November 19, 2019

Briefly

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  • ‘For example, the tweet “I saw him yesterday” is scored as 6 per cent toxic, but it suddenly skyrockets to 95 per cent for the comment “I saw his ass yesterday”.‘  The Register, talking about a paper from the University of Washington
  • “Long-awaited cystic fibrosis drug could turn deadly disease into a manageable condition”. From the Washington Post. However, this drug will be priced at about NZ$485,000 for one year.  At that price, treating 500 people would cost about as much as Pharmac’s top six drugs, or as much as Pharmac currently spends on all cancer drugs. So let’s hope Pharmac can get a good deal.
  • Janelle Shane, optical physicist and AI humorist, has written a book about AI. The title is one of a set of machine-generated pickup lines. “You Look Like a Thing and I Love You”
  • “The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users….we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.” The interesting part of this quote is the source: Page L, Brin S (1998) “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine” (via Slate Money)
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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »