How Feelings Help You Think

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If you’re in a grocery store, and you're hungry, everyone knows you're going to buy more stuff. You go into the store, you have certain data. If you go when you're in a non-hungry state, you have all that data in front of you, and all those choices to make, and you make a series of choices. If you go when you're in a hungry state, same data, same information, and you make totally different decisions. That's a good illustration of what emotions do. The emotions are a framework for your logical processing. It affects how you evaluate data, how skeptical you are of certain ideas versus how accepting you are of those same ideas. Your brain doesn't process in a vacuum. 

Leonard Mlodinow, quoted in GQ

Fleeting Happiness

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I have now reigned above 50 years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call. I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot. They amount to 14. —Abd al-Rahman III, the emir and caliph of Córdoba in 10th-century Spain

The Struggle for Social Innovation

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Social problem solving is not only slow, it is untidy.  Purposeful social change occurs through a long and disorderly process of trial and error not unlike that of an infant learning to walk. The infant tries, fails, has partial successes, learns, bumps its nose, cries, and tries again. It has many failures before it succeeds. This is why Harlan Cleveland says that “planning is improvisation on a sense of direction.”  No plan for social or institutional Improvement can be put into effect without innumerable in-course corrections.

John W. Gardner, On Leadership

Data Science articles - Feb. 2022

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Using artificial intelligence to find anomalies hiding in massive datasets

Using Google Maps to track the invasion of Ukraine —the app alerted researchers watching traffic before it hit social media or news sites

Technological advances make hiding military movements in Ukraine difficult—thanks to rapidly updated imagery from commercial satellites in the public domain & the IOT (from fitness trackers to cell phones) 

The role of analysts in Geospatial Intelligence technologies such as Very High Resolution (VHR) images, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images

Dispelling the mysteries around neural networks in healthcare

A pitch for symbolic AI as a way to meet the shortcomings of machine learning

A new R package for simulation-based calibration of Bayesian models

Assessing the use of deep learning to detect deepfakes

Will the data-centric AI movement replace the shift to deep learning? A look at the attempt to yield “small data” solutions to big issues in AI

Pro tips for organizing, storing, & recalling pieces of Python code—managing code to be reusable

One of the world’s largest constellations of satellites is operated not by a government but by a company—what’s planned for the 100 Spire satellites floating just above Earth’s atmosphere

DeepMind says its new AI coding engine is as good as an average human programmer—more likely is progress but not great results—yet

5 Ways Google Does Data Engineering Differently

“5 things that I actually did at work as a data scientist“

“90% of the data generated is unstructured but only 32% of companies can extract business value from their data”- but you ignore unstructured data at your own risk

While there are plenty of resources talking about pruning neural networks there are few explanations of the code behind it— here is look at the nuts and bolts involved in pruning deep neural networks

Report: U.S. military needs a better way to buy commercial satellite imagery

SpaceX rocket successfully launches US spy satellite

Microsoft researchers say their AI model can create poetry from images

Resources for following the invasion of Ukraine

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Links directly to the latest verified news on the conflict in Ukraine curated by news organizations. 

Twitter accounts related to coverage of Ukraine:

  • Daniel Dale (a list of Twitter accounts on Ukraine compiled by the CNN reporter)

  • Janet Lytvyneko (a senior research fellow at the Technology and Social Change Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center and originally from Ukraine)

  • Josh Marshall (a list of Twitter accounts on Ukraine compiled by the editor and publisher of Talking Points Memo)

  • Kayleen Devlin (member of the BBC’s disinformation monitoring unit)

  • Lisa Charlotte Muth (DataWrapper writer compiled info on various maps)

  • Olga Robinson (member of the BBC’s disinformation monitoring unit)

  • Rebecca Shabad (a list of Twitter accounts on Ukraine compiled by the politics reporter for NBC News)

Interactive Maps on the conflict:

We’re doing Time management wrong

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Time management strategies work in the sense that you’ll process more incoming inputs, but we’re living in a world with effectively infinite inputs—emails you could receive, demands that could be made of you, or ambitions that you could have. Getting better at moving through them is not going to get you to the end of them, so the promise of reaching a point at which you feel on top of everything is flawed on a math basis from the beginning.  

We are finite, limited creatures living in a world of constraints and stubborn reality. Once you’re no longer kidding yourself that one day you’re going to become capable of doing everything that’s thrown at you, you get to make better decisions about which things you are going to focus on and which you’re going to neglect.

Oliver Burkeman quoted in The Atlantic

The Secret to Happiness at Work

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To be happy at work, you don’t have to hold a fascinating job that represents the pinnacle of your educational achievement or the most prestigious use of your “potential,” and you don’t have to make a lot of money. What matters is not so much the “what” of a job, but more the “who” and the “why”: Job satisfaction comes from people, values, and a sense of accomplishment.

