The Joy of Calculation
I recently had the pleasure of finding a copy of the manual for my favorite calculator. I know it is incredibly nerdy to have a favorite calculator (and even more nerdy to read the manual), but it really got me thinking.
The Data Enrichment Method
We explore some of the ideas from the seminal paper “The Data-Enrichment Method” ( Henry R Lewis, Operations Research (1957) vol. 5 (4) pp. 1-5). The paper explains a technique of improving the quality of statistical inference by increasing the effective size of the data-set. This is called “Data-Enrichment.” Now […]
What does the Market Think?
What does the market think about IBM’s proposed acquisition of Sun?
It is not all the quants’ fault.
There is plenty of blame to go around from the current global financial crisis. But, I would like to point out that it is not “all the quants’ fault.” We are all now, unfortunately, sitting in the middle of a high quality (and extremely expensive) lesson in financial mathematics. I […]
Volunteers in Large Clubs: The Theorist’s View
I have just posted a new write-up: Volunteers in Large Clubs: The Theorist’s View. This paper describes some interesting issues in organizing volunteers in a large club and tries to show (without math) how a theoretical computer scientist attacks such problems.
Map Reduce: A Good Idea
Some time ago I subscribed to The Database Column because it would be fun to see what these incredible people wanted to discuss. We owe much of our current database technology to Professor Stonebraker and Vertica sounds like an incredible product. And I definitely want to continue to subscribe. However, […]
Exciting Technique #1: The “R” language.
Our first “exciting technique” article is about a statistical language called “R.” R is a language for statistical analysis available from http://cran.r-project.org/ . The things you can immediately do with it are incredible. You can import a spreadsheet and immediately spot relationships, trend and anomalies. R gives you instant access […]
New “exciting techniques” series of articles.
I am starting a new “exciting techniques” series of articles on the Win-Vector blog. The primary purpose of the Win-Vector blog remains identifying and describing needs, but I am starting a new sub-series of articles about techniques.
The Purpose of this Blog
The purpose of this blog (which is not quite “blog like” in its promise of a once a month longish technical article) is to educate, share the Win-Vector principles and learn more about writing (through practice). I am a big fan of “understanding through writing” (you learn through trying to […]
Something I don’t get about business and bailouts
I don’t really know what the right answer to the $700 Billion Dollar Bailout Question is (I have not read the bill, and I wonder if the bill really describes what would happen). But the whole situation does remind me of a related question: is it really the end of […]