Learning Time

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Weekend Reading

If correlation doesn’t imply causation, then what does?

Before you can really understand AB tests, regression, and machine learning for data science, you have to understand the difference between observation and intervention.

Making Bayesian A/B testing more accessible

# Twitter ML Acquisition

Twitter Pays $13 Million Per Machine Learning Ph.D.

Why Twitter bought Magic Pony

# ML and Deep Learning

Pinterest's New Tools to Make Shopping Easier

Use of Image recognition and visual search on a massive scale to help customers find what they want

Using Deep Learning in Meteorology

This results in dramatic improvement in performance. What needs several hours of computations on a $40mm supercomputer can be done in less than 0.1 seconds on a laptop!!

How to Start Learning Deep Learning

Satya Nadella on AI

Explores how humans and A.I. can work together to solve society’s greatest challenges.

# Are Machines Just? Or they also have bias like us Humans?

Machine Bias

Artificial Intelligence’s White Guy Problem

# Maths: No equation involved, but highlights interesting aspects of Maths!

The Triumph (And Failure) Of John Nash’s Game Theory

These days, political scientists, evolutionary biologists, and even government regulators are obliged to grasp best-response equilibria and other aspects of game theory. Why so?

Waiting For Gödel

Gödel’s masterpiece was his incompleteness theorem, which ranks in scientific folklore with Einstein’s relativity and Heisenberg’s uncertainty.

# Economics

A good review of the book written by Mervyn King, former Bank of England governor. Paul Krugman has provided a nice perspective. Krugman’s NYRB reviews are quite a good resource.   

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Weekend Reading

Walmart has given up on becoming an ecommerce giant in China

Brexit 101 video, and Analysing Brexit using ML

Can this new website replace Reddit?

Anonymity can provide faster user growth for sites, but it can also create nuisance in terms of vitriolic comments. Previously, Reddit CEO had to resign because of this. Imzy aims to bring some kindness.

Machine Learning @ Google

Google has placed big bets on Machine Learning, a point explicitly emphasised by Sundar Pichai since he became the CEO, in the 2016 Google founders’ letter he spoke about the importance of the ML. (excerpt below) and also check him speaking at Google I/O 2016

“A key driver behind all of this work has been our long-term investment in machine learning and AI. It’s what allows you to use your voice to search for information, to translate the web from one language to another, to filter the spam from your inbox, to search for “hugs” in your photos and actually pull up pictures of people hugging ... to solve many of the problems we encounter in daily life. It’s what has allowed us to build products that get better over time, making them increasingly useful and helpful. We’ve been building the best AI team and tools for years, and recent breakthroughs will allow us to do even more.”      

Here are some articles/ videos helpful to get an idea of how Google aims to use/ is using Machine Learning in its products.

How Google is re-making itself to be ML first company

Interesting article on how Google is teaching ML to its engineers and infusing products with the technology.

AI, Apple and Google

Benedict Evans of a16z writes about the ML at Google and Apple (last week’s articles discussed AI at Apple)

Videos

Getting taste of ML: Google style

Machine Learning Recipes by Google

Short lectures on understanding ML using tensor flow and scikit learn

Machine Learning: Google's Vision @ Google I/O 2016

Breakthroughs in Machine Learning @ Google I/O 2016

Machine learning is not the future - Google I/O 2016

The title of talk is puzzling, isn’t it? See the video to understand the reason; it doesn’t look so weird after that!

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SInce the Brexit has been a hot topic, this Video can help viewers to gain some understanding

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Weekend Reading

AI, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning: A Primer

After multiple AI Winters, why is Silicon Valley buzzing about artificial intelligence again? What’s the breakthrough? In this presentation, Frank Chen from a16z explains why we're finally in an AI Spring.

What is Deep Learning? Intro to Deep Learning [related Slides] and [Wired Article]

Interesting use of Deep learning: Convert your hand drawn pictures into images

How a computer sees text?

R Passes SAS in Academic Publishing

Since academia is the first place where many people get exposed/learn a statistical tool, the use of R will only increase further in the companies when these students later enter into the workforce

How does use of AI by Apple differs from that of Google/ Facebook

                                                     &

Apple announced Differential privacy to getting user data without compromising individual privacy

Apple has always emphasized that the privacy of the users is important and because of its business model [selling high margin products] it doesn’t need to collect information about the customers to sell them ads which Google, Facebook do. So how should it build its AI technology, which needs humongous data, without breaching the privacy trust?

