Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way: Understanding Statistics and Probability with Star Wars, Lego, and Rubber Ducks


Will Kurt - 2019
    But many people use data in ways they don't even understand, meaning they aren't getting the most from it. Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way will change that.This book will give you a complete understanding of Bayesian statistics through simple explanations and un-boring examples. Find out the probability of UFOs landing in your garden, how likely Han Solo is to survive a flight through an asteroid shower, how to win an argument about conspiracy theories, and whether a burglary really was a burglary, to name a few examples.By using these off-the-beaten-track examples, the author actually makes learning statistics fun. And you'll learn real skills, like how to:- How to measure your own level of uncertainty in a conclusion or belief- Calculate Bayes theorem and understand what it's useful for- Find the posterior, likelihood, and prior to check the accuracy of your conclusions- Calculate distributions to see the range of your data- Compare hypotheses and draw reliable conclusions from themNext time you find yourself with a sheaf of survey results and no idea what to do with them, turn to Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way to get the most value from your data.

Data Feminism


Catherine D’Ignazio - 2020
    It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In Data Feminism, Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought.Illustrating data feminism in action, D'Ignazio and Klein show how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how, for example, an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective data visualization, and how the concept of invisible labor can expose the significant human efforts required by our automated systems. And they show why the data never, ever “speak for themselves.”Data Feminism offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. But Data Feminism is about much more than gender. It is about power, about who has it and who doesn't, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed.

The Human Face of Big Data


Rick Smolan - 2012
    Its enable us to sense, measure, and understand aspects of our existence in ways never before possible. The Human Face of Big Data captures, in glorious photographs and moving essays, an extraordinary revolution sweeping, almost invisibly, through business, academia, government, healthcare, and everyday life. It's already enabling us to provide a healthier life for our children. To provide our seniors with independence while keeping them safe. To help us conserve precious resources like water and energy. To alert us to tiny changes in our health, weeks or years before we develop a life-threatening illness. To peer into our own individual genetic makeup. To create new forms of life.  And soon, as many predict, to re-engineer our own species. And we've barely scratched the surface . . . Over the past decade, Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt, co-founders of Against All Odds Productions, have produced a series of ambitious global projects in collaboration with hundreds of the world's leading photographers, writers, and graphic designers. Their Day in the Life projects were credited for creating a mass market for large-format illustrated books (rare was the coffee table book without one).  Today their projects aim at sparking global conversations about emerging topics ranging from the Internet (24 Hours in Cyberspace), to Microprocessors (One Digital Day), to how the human race is learning to heal itself, (The Power to Heal) to the global water crisis (Blue Planet Run). This year Smolan and Erwitt dispatched photographers and writers in every corner of the globe to explore the world of “Big Data” and to determine if it truly does, as many in the field claim, represent a brand new toolset for humanity, helping address the biggest challenges facing our species. The book features 10 essays by noted writers:Introduction: OCEANS OF DATA by Dan GardnerChapter 1: REFLECTIONS IN A DIGITAL MIRROR by Juan Enriquez, CEO, BiotechnomomyChapter 2: OUR DATA OURSELVES by Kate Green, the EconomistChapter 3: QUANTIFYING MYSELF by AJ Jacobs, EsquireChapter 4: DARK DATA by Marc Goodman, Future Crime InstituteChapter 5:  THE SENTIENT SENSOR MESH by Susan Karlin, Fast CompanyChapter 6: TAKING THE PULSE OF THE PLANET by Esther Dyson, EDventureChapter 7: CITIZEN SCIENCE by Gareth Cook, the Boston GlobeChapter 8: A DEMOGRAPH OF ONE by Michael Malone, Forbes magazineChapter 9: THE ART OF DATA by Aaron Koblin, Google Artist in ResidenceChapter 10: DATA DRIVEN by Jonathan Harris, Cowbird The book will also feature stunning info graphics from NIGEL HOLMES.1) GOOGLING GOOGLE: all the ways Google uses Data to help humanity2) DATA IS THE NEW OIL3) THE WORLD ACCORDING TO TWITTER4) AUCTIONING EYEBALLS: The world of Internet advertising5) FACEBOOK: A Billion Friends

How Smart Machines Think


Sean Gerrish - 2018
    But how do all these things work? In this book, Sean Gerrish offers an engaging and accessible overview of the breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and machine learning that have made today's machines so smart.Gerrish outlines some of the key ideas that enable intelligent machines to perceive and interact with the world. He describes the software architecture that allows self-driving cars to stay on the road and to navigate crowded urban environments; the million-dollar Netflix competition for a better recommendation engine (which had an unexpected ending); and how programmers trained computers to perform certain behaviors by offering them treats, as if they were training a dog. He explains how artificial neural networks enable computers to perceive the world—and to play Atari video games better than humans. He explains Watson's famous victory on Jeopardy, and he looks at how computers play games, describing AlphaGo and Deep Blue, which beat reigning world champions at the strategy games of Go and chess. Computers have not yet mastered everything, however; Gerrish outlines the difficulties in creating intelligent agents that can successfully play video games like StarCraft that have evaded solution—at least for now.Gerrish weaves the stories behind these breakthroughs into the narrative, introducing readers to many of the researchers involved, and keeping technical details to a minimum. Science and technology buffs will find this book an essential guide to a future in which machines can outsmart people.

