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Roger Chen

Should You Invest in the Long Tail? - 0 views

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    Anita Elberse, a Harvard Business School associate professor, has a really interesting article in the new Harvard Business Review that analyzes some Long Tail data and challenges some of the theory's predictions.
Roger Chen

Why the cloud cannot obscure the scientific method - 0 views

  • Overall, the foundation of the argument for a replacement for science is correct: the data cloud is changing science, and leaving us in many cases with a Google-level understanding of the connections between things. Where Anderson stumbles is in his conclusions about what this means for science. The fact is that we couldn't have even reached this Google-level understanding without the models and mechanisms that he suggests are doomed to irrelevance.
  • Anderson appears to take the position that the new research part of the equation has become superfluous; simply having a good algorithm that recognizes the correlation is enough.
  • Correlations are a way of catching a scientist's attention, but the models and mechanisms that explain them are how we make the predictions that not only advance science, but generate practical applications.
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  • without the testable predictions made by the theory, we'll never be able to tell how precisely it is wrong
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    This article is a response to Chris Anerson's article "The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete" - http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory
Roger Chen

The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete - 0 views

  • Sixty years ago, digital computers made information readable. Twenty years ago, the Internet made it reachable. Ten years ago, the first search engine crawlers made it a single database.
  • Google's founding philosophy is that we don't know why this page is better than that one: If the statistics of incoming links say it is, that's good enough.
  • The scientific method is built around testable hypotheses. These models, for the most part, are systems visualized in the minds of scientists. The models are then tested, and experiments confirm or falsify theoretical models of how the world works. This is the way science has worked for hundreds of years.
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  • Peter Norvig, Google's research director, offered an update to George Box's maxim: "All models are wrong, and increasingly you can succeed without them."
  • Once you have a model, you can connect the data sets with confidence. Data without a model is just noise.
    • Roger Chen
       
      That's what Chris Anderson thought is old-school.
  • But faced with massive data, this approach to science — hypothesize, model, test — is becoming obsolete.
    • Roger Chen
       
      Come to conclusion? I don't think so.
  • There is now a better way. Petabytes allow us to say: "Correlation is enough." We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.
  • What can science learn from Google?
  • This kind of thinking is poised to go mainstream.
    • Roger Chen
       
      ???
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    "All models are wrong, and increasing you can succeed without them."
Roger Chen

spy - 0 views

Roger Chen

The Long Tail: Excellent HBR piece challenging the Long Tail - 0 views

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    Anita Elberse, a Harvard Business School associate professor, has a really interesting article in the new Harvard Business Review that analyzes some Long Tail data and challenges some of the theory's predictions.
Roger Chen

2collab Survey Reveals that Scientists and Researchers are "All Business" with Social A... - 0 views

  • scientists are using blogs, wikis, and social networking and bookmarking applications primarily for professional reasons. Results show that these social media applications have provided scientists and researchers with additional resources to help them collaborate, connect, share and discover information.
  • Over 50% of respondents see web-based social applications playing a key role in shaping the future of research. The largest influence will be on critical analysis and evaluation of research data, professional networking and collaboration, dissemination of research output, career development, as well as grant application and funding.
  • Comments from survey respondents identified several issues need to be addressed before mass acceptance by the research community is possible – namely the need for specialist tools, higher security, and validation of users. However, these concerns were not seen as insurmountable obstacles, and many anticipated tremendous potential for social media.
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    2collab, the research collaboration platform from Elsevier, the world's leading publisher of science, technology and medical (STM) information, announced today the results of a survey, asking researchers about the role of social media in their professional lives. The survey, which yielded over 1,800 responses, revealed that scientists are using blogs, wikis, and social networking and bookmarking applications primarily for professional reasons. Results show that these social media applications have provided scientists and researchers with additional resources to help them collaborate, connect, share and discover information.
Roger Chen

Key difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 - 0 views

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    Web 2.0 is a buzzword introduced in 2003-04 which is commonly used to encompass various novel phenomena on the World Wide Web. Although largely a marketing term, some of the key attributes associated with Web 2.0 include the growth of social networks, bi-directional communication, various 'glue' technologies, and significant diversity in content types. We are not aware of a technical comparison between Web 1.0 and 2.0. While most of Web 2.0 runs on the same substrate as 1.0, there are some key differences. We capture those differences and their implications for technical work in this paper. Our goal is to identify the primary differences leading to the properties of interest in 2.0 to be characterized. We identify novel challenges due to the different structures of Web 2.0 sites, richer methods of user interaction, new technologies, and fundamentally different philosophy. Although a significant amount of past work can be reapplied, some critical thinking is needed for the networking community to analyze the challenges of this new and rapidly evolving environment.
Roger Chen

Scimago Journal & Country Rank - 0 views

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    The SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.). These indicators could be used to assess and analyze scientific domains.
Roger Chen

科技日报- 中科院院士王鼎盛抨击影响因子崇拜 - 0 views

  • 根据SCI数据,王鼎盛分析全世界200多种发表研究论文的物理期刊时发现,期刊总的引用=1.5×论文数量×影响因子×半衰期(寿命)。
  • 因此即使以总的引用作为期刊影响力的衡量标准,期刊寿命也与影响因子有同等重要的地位。然而,期刊寿命常常会被忽视。王鼎盛认为,搞科学的人应该更看重期刊的寿命。
  • 国人对研究论文评价时的期刊崇拜,和对评价期刊时的影响因子崇拜,不但有碍我国物理期刊的提高,而且助长了科研中的浮躁情绪。中国物理界更该提倡追求影响的持续年限,并进而追求经典。
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