joyofdata

just curious - can you give an example for a big breaktrhough he co-authored?

nonetheless - some of his remarks are very specific and I don't see how informal style applies here to excuse them.

> therefore follows that a large neural network with 10 layers can do anything a human can in 0.1 seconds.

very funny ... as if ANNs are sufficiently comparable to actual neural activity. also I think it is naive to assess the "powerful"-ness of the brain to what is going on in a single neuron - it is certainly the parallel interaction which creates the human intelligence.

> And if human neurons turn out to be noisy (for example), which m...

it is pretty naive to consider noise as something of only handicapping nature - a lot of algorithms are as powerful as they are by utilizing noise and stochasticity

> What is learning? Learning is the problem of finding a setting of the neural network’s weights that achieves the best possible results on our training data.

Wrong - this is memorizing ... learning is the process leading to a low out-of-sample error.

thanks for the hint - no more blackhats and vitaly shown in the sources - seems to work

To consider "something" as just _in the mind_ v/s being physically rooted is similar too considering software bugs trivial b/c software can easily be changed compared to hardware that is broken.

To extend the analogy - asking a depressive patient to just sort it out mentally is like trying to debug a debugger using that same debugger!?

Let's say you are sitting in your office for 8 hours. In one case you could leave but probably won't - in the other case your boss puts a lock on your door for those 8 hours. Would that make a difference to you?

There is Ulam's Sprial for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulam_spiral

In other words,

organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations

—M. Conway

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law)

> The more you learn about the R language, the worse it will feel.

The opposite is true in my experience.

> R makes me want to kick things almost every time I use it.

Maybe R is not your biggest problem.

> The documentation is inanely bad. I can't explain it.

Good point!

Actually having lots of people complain about a programming language is a good indicator for that language doing well:

- JavaScript

- PHP

- C++

- ...

On that note, Hadley, R IS awesome and a large reason for that is your contribution to it! Thanks and keep up the good work!

I do second that - http://www.joyofdata.de/blog/hierarchical-clustering-with-r/ :)

Location: Munich, Germany

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: R, JavaScript, Haskell, Linux, Pentaho, Git, Machine Learning, Math, Statistics

Résumé/CV: http://www.joyofdata.de/blog/about-me/

Email: raffael.vogler.de▓gmail.com

Currently working as a Consultant for Business Analytics but will leave this job by end of 2014. I'd prefer to work for a start-up or small company as an inhouse Data Scientist - as opposed to consulting in large corporation environments.

My strength is combining analytical thinking with creativity and in looking at problems from unusual angles.

I worked in 2014 with a lot of different technologies for 3 projects involving: QlikView (which I pretty much dislike), R, hierarchical clustering, MongoDB, Git, H2O neural networks, Random Survival Forrests

I pay less than €800 for my 45m² 3 subway stops away from the central station. And I found it by talking to people within 3 months ... :) Paying more than €800 for a small room means even by Munich standards just that you are getting ripped off.

President Obama is recognized either as ...

... a mountain-bike / all-terrain-bike (http://cdn2.spiegel.de/images/image-730849-galleryV9-vuuv.jp...)

... or a rugby ball (http://cdn2.spiegel.de/images/image-730849-breitwandaufmache...)

... or a bullet proof vest (http://cdn2.spiegel.de/images/image-730849-thumb-vuuv.jpg)

I guess the implementation leaves room for improvement :)

Exactly!

http://www.joyofdata.de/blog/a-stackoverflow-but-for-busines...

I would love to have a more high-speed Q&A-site for BI and all those related topics - same quality- and fun-level as stackoverflow!

flagged - the title is bullshit anyway and the problem is not so much that somebody fakes linkbaity titles - the problem is that HN audience is apparently interested in it

“It is remarkable that mind enters into our awareness of nature on two separate levels. At the highest level, the level of human consciousness, our minds are somehow directly aware of the complicated flow of electrical and chemical patterns in our brains. At the lowest level, the level of single atoms and electrons, the mind of an observer is again involved in the description of events. Between lies the level of molecular biology, where mechanical models are adequate and mind appears to be irrelevant. But I, as a physicist, cannot help suspecting that there is a logical connection between the two ways in which mind appears in my universe. I cannot help thinking that our awareness of our own brains has something to do with the process which we call "observation" in atomic physics. That is to say, I think our consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the chemical events in our brains, but is an active agent forcing the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another. In other words, mind is already inherent in every electron, and the processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call "chance" when they are made by electrons.”