Team Geek: A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others


Brian W. Fitzpatrick - 2012
    And in a perfect world, those who produce the best code are the most successful. But in our perfectly messy world, success also depends on how you work with people to get your job done.In this highly entertaining book, Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman cover basic patterns and anti-patterns for working with other people, teams, and users while trying to develop software. It's valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular video series, "Working with Poisonous People," has attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers.You'll learn how to deal with imperfect people--those irrational and unpredictable beings--in the course of your work. And you'll discover why playing well with others is at least as important as having great technical skills. By internalizing the techniques in this book, you'll get more software written, be more influential, be happier in your career.

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley


Emily Chang - 2018
    It's a "Brotopia," where men hold all the cards and make all the rules. Vastly outnumbered, women face toxic workplaces rife with discrimination and sexual harassment, where investors take meetings in hot tubs and network at sex parties.In this powerful exposé, Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures despite decades of companies claiming the moral high ground (Don't Be Evil! Connect the World!)--and how women are finally starting to speak out and fight back.Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao's high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they "won't lower their standards" just to hire women. Interviews with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and former Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer--who got their start at Google, where just one in five engineers is a woman--reveal just how hard it is to crack the Silicon Ceiling. And Chang shows how women such as former Uber engineer Susan Fowler, entrepreneur Niniane Wang, and game developer Brianna Wu, have risked their careers and sometimes their lives to pave a way for other women.Silicon Valley's aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world. It's time to break up the boys' club. Emily Chang shows us how to fix this toxic culture--to bring down Brotopia, once and for all.

R in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference


Joseph Adler - 2009
    R in a Nutshell provides a quick and practical way to learn this increasingly popular open source language and environment. You'll not only learn how to program in R, but also how to find the right user-contributed R packages for statistical modeling, visualization, and bioinformatics.The author introduces you to the R environment, including the R graphical user interface and console, and takes you through the fundamentals of the object-oriented R language. Then, through a variety of practical examples from medicine, business, and sports, you'll learn how you can use this remarkable tool to solve your own data analysis problems.Understand the basics of the language, including the nature of R objectsLearn how to write R functions and build your own packagesWork with data through visualization, statistical analysis, and other methodsExplore the wealth of packages contributed by the R communityBecome familiar with the lattice graphics package for high-level data visualizationLearn about bioinformatics packages provided by Bioconductor"I am excited about this book. R in a Nutshell is a great introduction to R, as well as a comprehensive reference for using R in data analytics and visualization. Adler provides 'real world' examples, practical advice, and scripts, making it accessible to anyone working with data, not just professional statisticians."

Hands-On Programming with R: Write Your Own Functions and Simulations


Garrett Grolemund - 2014
    With this book, you'll learn how to load data, assemble and disassemble data objects, navigate R's environment system, write your own functions, and use all of R's programming tools.RStudio Master Instructor Garrett Grolemund not only teaches you how to program, but also shows you how to get more from R than just visualizing and modeling data. You'll gain valuable programming skills and support your work as a data scientist at the same time.Work hands-on with three practical data analysis projects based on casino gamesStore, retrieve, and change data values in your computer's memoryWrite programs and simulations that outperform those written by typical R usersUse R programming tools such as if else statements, for loops, and S3 classesLearn how to write lightning-fast vectorized R codeTake advantage of R's package system and debugging toolsPractice and apply R programming concepts as you learn them

Uncharted: Big Data and an Emerging Science of Human History


Erez Aiden - 2013
    Gigabytes, exabytes (that’s one quintillion bytes) of data are sitting on servers across the world. So how can we start to access this explosion of information, this “big data,” and what can it tell us?   Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel are two young scientists at Harvard who started to ask those questions. They teamed up with Google to create the Ngram Viewer, a Web-based tool that can chart words throughout the massive Google Books archive, sifting through billions of words to find fascinating cultural trends. On the day that the Ngram Viewer debuted in 2010, more than one million queries were run through it.   On the front lines of Big Data, Aiden and Michel realized that this big dataset—the Google Books archive that contains remarkable information on the human experience—had huge implications for looking at our shared human history. The tool they developed to delve into the data has enabled researchers to track how our language has evolved over time, how art has been censored, how fame can grow and fade, how nations trend toward war. How we remember and how we forget. And ultimately, how Big Data is changing the game for the sciences, humanities, politics, business, and our culture.

