Category: Research

Posted on

rePost::Analytics X Prize – Home

must file in the maybe part of my to do list!!!!

Welcome to the Analytics X Prize
The Analytics X Prize is an ongoing contest to apply analytics, modeling, and statistics to solve the social problems that affect our cities. It combines the fields of statistics, mathematics, and social science to understand the root causes of dysfunction in our neighborhoods. Understanding these relationships and discovering the most highly correlated variables allows us to deploy our limited resources more effectively and target the variables that will have the greatest positive impact on improvement.
Current Contest – 2010 – Predicting Homicides in Philadelphia
Philadelphia is a city with 5.8 million people spread out over 47 zip codes and, like any major city, it has its share of crime. The goal of the Analytics X Prize is to use statistical techniques and any data sets you can find to predict where crime, specifically homicides, will occur in the city. The ability to accurately predict where crime is likely to occur allows us to deploy our limited city resources more effectively. Full rules can be found on the Rules & FAQ page.
via Analytics X Prize – Home.

Posted on

rePost:: How to brag

Do I brag a lot? I hope not. Nice read!! from MR!
I think save for the obvious name/school/gadget dropping we are largely ignorant of the times we brag about stuff. This presents us a problem when trying to control our bad habit. I suggest that the cliche advice thinking before speaking is one of the most useful advice that we could employ against bragging.

How to brag
No one likes a show-off. But to get ahead in this world, you're going to need to let at least some people know what you're capable of. Thankfully Nurit Tal-Or has arrived with a pair of studies that offer some insight into how to brag without coming across as big-headed.
….
The crux of it: context is everything when it comes to boasting. If Avi’s friend raised the topic of the exams, Avi received favourable ratings in terms of his boastfulness and likeability, regardless of whether he was actually asked what grade he got. By contrast, if Avi raised the topic of the exams, but failed to provoke a question, then his likeability suffered and he was seen as more of a boaster. In other words, to pull off a successful boast, you need it to be appropriate to the conversation. If your friend, colleague, or date raises the topic, you can go ahead and pull a relevant boast in safety. Alternatively, if you’re forced to turn the conversation onto the required topic then you must succeed in provoking a question from your conversation partner. If there’s no question and you raised the topic then any boast you make will leave you looking like a big-head.
via BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: How to brag.

Posted on

rePost::Does watching TV really kill you? : Cognitive Daily

If we are really concerned with the supposed population problem I believe giving TV’s to the poor would be a great bargain. First they’d have something more to do rather than sex and it increases the risk of death!!!! Of course I’m joking.

The graph plots mortality rate (per 1000 person-years) against TV viewing-time. The population averaged about 50 years of age, so over 6 or 7 years, you would certainly expect some of them to die, and that’s what you see. The error bars here are 95 percent confidence intervals, which means that plot points are significantly different when they overlap by up to about half the length of the error bars. That means it’s quite clear that people who said they watched four or more hours of TV per day were significantly more likely to die than people who watched no TV. Even when the numbers were adjusted for exercise, age, and waist circumference, TV-watchers were significantly more likely to die during this period than non-TV-watchers (though the relationship was now not quite as strong). Indeed, after these adjustments, there were significant differences in risk of death between the groups who watched 0 to under 2 hours, 2 to under 4 hours, and 4 or more hours of TV per day.
via Does watching TV really kill you? : Cognitive Daily.

Posted on

rePost::Why I Love Scientists – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com

2. When Amy Wagers surgically joined a young mouse and an old mouse so that their bloodstreams became shared, healing to muscle damage in the old mouse occurred much faster than it did in other old mice. Something in the young mouse’s blood helped repair the old mouse’s tissues. If that “something” can be isolated, who knows how many different uses it might have.
My prediction: the first humans to get their hands on that “something” will be professional bike racers.
via Why I Love Scientists – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com.

I’ll gladly join an experiment for this if that someon you will be joined with was hot. hehehe.

Posted on

rePost::The Rich *Are* Different | Angry Bear

This is an intersting read. What could this bracket be for the Philippines?? Can we even make a similar graph from data BIR has? NSO ?
Sometimes wish a day has 2400 hours.(not too often)

That said, there is an interesting qualitative change in the structure of income that starts to happen around this cutoff for the “rich” which actually suggests that taxpayers above that threshold are rich in most important ways. The most recent (2007) tax stats from the IRS now reflect the peak of the late bubble and show that the $100K-$200K AGI bucket is the last one that more-or-less resembles middle-income categories in their dependence on labor as the all-but exclusive source of income. (Think of pensions and proceeds of retirement accounts as representing deferred wages or salaries.) This graph shows the shares of AGI from some major income sources, and the average incomes for various brackets. (*)
Sources of Individual Income, 2007 SOI Tax Stats
(May be embiggened by clicking here.)
Starting with the $200-500K category, the share of earnings from labor begins a marked decline. By the time you hit mid-six figures, average earnings from income, dividends, and capital gains become high enough to provide middle-class or better incomes without (necessarily) working. Tax returns in the upper-six-figure bucket, on average, show more income from other sources collectively than from salaries, and at the top of the income scale even interest and dividend income exceeds wages and salaries. (**) I suggest that if you can provide yourself with a better-than-average living without working, a very rare luxury indeed, you are in fact rich.
(Revised and slightly expanded.)
via The Rich *Are* Different | Angry Bear.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted on

rePost::When Situations Not Personality Dictate Our Behaviour | PsyBlog

If people are not doing the right things; If people are less kind than what we know they can be; If people are more selfish or self-centered that what we believe they should be; Maybe what’s wrong is that we are not letting them have the opportunity , the situations to show the good they can do. Whenever I fall in the trap of thinking myself as good and decent I step back and tell myself; How lucky I am that I have the opportunity to be good, to be decent. This is because I haven’t faced something that was big enough to push me to the limit. This keeps me huble.