Home Improvement retailer Wayfair has opened a Research and Development Laboratory to develop Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Technologies (also check this)

Its use? Check out the video.

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A much needed Textbook for Economics!

After the financial crisis there has been a growing disenchantment with the way in which Economics is being taught at universities. The most common complaint being that it is distant from reality and there is a narrow focus on neoclassical theories at the expense of other schools of thought, like Marxism, which deprives students of the rich, diverse views within Economics.

There have been agitations too by the student community; the most famous one being, by students at Harvard University who boycotted classes to demand  for improved syllabus and students at Manchester University formed a group to study Economics in a broader perspective. Many more groups have been formed at other universities too.

The most visible of these post crash institutions has been the Institute of New Economics Thinking (INET) backed by billionaire George Soros. INET has been funding some of the most unusual and disruptive research in Economics, so as to make the field more enriching and useful for real world applications.

The most important result of their endeavors has been the CORE-ECON project. A team of Economists led by Wendy Carlin of UCL worked on a book to incorporate the situations/realities traditionally disdained by economic text-books. The result has been a book which focuses on issues like financial instability, inequality, and most importantly irrationality. The tagline says it all “Teaching Economics as if last 30 years had happened”.

Azim-Premji University has also helped in funding of the project and they will be using it for their incoming Bachelor students as has been done at UCL, Sciences Po and few other universities. The book is open source and makes for an interesting read. Have a look!

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Today is a special day: π day (3/14/15)

Today is a special day for two reasons. It’s the birthday of Albert Einstein and its Pi (π )Day (if you are used to write your dates in American manner: month/day/year)

But today’s π day is also special for another reason. The date represents the five digits of pi (which is happening once in 100 years) and at 9.26.53 am (pm also if you want to consider) you can have the first 10 digits of the π (3.141592653)

There are bunch of informative articles written to commemorate this special day. I was most fascinated to know that  William Jones who represented pi for the first time by the greek letter π was the father of Sir William Jones, who served as a Judge of Supreme Court in Fort William (Calcutta, India)  in the 18th century and co-founded the Asiatic Society to study Indian culture.

# Steven Strogatz beautifully explains why π matters so much. New Yorker has two more articles on π (here and here)

# Gareth Roberts tells about the interesting man, William Jones who invented π. (for those who found Jones’s story fascinating, one more article on Jones)

# Alex Bellos writes on the fascination with π

# Manil Suri, the mathematician and novelist writes about π

# How is π day celebrated around the world. By having pie cake and π digits memorization games. Another link

# Mathematical properties of π

What makes Maths beautiful is its application. Read on for the ways in which π is being used.        

# Is π day the perfect day to start your romance?

# How π and business cycles were used to make an Economic model and even helped in predicting the 1987 stock market crash.

# At MIT, π day is a special day because they intimate students about their admission decision. On this special π day they came up with a video showing drones delivering the admission letters.

Have a wonderful maths day!!

P.S: Those who want more there is a book specially dedicated to π

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Economics related links

# An interesting list of books compiled by Diane Coyle to look forward in 2015

# Stiglitz advocating a Keynesian solution for the aggregate demand mess in the world economy

# Fed’s reliance on the economic indicators other than inflation and unemployment

# Bradford Delong writes about the lessons which we need to learn from the crisis.

# Some bad news for Russian economy and some flicker of hope.

# Matthew Yglesias wrote an article on the 9 least understood topics in Economics in his opinion, this was followed by an article by Noah Smith who tried to demystify these 9 topics, however Noah seemed to err in his explanation of H-O theorem regarding international trade and a clarification was followed by Tyler Cowen.

# Shiller defending the importance of Economists which has taken a beating after the crisis. He asks us to be thankful to them as we are to the Physicians, who cannot save us every time but nevertheless have made our lives better. Interestingly in another well written article, Mankiw also draws comparison between economics and medical science. 

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How to make a sense of the world?

New Developments are occurring at a very fast pace. Companies are dying faster than ever and new innovations, despite reservations by some experts, are being achieved at a lightening speed. Every industry is undergoing transformation, sometimes it is organic and sometimes a new innovation in another field opens up opportunity in traditional field, like Big Data can revolutionize the fields ranging from Business, Agriculture and Medical Science among many others.

