The Daily Mail reports on various dystopian AI scenarios---including all humans having to have a brain implant that allows for direct mind control. Surprisingly, there was nothing about robots coming over here, stealing the jobs and scrounging benefits---especially as it's (kind of) already happening...well, not the benefits bit, obviously. I'm off to kill the toaster before it turns on me. … [Read more...]
Microsoft R Open 3.2.5 released
Microsoft R Open 3.2.5 is now available. While there are no substantial changes to core R, the CRAN snapshot includes some new packages, such as deeplearning---a deep neural network implementation for regression and classification. … [Read more...]
Trump and confrontation (analysis)
The general consensus in the mainstream media seems to be that Trump is irrational...at least that's how the polite ones put it. However, the provocative positions he takes may draw attention away from a rational campaign strategy. Take Trump's famous wall. While Clinton mocks the unrealistic ambition, she doesn't seem to disagree with the basic premise. Her position is, basically, to build a … [Read more...]
Microsoft R Server documentation is now online
The complete Microsoft R Server documentation is now available on MSDN---and is publicly accessible. It includes comprehensive details of the RevoScaleR High Performance Analytics package. RevoScaleR includes the following analysis functions rxSummary (basic summary statistics) rxLinMod (linear modeling) rxLogit (logistic regression modeling) rxGlm (generalized linear modeling) rxCovCor … [Read more...]
Kids learn to make decisions by making decisions
Alfie Kohn is a critic of education's fixation (in some countries) on grades and test scores. In a 2010 article entitled "How to Create Nonreaders" he argued When parents ask, "What did you do in school today?", kids often respond, "Nothing." Howard Gardner pointed out that they're probably right, because "typically school is done to students." This sort of enforced passivity is particularly … [Read more...]