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The Gradual Public Awareness of the Might of Algorithms
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Sep 23, 2007 12:27 PM
from the interlocking-gears dept.
from the interlocking-gears dept.
Soylent Mauve writes "The trend toward data- and algorithm-driven tuning of business operations has gotten a lot of attention recently — check out the recent articles in the New York Times and the Economist. It looks like computer scientists, especially those with machine learning training, are getting their day in the sun. From the NYT piece: 'It was the Internet that stripped the word of its innocence. Algorithms, as closely guarded as state secrets, buy and sell stocks and mortgage-backed securities, sometimes with a dispassionate zeal that crashes markets. Algorithms promise to find the news that fits you, and even your perfect mate. You can't visit Amazon without being confronted with a list of books and other products that the Great Algoritmi recommends. Its intuitions, of course, are just calculations -- given enough time they could be carried out with stones. But when so much data is processed so rapidly, the effect is oracular and almost opaque.'"
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Oracular, opaque... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Oracular, opaque... (Score:5, Funny)
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Hell, I've got every volume, I've been referring to them for years, and I still haven't read much. All I know is that without his books I'd have been stuffed on a number of occasions
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No, I think you were right the first time. (Score:3, Interesting)
As you've demonstrated, the "oracular" part is badly mistaken.
Amazon almost NEVER guesses something I'd buy.
If I buy a new DVD, I am instantly bombarded with ads for EVERY new DVD. I buy the new Terry Pratchett book and I'm bombarded with EVERY book by him or co-authored by him or licensed by him or whatever. I don't want derivatives.
I picked up the "V" comic book (graphic novel) and now I'm bombarded with every comic bo
Re:No, I think you were right the first time. (Score:5, Informative)
My favorite is getting Amazon recommendations for books I've already bought... through Amazon.
I often find myself saying "Ah, yes, I just bought the hardcover version of that book last year, now I should go out and get the paperback, the second edition with a few minor spelling corrections, etc, etc."
Or something.
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Could be worse... (Score:3, Funny)
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No. You can always trust the answer a computer gives you to be correct.
Its the input data [wikipedia.org] that I'm worried about.
Re:Oracular, opaque... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't apply your intuition concerning human beings to other intelligent systems. A true AI may or may not decide it doesn't need us, depending on how it's programmed.
You ignore the fact that stand-alone sentience has little to do with our evolution-dictated habits (e.g. getting rid of competing group/species/whatever). You assume that all the evolution-dictated behaviour and thinking patterns embedded in human brain will somehow automagically manifest themselves in a true strong-AI machine, a view with which I disagree.
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Slightly O.T. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Slightly O.T. (Score:4, Funny)
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Layne
Said one computer scientist (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm melting, I'm melting!"
This Just In (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Insightful)
While that may be obvious for slashdot readers, it's news to the general public. I remember an endless number of conversations, even as recent as a few years ago, in which people would ask "Can you do anything with that degree other than teach?" upon learning that I was a mathematician. I think it's great that the public is starting to realize that math makes the world go around. God forbid, the gradual public awareness of the power of math might even lead to kids wanting to pay attention in class. While there are drawbacks to this (e.g., the deluge of college kids taking business-oriented mathematics programs with the expectation of a six-figure salary once they graduate), I'm generally happy to see math and computer science get their days in the sun.
GMD
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there American, fixed it for you.
This is an American site, you silly little British girlie - man.
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Maths are a really really powerful tool.
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Oh, and this is an American site. You're wrong in the first place.
Boy They're Slow (Score:4, Insightful)
Is management starting to wonder (again) whether a computer can really do a better job making the important decisions? But can it yet? There is so much data that needs to be acquired in order to return a meaningful answer.
Some of the most powerful organizations are probably making deals to combine as many databases as possible. Interesting to see (if they would let us see) if that will give them the answers they're looking for. As data acquisition becomes more accurate and less expensive, there will be less privacy but more creative computer output, a trade-off in the value of personal information leading to the possible marginalization of humanity.
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If they're foolish, sure they hope computers can make better decisions. If they aren't complete fools they realize that computers can provide analytical support for decisions. For example, algorithms can evaluate more potential alternatives, generate potentially good alternatives that
The joy of algorithms (Score:5, Interesting)
But seriously, a food recipe is an algorithm for all general purposes. All these people are saying is that the machine learning algorithms and match peoples' personalities and buy stock are too complicated for the average Joe Programmer Wannabe and look more or less like a black box. (which if they employ neural networks, instead of say SVN, they are actually black boxes even for the author who wrote it...).
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Machine learning is supposed to *look* like magic. It's supposed to behave like a black box with just one or two knobs on it. When -- and this is unfortunatley almost always -- it doesn't, then it's not the machine learing doing the work, it's the programmer. In this case I can forgive Joe Wannabe for tearing his hair
Heuristics are not the same as algorithms (Score:3, Insightful)
Sheesh! Someone needs to spend some time with a dictionary.
If only we could have a gradual (or sudden) awareness of the power of heuristics and modeling ...
Heuristics ARE algorithms (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Heuristics ARE algorithms (Score:4, Insightful)
P: "Heuristics ARE algorithms"
Both of these statements can be true. (Depending on the exact meaning of the GP.) For instance:
Humans are not the same as animals.
