Linear Digressions

Wikipedia says, "A hidden Markov model (HMM) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process with unobserved (hidden) states." What does that even mea...

24 Mar 201514min

This is another physics-centered podcast, about an ML-backed particle identification tool that we use to figure out what kind of particle caused a particular blob in the detector. But in this case, as...

12 Mar 20158min

Ever feel like you could randomly assemble words from a certain vocabulary and make semi-coherent Kanye West lyrics? Or technical documentation, imitations of local newscasters, your politically outsp...

4 Mar 20158min

Often machine learning discussions center around algorithms, or features, or datasets--this one centers around interpretation, and ethics. Suppose you could use a technology like fMRI to see what re...

25 Feb 20159min

In 2000, Enron was one of the largest and companies in the world, praised far and wide for its innovations in energy distribution and many other markets. By 2002, it was apparent that many bad apples...

9 Feb 201512min

Supervised classification is built on the backs of labeled datasets, but a good set of labels can be hard to find. Great data is everywhere, but the corresponding labels can sometimes be really trick...

4 Feb 201513min

So, um... what about machine learning for audio applications? In the course of starting this podcast, we've edited out a lot of "um"'s from our raw audio files. It's gotten now to the point that, wh...

23 Jan 201513min

Now that we know about eigenfaces (if you don't, listen to the previous episode), let's talk about how it breaks down. Variations that are trivial to humans when identifying faces can really mess up...

7 Jan 201511min