Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagData scraping

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Group of asian creative team programing designers participate in all phases of the UX design.

Using Data Like a Drunk Uses a Lamppost

Startup companies can be tempted to use statistics for support instead of real illumination

Karl Pearson, the great English mathematician and statistician, wrote, “Statistics is the grammar of science.” At its finest, it is. Statistical data and methods are the backbone of the scientific method that underlies the astonishing scientific advances that humans have made. Unfortunately, statistics can also be used to provide misleading support for false claims. The examples are numerous and so are the laments: There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.—Benjamin Disraeli There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.—Rex Stout Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures. —Evan Esar If you torture the data long enough, they will confess.—Ronald Coase We couldn’t Read More ›

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Social media facebook dis-like

Facebook Goes After Research Group Studying Its Ad Policies

The researchers received information from volunteers in order to study apparent violations of ad policies during the recent U.S. election

Facebook, one of the most ambitious companies in modern history—it is, after all, contemplating its own currency—is also trying to shut down an academic research group it doesn’t Like. The Ad Observatory, a project of NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, monitors ads on Facebook. In the most recent American election, they studied “Which candidates, super PACS, and dark money groups are spending most on Facebook advertising nationwide? What topics do they emphasize and what objectives do they seek to achieve with ads?” The project asked volunteers to install a plugin, Ad Observer, that automatically scrapes ads presented on Facebook and sends them in. Why does it matter? Because most of us see only a small proportion of the ads that Read More ›