Humans are animals.
A more exact statement than either is that heuristics are a subset of algorithms, as humans are a subset of animals.
Parent
Re:Heuristics ARE algorithms (Score:5, Interesting)
That's an elegant metaphor, but someone has misled you.
An algorithm is a precise specification of a process whose outcome is defined by the initial conditions. To cite your example, quicksort is an algorithm -- the outcome of the sorting process is well defined, given the inputs.
But typical implementations of quicksort use a heuristic to choose the pivot element -- median of three, media of five, middle element, etc. These are heuristics because their goal is to choose the median value, but they can't make any guarantee that it will find the median. They can't even guarantee that they will find a good value. In fact, they generally don't even consider all of their inputs! They could choose bad values every time... but on average they don't, and quicksort is fast.
Another way of looking at it is that if an algorithm is correct, it will produce a correct answer for all valid inputs. A heuristic might produce incorrect answers for valid inputs, but it's correct often enough so that it might still be worth using -- especially if a correct algorithm is not known.
You may point out that randomized algorithms have a similar property -- but the difference is that with randomized algorithms the probability of error can be made arbitrarily small. With heuristics, there's no telling.
Parent
Heuristics are, indeed, algorithms. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a graduate student in CS right now. One of the things I'm researching is stochastic approximation heuristics. Without any argument, these are algorithms. They have to be algorithms, or else the Church-Turing Thesis doesn't apply and we wouldn't be able to have computers do them at all.
An algorithm is, broadly speaking, a terminating sequence of deterministic steps that effectively derives outputs from provided inputs. But don't believe me--after all, I'm just a random guy on Slashdot. But maybe Co
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PLAIN SILLINESS (Score:2)
This is just silly. Someone is not comparing apples to oranges, but calling apples oranges. That does not make them so.
The Importance of a CS Degree (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're still entrenched in the thought that a CS degree "isn't needed for what I do," then let me propose a somewhat common problem. Suppose your client wants the built in reporting in your web application to minimize the amount of noise introduced by users who forget their password and create a new account rather than resetting it. It's up to you to write code to detect these duplicate accounts. How do you begin doing this beyond simple string comparisons?
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Ahh, but experience matters too..
Bingo (Score:2)
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It seems like since CS covers such a broad range of stuff universities are constantly trying to remove material in order to make the degree easier to obtain. If they arent dumbing down the architecture component of the degree they are removing theory, design, or something else that is perceived as being difficult. I
Re:The Importance of a CS Degree (Score:4, Insightful)
It is also useful to realize that just because one can does not mean that one should, especially when the cost of an error is high. There is a tendency, sometimes, among the computer scientists towards too much cleverness, particularly in algorithms, when something much simpler and more reliable would have been better. I cannot tell you how many times bad assumptions about automated processes and the algorithms which control them have lead to inappropriate behavior and blown user expectations under the worst possible conditions. The real world is not the same as the CS labs in your algorithms course and the simpler solution often has much to recommend itself over the efficient and elegant, but hopelessly complex and slightly unreliable algorithm that one learns in the AI courses during their university CS education.
For example, suppose that your online banking application assumes that you really do want that regular payment upon receipt to go through automatically, because that is how it has happened before, when in fact you, the user, know that a one time payment for an unrelated expense, which has not yet been posted but will be shortly, must be made first. The automated agent makes the deduction for the regular payment automatically while the one time payment, which goes through several days later, is unexpected and overdraws the account. The user curses the system for being too "clever" instead of just carrying out his instructions. Cancel or allow?
Parent
I was surprised when I found out (Score:2)
Mainstream Media (Score:2)
An underclass? (Score:2, Interesting)
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)
just how close are we to having this statement be 'real' to a large majority of people on this planet? discounting any second or third world countries, how many people in first world countries would consider the 'oracular' nature of an algorithm to be 'magical'?
the education system spread throughout the world is creating an over and under soci
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Software Patent Propaganda. (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't get caught up in the hype here. Algorithms are nothing special on their own. These articles are trying to make them look important, like inventions or physical objects, to further pump up the notion of software patents. It's not algorithms that are evil in GWB's great internet filters, it's the machinery that's been built on top of an otherwise dumb network and free internet that's evil.
Without algorithms, there can be no computing but there's nothing really special about any one in particular. Algorithms are just instructions, and there are many ways of achieving the same result. Algorithms can stand alone or be combined into programs that do things users want. The net result is just another set of instructions that can be considered a larger algorithm. Without modern computing equipment, most of these instructions are useless. Like the article say, "try doing this at home." No problem, if you have a computer but a real pain if you only have pen and paper. Medical imaging devices take advantage of mathematics that was little more than a curiosity when it was first published in 1917. The inventors of the device reinvented the math without knowing it some forty years later but it was not until the 1980s that the devices became practical due to the lower cost of computing.
This article is pumping up the value and utility of business methods. Common sense is a valuable thing, but it's not always an invention and business methods never are.
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Re:Software Patent Propaganda. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is especially important in resource-hungry applications, scientific calculation or on systems with constrained resources such as embedded systems.
Saying there's nothing special about any algorithm is simply dumb.
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Re:Looks like (Score:4, Funny)
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