Diversity and inclusion (D&I) increasingly are becoming a focus area for businesses. And it is not just because it is the right thing to do, but it also makes excellent business sense. According to McKinsey, the top quarter of companies on the diversity list were 33 percent more likely to be among the most profitable in their…

Summary: Now that we’ve detailed the four main AI-first strategies:  Data Dominance, Vertical, Horizontal, and Systems of Intelligence, it’s time to pick.  Here we provide side-by-side comparison and our opinion on the winner(s) for your own AI-first startup.

In our last several articles we’ve taken a tour of the four major…

Summary:  The fourth and final AI strategy we’ll review is Systems of Intelligence (SOI).  This is getting nearly as much attention as the Vertical strategy we previously reviewed.  It’s appealing because it seems to offer the financial advantages of a Horizontal strategy but its ability to create a defensible moat requires some fine tuning.

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The main components of systems theory that readers might remember are “inputs,” “processes,” and “outputs.”  The part that tends to get neglected is “feedback mechanisms.”  These mechanisms tell the system the extent to which operations fit the environment.  If there is lack of fitness, there is stress.  One adaptive impulse is to make processes more complex and intelligent - i.e. sometimes described as the fight response.  Another impulse is to give up and run away - i.e. the flight…

Summary: Computational Synthetic Biology (CSB) is likely to be both the next big thing and perhaps most important field to exploit data science.  As the name implies, this lies at the intersection of data science and biological research.  Big advancements and big investments are already starting to occur here.  Data scientists with deep learning skills will want to check this out.

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If many of your clients don’t understand the difference between artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent systems, you’re not alone. There’s a deeply rooted misconception about AI that isn’t going to clear up anytime soon.

AI has become a marketing buzzword and is being used interchangeably with computer algorithms that analyze data and produce a…

Today, many companies use big data to make super relevant recommendations and growth revenue. Among a variety of recommendation algorithms, data scientists need to choose the best one according a business’s limitations and requirements.

To simplify this task, my team has prepared an overview of the main existing recommendation system…

Dynamical ML is machine learning that can adapt to variations over time; it requires “real-time recursive” learning algorithms and time-varying data models such as the ones described in the blog,…

I came across the story of a manager who felt that the best way to encourage desirable behaviours was through reward and humiliation.  This encouragement occurred indirectly through what I would describe as “persuasive data”:  a table of data went out each week showing the best and worst performing employees.  Everyone in the team could see the stats plainly along with the names of coworkers.  They were encouraged to make comparisons.  This represents an aggressive use of data.  From my…

I am sometimes asked whether I am working on the stats, whether I am making progress on the stats, and what I do with all of the stats.  People are also prone to hyperbole.  I am told that I sure work on a lot of stats, I am always keeping myself busy doing stats, and I am the person to go to for stats.  I suppose my real job is more mysterious than the one others imagine that I do.  I first want to explain that for everyday people, the term “stats” or “statistics” often means historical…

It isn’t too unusual for surveys to contain open-ended questions:  respondents would be free to enter their comments in any manner.  More on an operational basis, not surveys but rather client systems might hold such comments; and not the respondents themselves but customer service agents would be responsible for entering the information.  These same agents would likely classify the nature of the exchange or comments maybe using drop-down menu choices, radials, and check-boxes.  One approach…

The diagram above was produced by my father in an effort to predict lotto numbers.  Usually in a given year, I read at least a few blogs on using data science to help improve a person’s odds gambling.  Gambling might include casino games, lottery tickets, and perhaps even stocks.  On the other hand - and I admit that I might be an oddball in this area - I…

I will be using this blog to assemble a number of different concepts that I introduced over many years in previous blogs (indicated in bold); then I will explain where all of this will be going in the future.  I am turning 50 years old in a couple of weeks, and I find that I habitually take inventory of my belongings these days before beginning any lengthy mission or journey.  I recently acquired a fairly expensive device called a CPAP machine.  It resembles a small stereo with…

I found some leftover hamburgers in the fridge. I decided to stack a couple of them together to form a colossal “super-burger.” At the time, I didn’t appreciate how doing so would make it almost impossible to physically fit the burger in my mouth. I squished and squeezed the burger until it was flat enough to eat. Such are the problems of physics that become…

Ableism (able + ism) is apparent in many interactions between people. While driving on a road having a posted limit of 60 KPH, I was traveling slower since I expected a red light to soon appear ahead of me. The driver behind me - at that point stopped due to the red light - hollered that no car should be driving less than the posted limit. I explained, "60 is the maximum speed. You shouldn't do more than the…

For a number of months, I have been generating codified narrative from films, fairytales, paintings, court cases, and news events. Codified narrative might be described as a tokenized rendition of the underlying content. There are many ways to do a rendering. Imagine asking 100,000 people to write a story based on the same general details such as scenery, major events, and specific outcomes. To the extent there are commonalities in the resulting storylines, I would say that "social…

In recent blogs, I have been distinguishing between quantitative data and narrative data. I believe that I separated the two forms relatively well. Although I originally focused on the differences in data in order to give narrative "its own space," actually there can be a symbiotic relationship between the two types of data. In my last blog, I said that quantitative data can be incorporated into narrative data. In my submission today, I will be discussing how the narrative can be used to…

Codified narrative is the product of converting human-friendly narrative into computer-friendly code. In past blogs, I discussed my own approach towards this process of codification. Here, I will be covering the idea of spatial, temporal, and contextual distribution of codified narrative. I have never suggested that narrative can or should be used in place of quantitative data. However, I have reflected on how the quantitative regime has tended to dominate discourse; this has perhaps led to…

In this blog, I will be discussing some distinct types of data involved in feedback. The types that I will be covering are as follows: 1) structural; 2) event; 3) quantitative; 4) contextual; and 5) systemic. In 2014, I recall reading a number of blogs about three types of data: prescriptive, descriptive, and predictive. There was a data scientist apparently on tour lecturing extensively about these three types. I don't recall the individual's name. Well, prescription, description, and…

When I talk about "the institutional response," I am referring to an increasingly common occurrence: a standardized or large-scale approach is supported, promoted, and applied by a particular institution - sometimes governmental in nature - premised on its apparent suitability or superiority to achieve desirable outcomes. I suspect that in recent years, there has been a push to get citizens to file their income tax returns electronically. I know that in Canada, it has become difficult…