Permanent link to this article: https://betweenthenumbers.net/2013/11/artificial-intelligence-solves-the-perennial-whodunit-of-unsigned-judicial-opinions/
Nov 14
After an eight year class action copyright infringement battle in and out of court, Google won the right to continue its Google Books project to digitize books. According to Judge Denny Chin’s November 14, 2013 Ruling, to date, Google digitized, indexed, and made available for search more than 20 million books. Even though many of …
Permanent link to this article: https://betweenthenumbers.net/2013/11/google-prevails-in-copyright-lawsuit-against-google-books/
Oct 17
The announcement of the Nobel Prize winners every October means that at least once a year a handful of economists become relatively popular. We can observe this spike in popularity using web search data reported by Google Trends. The chart below traces each Nobel laureate’s popularity before, during, and after the Prize was announced using …
Permanent link to this article: https://betweenthenumbers.net/2013/10/popularity-of-nobel-prizewinners-in-the-dismal-science-has-dismal-staying-power/
Oct 07
I’m occasionally surprised by the variety of anecdotes that support theories of market efficiency and the rapid adaptation of consumer behavior in free economies. The recent government shutdown seems to have introduced one such case. CBS reports that traffic is suddenly booming for “sugar daddy” websites. The news organization quotes folks at seekingarrangement.com and whatsyourprice.com …
Permanent link to this article: https://betweenthenumbers.net/2013/10/government-shutdown-great-for-some-businesses/
Oct 03
A recently published article on “Weight Bias in Graduate School Admissions” (gated link here) inadvertently highlights the dangers of drawing global conclusions based on inappropriate samples. Based on responses from 97 applicants to one university’s psychology department, the study asserts that graduate applicants with a higher Body Mass Index (BMI) tend to receive significantly fewer …
Permanent link to this article: https://betweenthenumbers.net/2013/10/according-to-a-scrawny-sample-fatter-applicants-are-less-likely-to-get-into-graduate-school/
Oct 02
A popular news service reported that it costs $241,080 to raise a child and then remarked, “the cost of raising a child is climbing at a rate that many families can’t keep up with.” The news agency cites falling wages and lower employment rates as support for this struggle to keep up. A host of …
Permanent link to this article: https://betweenthenumbers.net/2013/10/it-costs-241080-to-raise-a-child-and-other-reasons-why-averages-can-be-completely-uninformative/
Sep 26
Last Tuesday, an earthquake of magnitude 7.7 shook with such violence that it created a new island off the coast of Pakistan, as well as tragically killing at least 515 people and affecting at least 300,000 more. The international community has attempted to provide relief and humanitarian assistance. A 2013 social science paper indicates that …
Permanent link to this article: https://betweenthenumbers.net/2013/09/using-fatalities-to-predict-humanitarian-aid/
Sep 25
According to a recent article in Canada’s largest national newspaper, students and young adults have not become worse writers since the advent of new(ish) technologies like text messaging, Twitter, and Facebook. If anything, says the article, writers have become better over time in part thanks to new opportunities to write and create with these new …
Permanent link to this article: https://betweenthenumbers.net/2013/09/why-cataloguing-thousands-of-essays-still-doesnt-tell-you-whether-student-writing-has-improved/
Sep 23
When I was in junior high school in the early 90’s, my typing teacher mournfully predicted that typing would soon become an obsolete skill. Before long, computers would type as we dictated. Her prediction was not uncommon at the time. Many were enthralled by the ability of computers to understand and type out spoken words. …
Permanent link to this article: https://betweenthenumbers.net/2013/09/in-a-reversal-of-predictions-typing-has-replaced-speaking/
Sep 16
ABC’s popular reality TV show, “Shark Tank,” features financing negotiations between a panel of venture capitalists (the “Sharks”) and entrepreneurs/small business owners. Like normal venture capital investing, the deals portrayed in the show generally involve an exchange of an equity stake in the company for a certain amount cash that the business requires. The show’s …
Permanent link to this article: https://betweenthenumbers.net/2013/09/the-behind-the-scenes-cost-of-entering-the-shark-tank/
Nov 27
Artificial Intelligence Solves the Perennial Whodunit of Unsigned Judicial Opinions
November 27, 2013
An academic article published this year by the Stanford Technology Law Review demonstrates how machine learning and natural language processing techniques can provide new insights within the study of law. Machine learning, a technique developed in the field of artificial intelligence, typically uses computer algorithms to identify (i.e. “learn”) patterns in large datasets. In many …
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