linkstream2 microblog

After @pmarca’s classic 2011 essay “Why Software is Eating the World,” Cohen & @MatthewGranade now posit that “Models Will Run the World” https://www.WSJ.com/articles/models-will-run-the-world-1534716720 Illustrates the transition from computer science to #DataScience HT @WillMeyerson

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The software revolution has transformed business. What’s next? Processes that constantly improve themselves without need of human intervention.

By Steven A. Cohen and Matthew W. Granade
Aug. 19, 2018 6:12 p.m. ET

Marc Andreessen’s essay “Why Software is Eating the World” appeared in this newspaper Aug. 20, 2011. Mr. Andreessen’s analysis was prescient. The companies he identified—Netflix, Amazon, Spotify—did eat their industries. Newer software companies—Didi, Airbnb, Stripe—are also at the table, digging in.
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A nice commentary on the role of data science in industry.

Long-awaited @Yale STEM report calls for new research institutes
https://YaleDailyNews.com/blog/2018/06/14/long-awaited-stem-report-calls-for-new-research-institutes Top recommendation is a new #DataScience institute! Followed by one for #Neuroscience. Cross-cutting recommendations on grad. student support & sci. cores (https://research.Yale.edu/ussc-report)

Blog post itself has some interesting “text evolution”:
http://meetings.gersteinlab.org/2018/06.20/Text-evolution-of-USSC-news-article

Points from the new University Science Strategy Committee Report :

Under Five Ideas for Top-Priority Investment: (University-wide Institute for) Integrative Data Science and its Mathematical Foundations and Neuroscience, from Molecules to Mind

Under Five Additional Priority Ideas: Computer Science, Conquering Cancer, Precision Medicine, Regenerative Medicine

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Mark Gerstein — a professor of biomedical informatics— similarly emphasized the value of a new data science institute that would integrate Yale’s science campuses and discourage research “silos.” …
Another concern is establishing the specific role of the institute amid the various departments and programs at Yale that perform data science research, Gerstein said. For example, he said, Yale’s new Center for Biomedical Data Science, which Gerstein co-directs, might eventually be folded into the proposed institute.
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“In a response to STAT’s questions, Memorial Sloan Kettering said international journals are part of the literature it provides to Watson, including the Lancet, the European Journal of Cancer, Annals of Oncology, and the BMJ. “As we do in all areas of cancer research, we will continue to observe and study how Watson for Oncology impacts care internationally, follow the evidence, and work with IBM to optimize the system,” the hospital said.”
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https://www.statnews.com/2017/09/05/watson-ibm-cancer/

Long-awaited @Yale STEM report calls for new research institutes
https://YaleDailyNews.com/blog/2018/06/14/long-awaited-stem-report-calls-for-new-research-institutes Top recommendation is a new #DataScience institute! Followed by one for #Neuroscience. Cross-cutting recommendations on grad. student support & sci. cores (https://research.Yale.edu/ussc-report)

Points from the new University Science Strategy Committee Report

Under Five Ideas for Top-Priority Investment: (University-wide Institute for) Integrative Data Science and its Mathematical Foundations and Neuroscience, from Molecules to Mind

Under Five Additional Priority Ideas: Computer Science, Conquering Cancer, Precision Medicine, Regenerative Medicine

http://scikit-learn.org/stable/index.html

Great talk today @Yale by @MooreJH. He describes flow of calculations in biomed. #DataScience, including feature construction, machine learning & downstream interpretation.

Great slide on ML derived from
https://martin-thoma.com/comparing-classifiers

NYC’s Bold, Flawed Attempt to Make #Algorithms Accountable
https://www.NewYorker.com/tech/elements/new-york-citys-bold-flawed-attempt-to-make-algorithms-accountable QT: “#NYC should commit to demanding openness in all future contracts with vendors of these algorithmic services…It’s a dereliction of duty to allow vital decisions to be made by a black box.”

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“Frank Pasquale,… told me much the same. “While the terms of past contracts are hard to revisit, New York City should commit to demanding openness in all future contracts with venders of these algorithmic services,” he said. “They have the leverage here, not the firms. Secrecy may incentivize tiny gains in efficiency, but those are not worth the erosion of legitimacy and public confidence in government. It’s a dereliction of duty to allow vital decisions to be made by a black box.”
…
Cathy O’Neil, the author of “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy,” told me. “What we’re finding is that the world of algorithms is one ugly wormhole.” In insulating algorithms and their creators from public scrutiny, rather than responding to civic concerns about bias and discrimination, the existing system “propagates the myth that those algorithms are objective and fair,” O’Neil said. “There’s no reason to believe either.””

http://researchdata.yale.edu/training-calendarthe Research Data Support website has published a unified calendar for data and research skills training provided by the Library, Center for Research Computing, Medical Library, and Center for Teaching and Learning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tukey

fellowships, grants, space
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“DOMINICI: Because of the new advances in technology, almost every field right now has data, and more data than ever. Clearly, there’s the explosion of genetics and genomics data in the life sciences, in molecular data, as well as astronomy and economics. Even in the humanities, you can scan documents and turn it into data that you can analyze.
…
PARKES: To add some numbers to this, IBM has estimated that we’re generating more than one quintillion bytes of data a day. (A quintillion is a 10 to the 18th.)
…
DOMINICI: One of the reasons we are so excited that Harvard is launching the Data Science Initiative is because of all the advances our faculty have made in recent years. We can now describe the entire genome, define the exposome (the environmental analogue to the genome), characterize social interactions and mood via cellphone data, and can digitize historical data relevant for the humanities. ….

DOMINICI: We have launched the Harvard Data Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, which is among the largest programs of its kind, and we want to recruit talented individuals in a highly interdisciplinary ways. We’re looking for people who can lead their own research but will want to work collaboratively with other people around the University. In fact, we’ve asked them to identify faculty they’d be excited to work with. In addition to passsion for computer science and statistics, we are are looking for talented individuals who want to advance knowledge in astronomy, psychology, business, health, and are excited to work with us to builld data science at Harvard. We have a committee that will be making decisions about this very soon.

We have also launched a competitive research fund that will catalyze small research projects around the University. Through our friends in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Medical School, we’ve identified some spaces in the near term where people can get together. …

PARKES: We are launching the initiative because we want to get to a point where we have a Harvard Data Science Institute. The aspiration is that the Data Science Institute will have some physical space associated with it,
…
Then the third one I wanted to mention is privacy.
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http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/03/co-directors-of-newly-launched-harvard-data-science-initiative-discuss-new-era/