December 24, 2024

Greedy is good when you’re optimizing giant online experiments

Clinical drug trials are designed to compare a treatment against a placebo to determine the best option for a patient. These randomized control studies are the gold standard for determining causality. If there are enough participants, they can be used to determine the best course of action. The knowledge gained through the experiment allows drug […]

Face the unsettling power of AI in analyzing our photos

Kosinski’s latest study was published in Scientific Reports earlier this year. He fed over 1 million pictures of social media profiles into the algorithm, which correctly predicted a person’s self-identified ideology 72% of the time. Humans got it right only 55% of the time. Kosinski is an associate professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of […]

The Fast and the Incurious: How high-speed stock trading pushes out smart money

Michael Lewis called them “Flash Boysopen in a new window,” who use algorithms to predict and profit from significant moves made by slow-moving funds. These algorithms detect when mutual funds are about to purchase large stock quantities and can direct the system to start buying shares immediately. These algorithmic traders then profit from a short […]

How flawed data exacerbates inequality in credit scores

A study in which researchers tested alternative credit scoring models using artificial intelligence found that lower-income families and minorities have a problem: the predictive tools are between 5-10% less accurate than those for higher-income groups and non-minorities. The algorithms that determine credit scores are not biased against disadvantaged borrowers. It’s not that credit score algorithms are […]

What million articles reveal about the state of U.S. newspapers

Does this mean that the quality of journalism is about to deteriorate? Are newspapers less likely to produce investigative stories that readers depend on to expose corruption, uncover wrongdoing, and hold influential people and institutions accountable? The worry is who else will investigate a scandal in a small regional city? says Gregory J. Martin, assistant […]

The Beautiful Application of Economics: Making Kidney Exchanges More Efficient and Fair

Even modest improvements in the organ exchange market can save many people’s lives. This is where economists and experts in operations come into play. Akbarpour, a professor of economics and associate professor at Stanford GSB, recalls: “We used these tools I was familiar with to solve this social problem.” “I’d never seen such an elegant […]

How Income Inequality Can Drive COVID Infections

An analysis of lockdowns in Chile reveals that wealth was critical in determining who stayed at home and who took a risk. Latin American countries rushed to impose lockdowns and restrictions on mobility when COVID-19 struck in March 2020. Evidently, these public health measures would slow down the region’s growing economy. Still, it wasn’t clear […]

The Tipping point: Subtle psychology and economics of taxi fares

Donkor was always intrigued by the fact that an unpleasant or harmful experience with a passenger did not seem to affect whether they tipped him and how much. Why? He wondered why people list in the first place. Donkor, a marketing assistant at Stanford Graduate School of Business, explains that tipping behavior in NYC taxis […]

How to convert your tech thoughts into a minimum viable product

You are counting sheep at 3 am, trying to get some sleep, when an idea comes to you that you believe will revolutionize how people view, experience, and understand technology. What do you do when an idea flashes by? It’s simple: write the idea, then in a few days, design, develop, test, and deploy it. […]

The Complete Guide to Optical Character Recognition

You can find it here if you still need to read the first part of this series. As promised, in today’s blog, we will explore the benefits of Optical Character Recognition, its current and future uses, and alternative alternatives. OCR: Benefits of OCR OCR technology automates tasks, saving time and money. This tool is great […]

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