Kenneth Cukier: Big Data is better data

Kenneth Cukier, the Data Editor of The Economist, recently gave a good lecture at TED Berlin, intitled Big Data is better data. I agree with him when he said that there is a lot of hype around the term, and that is very unfortunate, because big data is an extremely important tool by which society is going to advance.



"Big Data is going to transform how we live, how we work and how we think", he said. "It is going to help us manage our careers and lead lives of satisfaction and hope and happiness and health, but in the past, we've often looked at information technology and our eyes have only seen the T, the technology, the hardware, because that's what was physical. We now need to recast our gaze at the I, the information, which is less apparent, but in some ways a lot more important. Humanity can finally learn from the information that it can collect, as part of our timeless quest to understand the world and our place in it, and that's why big data is a big deal."

Why smart statistics are the key to fighting crime

I watched at TED a good lecture on the use of analytics to fighting crime, by Anne Milgram. an american attorney. In the lecture, Anne Milgram explains that when she became the attorney general of New Jersey in 2007, she quickly discovered a few startling facts: not only did her team not really know who they were putting in jail, but they had no way of understanding if their decisions were actually making the public safer. And so began her ongoing, inspirational quest to bring data analytics and statistical analysis to the US criminal justice system.

Anne Milgram said that decided to focus on using data and analytics to help make the most critical decision in public safety, and that decision is the determination of whether, when someone has been arrested, whether they pose a risk to public safety and should be detained, or whether they don't pose a risk to public safety and should be released. Everything that happens in criminal cases comes out of this one decision. It impacts everything. It impacts sentencing. It impacts whether someone gets drug treatment. It impacts crime and violence.

So she went out and built a phenomenal team of data scientists and researchers and statisticians to build a universal risk assessment tool, so that every single judge in the United States of America can have an objective, scientific measure of risk. In the tool that they've built, what they did was they collected 1.5 million cases from all around the United States, from cities, from counties, from every single state in the country, the federal districts. Their goal, is that every single judge in the United States will use a data-driven risk tool within the next five years. She finished with a statement: "Some people call it data science. I call it moneyballing criminal justice."

TED link: Why smart statistics are the key to fighting crime

Can Robots Inspire Us To Be Better Humans?

Ken Goldberg presented at TEDxBerkeley, an independently organized TED event, an interesting lecture called 4 lessons from robots about being human, where he shared four very human lessons that he's learned from working with robots. Ken Goldberg is a Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research in Robotics, Automation, and New Media at UC Berkeley and his work reflects the intersection of robotics, social media, and art. Watch and enjoy.

Try something new for 30 days

TED published a short but interesting video in its series TED Talks In less than 6 minutes, entitled Try something new for 30 days, by Matt Cutts, an engineer at Google. In the presentation, Matt commented about a nice approach to set and achieve goals: Try something new for 30 days. "The idea is actually pretty simple. Think about something you've always wanted to add to your life and try it for the next 30 days. It turns out, 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a new habit or subtract a habit -- like watching the news -- from your life."

It's time to redesign medical data

Thomas Goetz presented at TED an interesting lecture called It's time to redesign medical data. He is the executive editor of Wired and author of The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine. About this talk, from TED: "Your medical chart: it's hard to access, impossible to read -- and full of information that could make you healthier if you just knew how to use it. At TEDMED, Thomas Goetz looks at medical data, making a bold call to redesign it and get more insight from it."

Watch and enjoy.

Raw Data Now

Recently, I watched two interesting lectures by Tim Berners-Lee, recorded at TED in 2009 and 2010. In the first lecture, Tim called for "raw data now", asked the people to put their data on the web, any type of data (government data, scientific data, community data) to be used for other people. About this lecture, from TED: "20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together."



In the second lecture, entitled The year open data went worldwide, he showed a few of the interesting results when the data gets linked up. About this lecture, from TED: "At TED2009, Tim Berners-Lee called for "raw data now" - for governments, scientists and institutions to make their data openly available on the web. At TED University in 2010, he shows a few of the interesting results when the data gets linked up."



Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He leads the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which maintains standards for the Web and continues to refine its design. Recently he has envisioned a "Semantic Web" - an evolved version of the same system that recognizes the meaning of the information it carries. He is also a senior researcher at MIT's Computer Science and AI Lab.

Using game theory to predict the future and make strategic decisions

Neil Raden's Tweet¹ caught my attention about the book of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, called The Predictioneer’s Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future.


Bruce is a research in game theory, and Professor at New York University and Stanford University. He is also a partner in Mesquita & Roundell, a consulting firm that uses game theory models he developed to assist corporations and the U.S. intelligence (CIA and the Department of Defense) and policymaking community in complex negotiations involving mergers and acquisitions, litigation, regulation, and national security matters.

Bruce wrote in his website: "Decision making is one of the last frontiers barely touched by science in day-to-day use. The Predictioneer’s Game was written to help change that. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for wisdom and “street smarts.” But it is awfully hard to know who is wise and who has great intuition before decisions have to be made. It is much more helpful to have a proven method to connect the dots correctly beforehand. That is true whether addressing everyday life, business choices, or the biggest national security questions. The Predictioneer’s Game is about learning to come up with reliable predictions to foresee and even engineer the future."

I have not read his book yet, but I intend to read it soon. Based in the book's excerpts published in his site, I think it is very interesting.

Last year Bruce gave a good lecture at TED: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita predicts Iran's future. According TED: "Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses mathematical analysis to predict (very often correctly) such messy human events as war, political power shifts, Intifada ... After a crisp explanation of how he does it, he offers three predictions on the future of Iran."



Other interesting links with articles about Bruce Bueno de Mesquita:

- Good Magazine article, “The New Nostradamus”
- New York Times Sunday Magazine Profile


1 - Tweet is a message in Twitter.

Bill Gates on energy: Innovating to zero!

Bill Gates presented this month an interesting lecture on energy and environment at TED2010. About the lecture, from TED: "At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world's energy future, describing the need for "miracles" to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he's backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050."

After Gates left his day-to-day role with Microsoft, he focused on philanthropy through his foundation. He has a website entitled The Gates Notes, where he publishes his thoughts, ideas and notes. Recently, he started to use Twitter to share his ideas.

Bill Gates published a post with some comments on his lecture: "It’s the first time I’ve spoken in public on the topic, but I’ve been studying energy and climate change over the last couple of years, and have been lucky to meet fairly regularly with some of the leading scientists in the field."

"In the presentation, I talked about the massive innovation effort needed to deliver “energy miracles,” breakthroughs that will make zero-carbon energy generation possible. There are many promising approaches which we need to continue pursuing aggressively: CCS, Nuclear, Wind, Solar PV and Solar Thermal – but they all have challenges that must be addressed. And the only way to get there is through innovation."

The surprising science of motivation

A tweet¹ by Ron Dimon caught my attention about an excellent video published in the Tony Mayo's blog. It is a Dan Pink's lecture on motivation and rewards, recorded in July at TED Global 2009. About this lecture, from TED: "Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward."

Watch and enjoy.



Thanks Ron Dimon and Tony Mayo for share the link.

1 - Tweet is a message in Twitter.