Monthly Archives: December 2008

Facebook sentiment mining predicts presidential polls

I’m a bit late blogging this, but here’s a messy, exciting — and statistically validated! — new online data source. My friend Roddy at Facebook wrote a post describing their sentiment analysis system, which can evaluate positive or negative sentiment … Continue reading

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Information cost and genocide

In 1994, the Rwandan genocide claimed 800,000 lives.  This genocide was remarkable for being very low-tech — lots of non-military, average people with machetes killing their neighbors.  Romeo Dallaire, the leader of the small UN peacekeeping mission there, saw it … Continue reading

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Statistics vs. Machine Learning, fight!

10/1/09 update — well, it’s been nearly a year, and I should say not everything in this rant is totally true, and I certainly believe much less of it now. Current take: Statistics, not machine learning, is the real deal, … Continue reading

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