Master Class Tomorrow Featuring Picture It Settled
December 2, 2013
Learn how to exploit lawyer predictability in mediation using concession planning. When: Tuesday, December 3, 2013 Time: 9:00 am Pacific/Noon Eastern Length: 60 minutes Cost: $49.99 What participant's say about these webinars: "I had an intense mediation yesterday, an employment case with a lot of hard feelings and an opposing attorney who lost her professional distance. Your latest webinar helped me prepare myself & the clients. But better still, it helped me help a very...
December 2, 2013
Learn how to exploit lawyer predictability in mediation using concession planning. When: Tuesday, December 3, 2013 Time: 9:00 am Pacific/Noon Eastern Length: 60 minutes Cost: $49.99 What participant's say about these webinars: "I had an intense mediation yesterday, an employment case with a lot of hard feelings and an opposing attorney who lost her professional distance. Your latest webinar helped me prepare myself & the clients. But better still, it helped me help a very...
EDGE: Imagining Conflict Resolution
November 28, 2013
"The advantage of neuroscience is being able to look under the hood and see the mechanisms that actually create the thoughts and the behaviors that create and perpetuate conflict. Seems like it ought to be useful. That's the question that I'm asking myself right now, can science in general, or neuroscience in particular, be used to understand what drives conflict, what prevents reconciliation, why some interventions work for some people some of the time, and how to make and evaluate better ones."
November 28, 2013
"The advantage of neuroscience is being able to look under the hood and see the mechanisms that actually create the thoughts and the behaviors that create and perpetuate conflict. Seems like it ought to be useful. That's the question that I'm asking myself right now, can science in general, or neuroscience in particular, be used to understand what drives conflict, what prevents reconciliation, why some interventions work for some people some of the time, and how to make and evaluate better ones."
Auto Correct: Has the self-driving car at last arrived?
November 25, 2013
Human beings make terrible drivers. They talk on the phone and run red lights, signal to the left and turn to the right. They drink too much beer and plow into trees or veer into traffic as they swat at their kids. They have blind spots, leg cramps, seizures, and heart attacks. They rubberneck, hotdog, and take pity on turtles, cause fender benders, pileups, and head-on collisions. They nod off at the wheel, wrestle with maps, fiddle with knobs, have marital spats, take the curve too late, take the curve...
November 25, 2013
Human beings make terrible drivers. They talk on the phone and run red lights, signal to the left and turn to the right. They drink too much beer and plow into trees or veer into traffic as they swat at their kids. They have blind spots, leg cramps, seizures, and heart attacks. They rubberneck, hotdog, and take pity on turtles, cause fender benders, pileups, and head-on collisions. They nod off at the wheel, wrestle with maps, fiddle with knobs, have marital spats, take the curve too late, take the curve...
EDGE: What Big Data Means for Social Science
November 25, 2013
"I'm going to talk to you today about a project that I've started in the last year or two. This type of thinking, this type of work, is going to be one of the challenges social science faces in the coming three, four, five, ten years. It's work exclusively with Jon Kleinberg. For those of you who don't know him, Jon is a computer scientist, one of the preeminent computer scientists. He's probably the smart one of the two of us, but I'm the pretty one so it's better that I'm being taped. "This...
November 25, 2013
"I'm going to talk to you today about a project that I've started in the last year or two. This type of thinking, this type of work, is going to be one of the challenges social science faces in the coming three, four, five, ten years. It's work exclusively with Jon Kleinberg. For those of you who don't know him, Jon is a computer scientist, one of the preeminent computer scientists. He's probably the smart one of the two of us, but I'm the pretty one so it's better that I'm being taped. "This...
Will the Next Nate Silver Please Stand Up?
November 24, 2013
Ever since Nate Silver made a splash with his freakishly accurate election predictions, all sorts of companies have been looking for their own rock-star data scientists. The trouble is that these people are hard to come by — few can blend computer science with applied mathematics in a way that produces truly effective data science — and for many companies, it’s not even clear that they really need this kind of expertise. Shashi Upadhyay, CEO of analytics outfit Lattice Engines, which helps...
November 24, 2013
Ever since Nate Silver made a splash with his freakishly accurate election predictions, all sorts of companies have been looking for their own rock-star data scientists. The trouble is that these people are hard to come by — few can blend computer science with applied mathematics in a way that produces truly effective data science — and for many companies, it’s not even clear that they really need this kind of expertise. Shashi Upadhyay, CEO of analytics outfit Lattice Engines, which helps...
Google to Grab Consumers By the Throat
November 24, 2013
To those who called Google Inc.'s Glass freakish: "you ain't seen nothin' yet." Wireless device-maker Motorola Mobility, acquired last year by Google, is looking to market U.S. Patent application No. 20130297301, which allows for a microphone to be electronically tattooed on a customer's throat, giving a whole new meaning to "wearable device." The microphone tattoo would include a wireless transceiver to connect to a mobile device, according to the Nov. 7 patent application. Positioned near...
November 24, 2013
To those who called Google Inc.'s Glass freakish: "you ain't seen nothin' yet." Wireless device-maker Motorola Mobility, acquired last year by Google, is looking to market U.S. Patent application No. 20130297301, which allows for a microphone to be electronically tattooed on a customer's throat, giving a whole new meaning to "wearable device." The microphone tattoo would include a wireless transceiver to connect to a mobile device, according to the Nov. 7 patent application. Positioned near...