Keeping a tab on these developments and making sense can be a complex task, so how should one start? This issue has bothered me a lot, as I want to have a sense of its pace and direction. I feel there is a first step to which many people will agree. READ READ & READ. Reading is very important, the more we keep ourselves updated about the changes in the world, the more headway we will be able to make in dynamic world.

I have a very non-disciplined reading habit, I read multiple articles in one go and from different fields/sources and then can’t remember the source. So I will try to read in a more disciplined manner and will share the link of articles which I personally found interesting/ enlightening/mind blowing /informative/inspiring.

This is the first list. Happy reading!!

# This article in New Yorker talks in depth about the development of self driving cars by Google and what other automotive companies are doing. 

# A profile of the Moonshot CEO, Larry Page

# The company which is anti-thesis to Google's search practices!

# We celebrate successful technology products. Let’s learn from some failures.

# Making an intuitive product as if its by Apple however it’s not by Apple!! 

# Who knows you better? Facebook or your relatives? 

# Have you heard about the "Google of China"? See what it is upto!! Here, here, here and finally here. 

Hope you find it interesting. Keep checking for future links!

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Be a Data Scientist in 8 steps!

Data science is the new thing! How to be a data scientist? See here. This was originally was written by the team behind DataCamp,

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NYT carries a nice feature by the name of Corner Office. It interviews people in Leadership positions on their experiences and lessons related to leadership and management. Read on the nice interviews...

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Its great to know that the people are working hard to solve the problems around them in the most effective and inexpensive manner. The stories of these award winners in just inspiring!!

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How Linkedin sees the its role in the job market in future (Connecting 3bn members!). In last 7 minutes, Jeff speaks about the amazing vision of the company. 

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Travelling in the Trans- Siberian Railway is my dream. I hope to realize it soon. Meanwhile, this video might also make you desire the same!! 

Cheers, 

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Illustrates how a simple innovation can have a big impact. 

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Free Textbooks!!

Have you checked the US price of textbooks. Its absurdly high for some books. Considering that student loans are already high in US (amounting to $1tn by one estimate) and this is being seen in developing countries too, its imperative that we as a society should do our bit to decrease the cost of education in whatever manner its possible. 

MOOC's have already started the process, it has lowered the price for education for many people. Simultaneously, there is complimentary development going on and that is the emergence of free text books. I hope more programmes of this nature come up putting pressure on the publishers/authors to lower the price of their books to acceptable levels. 

Here are some of the links (will keep updating). Also check DOAB, which acts as a depository of free books.

Open Stax College

OTexts

Open Textbook Library

Open Intro Stats (for Statistics)

Springer Open Books (they have open accessed many journals too)  

Open SUNY 

Happy Studying!

Updates

E-Books Directory

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Christopher Columbus: Adventurer or Ruthless Tyrant?

On 13th October, America Celebrated Christopher Columbus Day. It celebrates the discovery of the America by the so called great adventurer. 

However, there was also a dark side to these explorations which has not been highlighted upon, especially in our history textbooks. I was shocked to know about the atrocities committed by the man on the Native American people and his own people. He also among other brutal acts like homicide started slavery. 

You can read about the atrocities in detail here. 

I believe we should remind ourselves and others about the different facets of personality of a person before we make him a blemish-free, unquestioned hero in the eyes of the people. 

Here you can read about the fight of Native Americans to change the name of Columbus day. 

Painting depicting Columbus' men sending dogs for native people in Hisponia after they tried running away (check here)

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Which Book you should read next?

Most of us have a fair idea of the books which we want to read and which will suit our tastes. However it never harms to go beyond our comfort zone and try books which will help us explore beyond our familiar topics. 

Searching and verifying the quality of a book not from your field can be bit taxing sometimes, so whats the best way?

Answer: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants!

There are two amazing book recommendation site for the same which hopefully help you to discover a new book to read.

Five Books

The Books Project

Update [ Jun 2016]

Since the posting of this entry, I came across another website, developed by an Indian programmer which mines twitter feed of famous personalities to get the list of books they are reading. A good source.

Highly Reco

I strongly recommend both the three sites, they have suggestions from people who have contributed highly to their respective fields and are avid book lovers. The recommendations from bigwigs give a good incentive to start a book.

So widen your horizons and read as much as possible!!