Next year – suddenly out of nowhere – we’ll have a slew of new political prediction models all of them claiming to have been able to predict the Rise of Donald Trump, the Sanders Movement and even the recent exit of Britain from the European Union. Of course, all of them will be after the fact which has always been an easier thing to accomplish – and in the next cycle we’ll throw them all out and go back to the standard models that assume that most people will vote the way that they’re expected to vote under normal circumstances.

We’re talking about some major models breaking down in the face of unexpected changes using standard [...]

If you’ve been in the data or computational science field as a researcher or a professional in the last few years, you’ve probably come across someone talking about machine learning. You’ve probably come across an employer or a potential collaborator who was so excited about the potential of “machine learning” that they somehow managed to spit on you in their (pleasantly) ignorant but very cute excitement about the subject. (For those with a spitting problem, you should check out this piece about chronic spitting problems from 2005).

Of course, where hype and ignorance goes so does a fringe academic industry in hopes of capitalizing misunderstood [...]

Let’s talk some politics today – it is the weekend after all and none of you have anything better to do. Come on. Admit it!!

At one of Bernie Sander’s campaign speeches on Friday, the most adorable little sparrow landed on his podium and just stayed there for about half a minute or so. Social media went insane with praise and talk about symbolism, especially on Twitter under the hashtag #BirdieSanders – a little word play on his name. The most interesting thing for me was his reaction. He just stood there looking at it. I think he was trying not to disturb it, or maybe he was trying to think of a good joke or pun to say but couldn’t come up with [...]

Recently, I’ve been having conversations about the teaching, or lack of a social network analysis course in business schools both in the graduate and undergraduate levels. I really don’t think enough is being done or that there is an active effort to bring about this powerful science to the hands of future business executives, managers, and professionals.

First of all a simple search on indeed.com for the keywords social network analysis reveals several thousand jobs available in a variety of areas. It’s true that the job set is very diverse covering everything from intelligence analysis to marketing, and it’s true that most job are not solely focused [...]

Trumpertantrum (noun, adjective, pronoun, and whatever else you want it to be): (Definition) Throwing a fit so loud and so noisy, so violent, and unexpected, so unreasonable that it resembles the origin of the word itself. Donald Drumpf…oops..sorry, I meant Donald Trump.

You’ve seen the news. The short version of it is that for quite some time now every candidate has had protesters from the other side (Democrat/Republican) come to many of their events. They protest, sometimes a few insults are thrown here and there, and everyone then goes home feeling good about themselves and more convinced that they’re righteous. Ahhhh!!! Amu’rikaaahhh!

The [...]

You’ve seen them on your Facebook timeline. It’s that guy or girl who is constantly taking selfies and changing their profile picture, as if they’re God’s gift to Mankind and need to remind us of that absolute truth. They’re ****ing annoying, unless you’re just like them and you subscribe to it as well. It’s one of those things that just irks and it happens so often that we ignore it – is it Narcissism.

Lately however, I’ve been seeing it all happen much more frequently, and sometimes from people who don’t come off as narcissistic or socially un-endowed so it made me wonder. IS there some kind of relationship between [...]