Freeman Dyson

If I'd get one Bitcoin for every cryptocurrency that is promoted on HN, ...

I am wondering about this:

Why not paying out expected clicks according to a forecast based on click data prior to the alleged fraud?

That should be a fair compromise IMO

I found this before Stanford found it ... during my math studies I was all the time walking up and down between the shelves of the library :)

In addition to walking around I highly recommend talking to yourself and gesticulating! Looks weird but it works.

What I find most hideous about every single wrong conviction is that it could not just have prevented most of the time and that it was contrived by overeager prosecutors - for every one wrongfully convicted the real culprit is walking freely!

Just watch "West of Memphis" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2130321/) and see how the state solves the issue of three wrongfully convicted boys - with something as rediculous and stupid as the Alford plea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford_plea) - nothing more than a sophistry with the very practical effect of that the police doesn't even have to solve the crime anymore.

I am from Germany and we have a less extreme contemporary example of wrong conviction of Gustl Mollath - he was basically fucked over by a network of Bavarian judges, prosecutors, bankers and expert witnesses for denouncing the HypoVereinsbank of fiscal evasion.

The infamous - survivorship bias :-o

> People with WS are empathetic, social, friendly and endearing but they tend to have a low IQ, making tasks such as counting money difficult.

IQ is what a standardized IQ test measures. And there is no way such a person can effectively attend a standard IQ test - which is why this statement is pointless by definition.

And to connect this "low IQ" with having problems counting money is funny in multiple ways! First of all - counting anything is not what I would consider needing intelligence. Usually the opposite is correct - pertaining a boring task as counting is usually impaired by high intelligence.

And second of all - isn't the feat of "counting money" the root of most of mankind's biggest problems? Wouldn't it be more intelligent in fact trying to foster some of the conditions coming with this "disorder"?

Like approaching people open and friendly disregarding their dull and dismissive facial expressions and aura - tired from counting money very well all day long?

SEEKING WORK - Munich, Germany - but also other large towns in Germany or simply home office

---

Data Science and Data Engineering:

- R

- Pentaho Kettle / PDI

- Machine Learning (Decision Trees, SVMs, ...)

- Python

- Data Visualizations

- Data Analysis / Statistics

---

www.joyofdata.de/blog/about-me/

www.linkedin.com/in/raffaelvogler

"Almost immediately, Freitas started building a more secure and robust alternative to Twitter, making use of code from two other massively successful online projects: bitcoin and BitTorrent."

[http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/01/twister/]

Seems to be related to the idea behind Twister.

The denial is the problem - the fact that people who do not live anymore committed a genocide is certainly nothing that people living now should be held responsible for. But a nation has to embrace its history even if it was a predecessing state - the Third Reich is different from today's Germany as much as Turkey is different from the Ottoman Empire.

If you deny Holocaust publicly in Germany you are in serious legal trouble - but in Turkey it is the opposite - you are in trouble when you publicly claim that a genocide on Turkey's terrain took place.

"Shortly before an election, a spin-doctor and a Hollywood producer join efforts to fabricate a war in order to cover up a presidential sex scandal."

(IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120885/)

This main difference though is that this is going to be for real.

"Everyone, it seems, is waiting for compromising sex tapes to emerge, a tawdry phenomenon with a history in Turkish politics, especially at election time. Already, sex tapes supposedly involving high-level officials have been delivered to some news organizations, which, for now, have shown restraint. It is probably only a matter of time before they begin showing up on social media."

(NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/world/europe/turks-are-glu...)

thoughts -> TWISTER -> http://twister.net.co/

That means you are willing to receive have of your fortune?

For me precisely this was the final reason I needed to simply erase Windows 8 64bit Professional (which I paid for half a year earlier) and install Ubuntu 13.10.

I was worried about driver issues and spending too much time adminstering my system instead of using it for being productive. I cannot emphasize enough how unnecessary those worries were - I f love it! As an IT guy using R, Git, Python and further Linux tools this made actually a lot of tasks way easier!

My recommendation - f* dual boot - get rid of Windows and switch to Linux!