In a hurry, can’t stop
Here’s what happened. On average just 40% of the seminary students offered help (with a few stepping over the apparently injured man) but crucially the amount of hurry they were in had a large influence on behaviour. Here is the percentage of participants who offered help by condition:
* Low hurry: 63%
* Medium hurry: 45%
* High hurry: 10%
The type of talk they were giving also had an effect on whether they offered help. Of those asked to talk about careers for seminarians, just 29% offered help, while of those asked to talk about the parable of the Good Samaritan, fully 53% gave assistance.
What these figures show is the large effect that subtle aspects of the situation have on the way people behave. Recall that the experimenters also measured personality variables, specifically the 'religiosity' of the seminarians. When the effect of personality was compared with situation, i.e. how much of a hurry they happened to be in or whether they were thinking about a relevant parable, the effect of religiosity was almost insignificant. In this context, then, situation is easily trumping personality.
via When Situations Not Personality Dictate Our Behaviour | PsyBlog.

Posted on

rePost::How Other People’s Unspoken Expectations Control Us | PsyBlog

When independent observers listened to the tapes of the conversation they found that when women were talking to men who thought they were very attractive, the women exhibited more of the behaviours stereotypically associated with attractive people: they talked more animatedly and seemed to be enjoying the chat more. What was happening was that the women conformed to the stereotype the men projected on them. So people really do sense how they are viewed by others and change their behaviour to match this expectation.
Now this experiment just happened to be carried out by manipulating the stereotype of attractiveness but the same rule applies to many different areas of life. Think of any of the standard stereotypes about class, race and nationality. Each of these create expectations in other people's minds, expectations that are difficult for us to avoid playing up to.
via How Other People’s Unspoken Expectations Control Us | PsyBlog.

This is powerful because it shows another mechanism in which people who think negatively or suspiciously of somebody/something affects how that someone acta/reacts towards them.  Does this mean I need to expect people would be kind and giving towards me? I don’t know , maybe. Read the whole thing to see how they setup the experiment.

Posted on

rePost::Free Will and Ethics : The Frontal Cortex

At the very least, free will is a useful illusion, leading us to be more prosocial and ethical. Because even if we are just “a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules,” we’re a vast assembly that feels like so much more. William James, as usual, said it best: “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”
via Free Will and Ethics : The Frontal Cortex.

The quoted blog post links to three studies on free will that is very interesting and you would do well to read (at least the original blog post and if that wasn’t enough for you the linked studies.) I generally believe in living rationally and the importance of truth in everything, but if for some people the truth is a little too hard, maybe for some delusion would be okay!!!!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted on

rePost::Super Strength Substance (Myostatin) One Step Closer to Human Trials | Singularity Hub

As with all animals we’ve seen with myostatin inhibition, the monkeys at NCH enjoyed some serious boosts in strength. The macaques exhibited enhanced muscle growth for 12 weeks after treatment, beyond which muscle mass stabilized. The average circumference of the animals quadriceps increased by 15%. Using electric stimulation (you can’t order a monkey to lift weights) scientists were able to observe profound increases in leg strength. One specimen demonstrated a 78% increase over control results.
The next step for NCH is toxicology and biodistribution tests as outlined by the FDA. After that, further rounds of testing will be necessary before human clinical trials can begin. Still, considering the lack of negative side effects, and the profound need from the Muscular Dystrophy community, one hopes that those trials will begin in the next few years. If ultimately successful, follistatin gene therapy could treat the symptoms of MD while different genetic therapies could affect the causes of some forms of MD. And let’s not forget the weight-lifting 800 pound gorilla in the room. Along with MD treatments, and therapies for muscle loss in old age, the defeat of myostatin could lead to an effective way for all of us to get fit fast. No workouts necessary, eat almost all you want, and have a body like Adonis. This research is taking us one step closer to that goal…but it still sounds too good to be true. We can’t all be Superman, can we?
via Super Strength Substance (Myostatin) One Step Closer to Human Trials | Singularity Hub.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted on

ROTD::The downside of beauty : Gene Expression

And yet as you can see above, strong male preference for these fecund females reduces their fitness. Male persistence from what I can tell might be colloquially termed “harassment.” The energetic surfeit which larger females might allocate to their own reproductive output for provisioning has to be expended upon fending off males. In a context where males strongly prefer large females their fitness advantage is actually mitigated! This is a really weird outcome of sexual preferences.
….
I’m left a little confused by this sort of paper. Evolution is in its ultimate basis is a matter of logic, but when it comes to the byzantine dance between sexual, environmental and social selection, the balance between physiological and reproductive fitness, one can be left like a dog chasing one’s own tail logic takes nature by its horns and drives to inevitable conclusions. I assume that’s why experiments and field research are a necessary complement to analysis from first priniciples. The authors are cautious about their results:
via The downside of beauty : Gene Expression.