Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From The Noisy Channel
Seasonality
Whether it’s the time of year or the time of day, the time when someone performs a search sometimes help us determine the searcher’s intent. As with location, it...
From The Noisy Channel
Geographical Context
Location often provides a strong signal of searcher intent. Sometimes location acts as an implicit part of the search query, such as when people are searching for...
From The Noisy Channel
To Build Better Search, Develop Empathy With Your Users
User experience designers recognize the importance of empathy in the design process. Understanding how and why users engage with products yields insights that help...
From The Noisy Channel
Session Context
The most immediate context for a search query is a search session, a sequence of activities the searcher performs in order to pursue an information-seeking task...
From The Noisy Channel
Why Voice isn’t Selling…Yet
Originally published in VentureBeat.Personal digital assistants have taken the world by storm. We have Siri and Google Assistant on our phones, and many of us have...
From The Noisy Channel
Evaluating Search: Using Human Judgement
Originally posted on the Twiggle blog.In the previous post, we looked at measuring searcher behavior in order to evaluate search engine performance. Measuring searcher...
From The Noisy Channel
Evaluating Search: Measuring Searcher Behavior
Originally posted on the Twiggle blog.Measuring the effectiveness of your search engine is hard. Fortunately, you have an army of volunteers helping you: your customers...
From The Noisy Channel
Evaluating Good Search (Part I): Measure It
Originally posted on the Twiggle blog.At Twiggle, we’re all about improving the search experience. But how do we define improvement? As Lord Kelvin, one of history...
From The Noisy Channel
Contextual Query Understanding
So far, we’ve focused on understanding searchers based entirely on the words they type into the search box. But search doesn’t occur in a vacuum. In the next posts...
From My Biased Coin
Simulated Annealing for JPEG Quantization
I have a new paper on the arxiv (web page describing results, and full version** available) with two Harvard undergrads, Max Hopkins and Sebastian Wagner-Carrena...
From My Biased Coin
Grace Hopper College
I hadn't seen the news about Yale renaming Calhoun College to Hopper College; it just popped into one of my newslines here in the New York times. I guess I hadn't...
From The Noisy Channel
10 Things Everyone Should Know About Machine Learning
As someone who often finds himself explaining machine learning to non-experts, I offer the following list as a public service announcement. Machine learning means...
From The Noisy Channel
Autocomplete and User Experience
The previous post focused on how to determine the best autocomplete suggestions based on query probability and query performance. In this post, we’ll dive intoscope...
From The Noisy Channel
You’re absolutely right about the number of suggestions, of course.
You’re absolutely right about the number of suggestions, of course. And it’s a good reminder that autocomplete user experience deserves its own post, which I promise...
From The Noisy Channel
Autocomplete
In the past decade, autocomplete has become a required feature for search engines. Today, searchers who type into a search box expect to see autocomplete suggestions...
From The Noisy Channel
I agree with the judge about the balance of hardships, but that in itself wouldn’t have been…
I agree with the judge about the balance of hardships, but that in itself wouldn’t have been sufficient to grant the injunction. The judge also ruled that “hiQ...
From The Noisy Channel
On hiQ v. LinkedIn
On August 14th, US District Judge Edward M. Chen granted a preliminary injunction to hiQ Labs in its case against LinkedIn. While I agree with part of the judge...
From My Biased Coin
Best Post I've Read on the Google Memo
After the shout-out to Meena, she suggested I might have more to say on the issue of the Google memo. I (like I imagine so many others) have been following the...
From My Biased Coin