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aokion Foundations of Data Science [pdf]

to your point about analysis, the folks with a CS education here (myself included) should ponder this quote from the intro: "...we have written this book to cover the theory likely to be useful in the next 40 years, just as an understanding of automata theory, algorithms and related topics gave students an advantage in the last 40 years. One of the major changes is the switch from discrete mathematics to more of an emphasis on probability, statistics, and numerical methods." some of the key stuff in statistical learning isn't even real analysis, it's functional analysis (usually two courses later).

aokion Foundations of Data Science [pdf]

might be worth noting that "calculus by spivak" is famously mistitled and is what people today call an intro analysis text. (says so right in the intro :-)

there are now "warm up" books (alcock) as well as even more basic real analysis books (abbott, about half the length of spivak).

aokion Thought Experiments in Mathematics: Gabriel's Horn

ah, thank you. i did not really understand why this was really any more "surprising" than the 2D analogue (finite area under an infinite curve). there are at least some other people who think it's not :-)

aokion Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) Darpa Funding

apparently had a preferred vendor in mind: http://www.bigassfans.com/

aokion 46-927 Introduction to AI (1997)

click on the december 11 lecture.

aokion Navy to Name Ship After Gay Rights Activist Harvey Milk

not sure i follow this. said man of peace was a navy officer and the article notes that he died wearing memorabilia from his service. do you have some reason to believe he would have agreed with you?

aokion Navy to Name Ship After Gay Rights Activist Harvey Milk

ship naming has been random and political since forever.

submariners used to call SSN 685 "lipscomb fish"...glenard p. lipscomb had nothing to do with the navy and did nothing but die as a congressman the year the ship was being named.

uss jimmy carter? the ex-secretary club (forrestal, john warner, thomas s. gates)?

aokion In 1987, an Iraqi Warplane Struck an American Frigate and Killed 37 Sailors

(1) removing the word "secret" from the HN title removes the only "interesting" element, since the fact that the stark was attacked by an iraqi jet is a matter of record. the article's claim is that it was a dassault bizjet training aircraft (falcon 50) that fired on the stark, as opposed to the dassault fighters (mirage f1) it was supposed to be supporting.

(2) there are no documentary sources cited for the article's claims. (the guy who wrote this writes whole books explicitly relying on unverifiable primary sources as well: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1841767875) i don't have any particular reason to disbelieve it but i also don't understand the claim that an f1 with a refueling probe and two hardpoints could not possibly have carried two exocets.

(3) the cyrano/exocet combination fingerprinted the iraqi air force even if they hadn't quickly copped to the attack. even if true, knowing this "secret" doesn't change anything.

aokion Skully has crashed and burned

well that's a blast from the past, thanks. though it did totally jump the shark when any bad news at any company of any size got to be "newsworthy."

aokion Google and LinkedIn announce massive land swap

http://sfbay.wr.usgs.gov/sediment/southsfbay/depth_maps.html

there is a marina in redwood city, but notice how shallow the bay is south of SFO (aside from the channel) - much of that is mudflats (lakes don't have tides), marine preserves, etc.

aokion Google and LinkedIn announce massive land swap

personally, i can't wait to see what the Silicon Valley (HBO) credits animation does with this next season. buildings standing up and trading places?

aokion Google and LinkedIn announce massive land swap

MSR BARC was in downtown SF. did you mean the buildings around the late MSR-SV? no sign of that yet.

aokion Silicon Valley firms are increasingly hiring chiefs of staff

i don't think that's quite right. when i was at intel the chief of staff role was the "technical assistant" or TA (as opposed to the administrative assistant or AA/EA); some TAs were business types but many had advanced engineering degrees, even PhDs. a well-aligned TA seems like a massive multiplier for execs. the main peril with a chief of staff who is less technical than the exec is that they are gatekeeping (filtering meetings and proposals) based on a pattern-matching level of understanding about technology, as opposed to actual understanding, and that's sort of asking for leadership to drift off in their own filter bubbles.

aokion Be Careful What You Code For

consider danah's example in which external studies show that blacks are convicted for drug crimes at a rate disproportionate to the actual crime incidence rate. the fact that the easily-available training data (court stats) is unrepresentative of the underlying process (crime incidence) is a problem that has to be corrected or predictive output will also over-represent them. the point is that this prior or correction is also part of the "data available" but you have to actually know something about the problem domain to know about it; you can't just grab a court data dump and pour it into a model and say, "welp, that was the data available to me, it's not biased."

aokion Be Careful What You Code For

i don't think you meant "bad sample size," i think you meant "non-representative sample" or just "bad sampling design."

the parent referred to bias. the example you're giving is one where the sample is biased because of a poor choice of sampling method. so, i think you're actually agreeing with the parent (as well as danah).

aokion How Google Is Remaking Itself for “Machine Learning First”

if it makes you feel better, i don't think you were supposed to be inspired. "ML Ninja" is just the name of the rotation program. if your team sends you, it's because they need someone to get the training, not because the program name makes it sound cool. i doubt the PM thought it would be public when she named it.