Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2013
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predictive Analytics Evolution in R
Good, general non technical piece from Ventana Research. It is an evolution, with many people not understanding the issues in its use. " ... R, the open source programming language for statistics and graphics, has now become…
From Schneier on Security
NSA Tracks People Using Google Cookies
The Washington Post has a detailed article on how the NSA uses cookie data to track individuals. The EFF also has a good post on this.
I have been writing and saying that government surveillance largely piggy backs on corporate…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Does Computer Science Count in Your State?
Computer science only counts as a graduation credit (usually in either math or science) in 15 states. In most states a computer science class can be an elective but nothing more. That means that a lot of students who could take…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
CSEDWeek Highlights at ASMSA
Like schools across the country, we are celebrating Computer Science Education week here at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts (ASMSA) in several ways and we are making sure to involve the educational …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tableau 8.1 and R Introduction
In exploration for a project that requires the use of some advanced analytical methods developed in R which would then provide access to the results interactively, I was looking for a method that could provide both capabilities…
From Apophenia
Data & Society: Call for Fellows
Over the last six months, I’ve been working to create the Data & Society Research Institute to address the social, technical, ethical, legal, and policy issues that are emerging because of data-centric technological development…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Simulating for Success
In Fortune: My early work with analytics was building simulations systems at the Pentagon. This article describes well how this is done in Defense. And its improved much since then. It has been attempted in the enterprise…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visualizing Cell Phone Signals
Had always wondered what the RF space would look like. Here an attempt at visualizing how complex the coverage of RF looks like today. Some of the commenters suggest it is a big simplification. Even before Marconi there were…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Be Careful With People Anaytics
HR analytics have been much in the news and in my investigations of late. Here some cautionary notes. What parts of HR can be constructed as a science? It was also our internal experience: This is still decision support…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Business Card
In draft. Comments? Like to Chat? Contact me.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wireless Charging in RF
New developments in wireless charging. Most methods today use inductive technologies these use radio frequency. I wonder about RF interference here. We examined wireless charging for smart home applications.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
White House and National Science Foundation Proclaim Computer Science is for Everyone!
As part of Computer Science Education Week, Tom Kalil, Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation at The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and Farnam Jahanian, Assistant Director of The National Science…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Facebook creating new Research Lab in Artificial Intelligence
It was announced on December 9, 2013 that Yann LeCun from NYU will be heading a new research lab at Facebook focused on Artificial Intelligence. LeCun posted on his Facebook page: Big news today! Facebook has created a new research…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data Requires Small Steps
In E-Commerce Times: A reasonable piece. The idea requires both handling the data and the application of the analytics that result. Analytics requires you to understand how the results link to your decision process. Fewer…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ontology and Big Data
An interesting case of combining Ontologies and big data, in a slide show. Using health data as an example. Ontologies are shared vocabularies as they relate to the use of terms to represent knowledge. Good look at better organizing…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Why I Write Code
I’ve been programming for about 40 years now. That’s a long time in Internet time. Honestly in some ways it is more fun now then ever and it started off as fun for me. The story starts for me back in college when I took a programming…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wi-Fi Enabled Services in Retail
Interesting post in the Cisco Blog. Consider the potential for added services in retail contexts. " ... That situation is changing through the growing availability of Wi-Fi in business locations. Many retailers, hotels,…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
The 25 Year Commitment to Making a Computer Scientist
CSEdWeek continues to roll along with events in schools, districts, community centers, and businesses and computer science educators continue to play a critical role in all of these events. Last night I had the pleasure of attending…
From BLOG@CACM
Hour of Code: Observations from a Middle School Classroom
I volunteered at a middle school for the Hour of Code and helped students learn basic programming. Here are some observations that are relevant to CS education.
From The Eponymous Pickle
TIBCO Spotfire for Developers
Brought to my attention. TIBCO Spotfire for Developers by Manuel XavierLooks to be of interest, have yet to see any book on Spotfire, which we used for Business Sphere visualizations. I will review more completely in the coming…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Qualcomm Gimbal for Location Detection
More on another ability to detect, track and engage people in physical retail settings. Qualcomm's Gimbal. With similarities to Apple's iBeacon. Another quickly spreading idea covered here. " ... The Gimbal™ platform enables…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NIH Names Dr. Philip E. Bourne First Associate Director for Data Science
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the formal appointment of Dr. Philip E. Bourne as the First Associate Director for Data Science at the Institutes. Francis S. Collins, Director of NIH said, Phil will lead an…
From Schneier on Security
NSA Spying on Online Gaming Worlds
The NSA is spying on chats in World of Warcraft and other games. There's lots of information -- and a good source document. While it's fun to joke about the NSA and elves and dwarves from World of Warcraft, this kind of surveillance…
From The Eponymous Pickle
R Extracting Data from Google Analytics
Specifically using R. A good case study for using R as well." ... How to extract custom data from Google AnalyticsYou can use a programming language like R to bypass the Google Analytics Web interface to retrieve the data you…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
That Is Not My Name
My first major in college was Sociology. I did finish it along with a second major in Systems Analysis (few CS majors existed back in the dark ages) and to some extent that sociology background influences how I look at Computer…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A Negative Impossibility Theorem
A positive result on clustering Ravi Kannan is a long-time friend, a brilliant theorist, and a wonderful speaker. He has won numerous awards, including the Fulkerson Prize and the Knuth Prize, for his ground-breaking research…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Grace Hopper at 107
I see that it is the 107th anniversary of computer Pioneer Grace Hopper's birth. I wrote about my brief encounter with her while I was working at the Pentagon, in an early post in this blog. It was an honor to be connected…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Supreme Court to Decide on Software Patents
Reuters: Need this, finally. Lets hope for some sanity" ... The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to rule on the divisive issue of what kinds of software are eligible for patent protection in a case being closely watched by the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neurogames are here
Correspondent Ron Wright, President / CEO Sands Research Inc. writes:Dear Neuromarketing DG Member:Just a quick note to alert you that I have set up a new Discussion Group for the growing field of applying neuroscience in the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Memories are Geotagged
In KurzweilAI: Memories may be geotagged with spatial information about the location where the information was acquired. Applications to retail engagement? Is this just in games? Quite a remarkable finding on the surface…