Good Charts: The HBR Guide to Making Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visualizations


Scott Berinato - 2016
    No longer. A new generation of tools and massive amounts of available data make it easy for anyone to create visualizations that communicate ideas far more effectively than generic spreadsheet charts ever could.What’s more, building good charts is quickly becoming a need-to-have skill for managers. If you’re not doing it, other managers are, and they’re getting noticed for it and getting credit for contributing to your company’s success.In Good Charts, dataviz maven Scott Berinato provides an essential guide to how visualization works and how to use this new language to impress and persuade. Dataviz today is where spreadsheets and word processors were in the early 1980s—on the cusp of changing how we work. Berinato lays out a system for thinking visually and building better charts through a process of talking, sketching, and prototyping.This book is much more than a set of static rules for making visualizations. It taps into both well-established and cutting-edge research in visual perception and neuroscience, as well as the emerging field of visualization science, to explore why good charts (and bad ones) create “feelings behind our eyes.” Along the way, Berinato also includes many engaging vignettes of dataviz pros, illustrating the ideas in practice.Good Charts will help you turn plain, uninspiring charts that merely present information into smart, effective visualizations that powerfully convey ideas.

Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence


Richard Yonck - 2017
    Heart of the Machine explores the next giant step in the relationship between humans and technology: the ability of computers to recognize, respond to, and even replicate emotions. Computers have long been integral to our lives, and their advances continue at an exponential rate. Many believe that artificial intelligence equal or superior to human intelligence will happen in the not-too-distance future; some even think machine consciousness will follow. Futurist Richard Yonck argues that emotion, the first, most basic, and most natural form of communication, is at the heart of how we will soon work with and use computers.Instilling emotions into computers is the next leap in our centuries-old obsession with creating machines that replicate humans. But for every benefit this progress may bring to our lives, there is a possible pitfall. Emotion recognition could lead to advanced surveillance, and the same technology that can manipulate our feelings could become a method of mass control. And, as shown in movies like Her and Ex Machina, our society already holds a deep-seated anxiety about what might happen if machines could actually feel and break free from our control. Heart of the Machine is an exploration of the new and inevitable ways in which mankind and technology will interact.

Introduction to Algorithms


Thomas H. Cormen - 1989
    Each chapter is relatively self-contained and can be used as a unit of study. The algorithms are described in English and in a pseudocode designed to be readable by anyone who has done a little programming. The explanations have been kept elementary without sacrificing depth of coverage or mathematical rigor.

HBR's 10 Must Reads on AI, Analytics, and the New Machine Age (with bonus article "Why Every Company Needs an Augmented Reality Strategy" by Michael E. Porter and James E. Heppelmann)


Harvard Business Review - 2018
    Is your company ready?If you read nothing else on how intelligent machines are revolutionizing business, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you understand how these technologies work together, how to adopt them, and why your strategy can't ignore them. In this book you'll learn how: Data science, driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning, is yielding unprecedented business insights Blockchain has the potential to restructure the economy Drones and driverless vehicles are becoming essential tools 3-D printing is making new business models possible Augmented reality is transforming retail and manufacturing Smart speakers are redefining the rules of marketing Humans and machines are working together to reach new levels of productivity This collection of articles includes "Artificial Intelligence for the Real World," by Thomas H. Davenport and Rajeev Ronanki; "Stitch Fix's CEO on Selling Personal Style to the Mass Market," by Katrina Lake; "Algorithms Need Managers, Too," by Michael Luca, Jon Kleinberg, and Sendhil Mullainathan; "Marketing in the Age of Alexa," by Niraj Dawar; "Why Every Organization Needs an Augmented Reality Strategy," by Michael E. Porter and James E. Heppelmann; "Drones Go to Work," by Chris Anderson; "The Truth About Blockchain," by Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani; "The 3-D Printing Playbook," by Richard A. D’Aveni; "Collaborative Intelligence: Humans and AI Are Joining Forces," by H. James Wilson and Paul R. Daugherty; "When Your Boss Wears Metal Pants," by Walter Frick; and "Managing Our Hub Economy," by Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani.

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability & Science of Customer Centricity [With CDROM]


Avinash Kaushik - 2009
    "Web Analytics 2.0" presents a new framework that will permanently change how you think about analytics. It provides specific recommendations for creating an actionable strategy, applying analytical techniques correctly, solving challenges such as measuring social media and multichannel campaigns, achieving optimal success by leveraging experimentation, and employing tactics for truly listening to your customers. The book will help your organization become more data driven while you become a super analysis ninja Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

AI Ethics


Mark Coeckelbergh - 2020
    AI is also behind self-driving cars, predictive policing, and autonomous weapons that can kill without human intervention. These and other AI applications raise complex ethical issues that are the subject of ongoing debate. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible synthesis of these issues. Written by a philosopher of technology, AI Ethics goes beyond the usual hype and nightmare scenarios to address concrete questions.Mark Coeckelbergh describes influential AI narratives, ranging from Frankenstein's monster to transhumanism and the technological singularity. He surveys relevant philosophical discussions: questions about the fundamental differences between humans and machines and debates over the moral status of AI. He explains the technology of AI, describing different approaches and focusing on machine learning and data science. He offers an overview of important ethical issues, including privacy concerns, responsibility and the delegation of decision making, transparency, and bias as it arises at all stages of data science processes. He also considers the future of work in an AI economy. Finally, he analyzes a range of policy proposals and discusses challenges for policymakers. He argues for ethical practices that embed values in design, translate democratic values into practices and include a vision of the good life and the good society.