Some of the squishiest aspects of a job are also the ones that make it most rewarding: the values held by your company and your co-workers. Research has shown, for example, that all over the world job satisfaction depends on a sense of accomplishment, recognition for a job well done, and work-life balance.

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

The Myth of Romantic Love

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To serve as effectively as it does to trap us into marriage, the experience of falling in love probably must have as one of its characteristics the illusion that the experience will last forever.  

This illusion is fostered in our culture by the commonly held myth of romantic love, which has its origins in our favorite childhood fairy tales, wherein the prince and princess, once united, live happily forever after. They myth of romantic love tell us, in effect, that for every young may in the world there is a young woman who was “meant for him” and vise versa.

Should it come to pass, however, that we do not satisfy or meet all of each other’s needs and friction arises and we fall out of love, then it is clear that a dreadful mistake was make, we misread the stars, we did not hook up with our one and only perfect match, what we thought was love was not real or “true” love, and nothing can be done about the situation except to live unhappily ever after or get divorced. 

The myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie.  

Millions of people waste vast amounts of energy desperately and futilely attempting to make the reality of their lives conform to the unreality of the myth. 

Ultimately, if they stay in therapy, all couples learn that a true acceptance of their own and each other’s individuality and separateness is the only foundation upon which a mature marriage can be based and real love can grow.  

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

The Risk Test shows how well you manage uncertainty

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The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a set of three simple questions designed to predict whether you will be good at things like managing uncertainty.  Each question has an intuitive –and wrong –response. Most people need a moment to get the right answer. 

Here are the three questions:

1. A bat and a ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

2. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Everyday, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half the lake?

Shane Frederick, assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, devised the test to assess the specific cognitive ability that relates to decision‐making. It has an amazing correlation with people’s ability to evaluate risky propositions and to sort out the time value of money. (A dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the future because today’s dollar ears interest.)

For example, those who incorrectly answered the first question thought that 92% of people would answer it correctly. Those that did answer it correctly thought that 62% would get it right. The ones who answered instinctively, and therefore incorrectly ‐ have an over‐inflated sense of confidence, misreading the difficulty of challenges. We have a natural tendency toward overconfidence and bias. Researchers say people consistently overrate their knowledge and skill.

Consider these two alternatives:  Would you rather receive $3,400 this month or $3,800 next month?   

The second choice is better. It is the same as getting 12% interest in only a single month. Of the people who got all three questions right on the CRT, 60% preferred to wait a month. Of the people who got all three questions wrong on the CRT, only 35% preferred to wait.  

In other words, people with higher scores indicated a greater tolerance for risk when the odds where in their favor. 

This is shown by another option offered to participants. People were asked which they would prefer, $500 for sure or a gamble in which there was a 15% chance of receiving one million dollars and an 85% chance of receiving nothing. 

Most of the people who scored zero on the CRT took the money while most of those who scored a perfect three on the test took the gamble. The later group instinctively understood the concept of the expected value, which is the sum of possible values, multiplied by its probability (15% of $1 million plus 85% of zero equals $150,000). The gamble is well-worth the $500, but many people don’t naturally see it that way.  They are basing their decisions on emotions rather than logic. 

This can be seen in what’s known as the Prospect Theory developed by two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. They found that people take greater risks to avoid losses than they do to earn profits because the pain of losing is greater than the joy of winning. That’s why people hang onto stocks and other investments (including people) when they should have let go of them long ago.  

Oh, and the answers to the CRT? 

1. Five cents, not ten cents.

2. 5 minutes, not 100 minutes.

3. 47 days not 24 days.

Read the original study here. 

Can’t we just get this change over with?

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People often ask whether there isn't some way to speed up transition, to get it over sooner; when they do, they are usually thinking of the time in the neutral zone when very little seems to be happening. As does any unfolding natural process, the neutral zone takes its own sweet time. "Speeding things up,' hitting the fast forward button, is a tempting idea, but that only stirs things up in ways that disrupt the natural formative processes that are going on. Far from bringing you out of the neurtral zone sooner, such tactics usually set you back and force you to start over again. Frustrating through it is, the best advice is to opt for the turtle and forget the hare.

At the same time, do keep moving. Because the opposite temptation - to try to undo the changes and put things back the way they were before the transition started - is equally misguided. That undoubtedly was an easier time than this nonplace you occupy now! But your life lacks a replay button. The transition that brought you to this place cannot be undone. Even putting things back "the way they were" is a misnomer, because back then, you hadn't had the experience of being plunged into transition. And that experience won't go away.

William Bridges, Transitions

The Power of Setting Goals

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Can you imagine Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest, explaining how he was able to accomplish that feat? Suppose he explained he was just out walking around on a day when he happened to find himself at the top of the tallest mountain in the world. Or the Chairman of the Board of General Motors explaining that he got his position because he just kept showing up for work and they just kept promoting him until one day he was Chairman of the Board. Ridiculous – of course – but no more ridiculous than your thinking you can accomplish anything significant without specific goals. 

Zig Ziglar, See You at the Top