The Turing Test
Let's imagine a future in which a truly intelligent computer program exists. How would it convince us (humanity) that it was intelligent? Alan Turing's answer to this question, proposed over 60 year...
12 Feb 201615min
Item Response Theory: how smart ARE you?
Psychometrics is all about measuring the psychological characteristics of people; for example, scholastic aptitude. How is this done? Tests, of course! But there's a chicken-and-egg problem here: y...
8 Feb 201611min
Go!
As you may have heard, a computer beat a world-class human player in Go last week. As recently as a year ago the prediction was that it would take a decade to get to this point, yet here we are, in 2...
5 Feb 201619min
Great Social Networks in History
The Medici were one of the great ruling families of Europe during the Renaissance. How did they come to rule? Not power, or money, or armies, but through the strength of their social network. And s...
1 Feb 201612min
How Much to Pay a Spy (and a lil' more auctions)
A few small encores on auction theory, and then--how can you value a piece of information before you know what it is? Decision theory has some pointers. Some highly relevant information if you are t...
29 Jan 201616min
Sold! Auctions (Part 2)
The Google ads auction is a special kind of auction, one you might not know as well as the famous English auction (which we talked about in the last episode). But if it's what Google uses to sell bil...
25 Jan 201617min
Going Once, Going Twice: Auctions (Part 1)
The Google AdWords algorithm is (famously) an auction system for allocating a massive amount of online ad space in real time--with that fascinating use case in mind, this episode is part one in a two-...
22 Jan 201612min
Chernoff Faces and Minard Maps
A data visualization extravaganza in this episode, as we discuss Chernoff faces (you: "faces? huh?" us: "oh just you wait") and the greatest data visualization of all time, or at least the Napoleonic ...
18 Jan 201615min
