Fri, 22 August 2014
Our topic for this week is "noise" as in signal vs. noise. This is not a signal processing discussions, but rather a brief introduction to how the work noise is used to describe how much information in a dataset is useless (as opposed to useful). Also, Kyle announces having recently had the pleasure of appearing as a guest on The Conspiracy Skeptic Podcast to discussion The Bible Code. Please check out this other fine program for this and it's many other great episodes. |
Fri, 15 August 2014
Our guest this week is Susan Gerbic. Susan is a skeptical activist involved in many activities, the one we focus on most in this episode is Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia, an organization working to improve the content and citations of Wikipedia.
Direct download: Guerilla_Skepticism_on_Wikipedia_with_Susan_Gerbic.mp3
Category:wikipedia -- posted at: 6:00am PDT |
Fri, 8 August 2014
In this week's mini episode, Linhda and Kyle discuss Ant Colony Optimization - a numerical / stochastic optimization technique which models its search after the process ants employ in using random walks to find a goal (food) and then leaving a pheremone trail in their walk back to the nest. We even find some way of relating the city of San Francisco and running a restaurant into the discussion. |
Fri, 1 August 2014
Our guest this week is Shahid Shah. Shahid is CEO at Netspective, and writes three blogs: Health Care Guy, Shahid Shah, and HitSphere - the Healthcare IT Supersite.
Direct download: Data_in_Healthcare_IT_with_Shahid_Shah.mp3
Category:medicine -- posted at: 6:00am PDT |
Fri, 25 July 2014
This miniepisode discusses the technique called Cross Validation - a process by which one randomly divides up a dataset into numerous small partitions. Next, (typically) one is held out, and the rest are used to train some model. The hold out set can then be used to validate how good the model does at describing/predicting new data. |
Fri, 18 July 2014
This episode features a discussion with statistics PhD student Zach Seeskin about a project he was involved in as part of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship. The project involved exploring the relationship (if any) between streetlight outages and crime in the City of Chicago. We discuss how the data was accessed via the City of Chicago data portal, how the analysis was done, and what correlations were discovered in the data. Won't you listen and hear what was found?
Direct download: Streetlight_Outage_and_Crime_Rate_Analysis_with_Zach_Seeskin.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am PDT |
Fri, 11 July 2014
This episode loosely explores the topic of Experimental Design including hypothesis testing, the importance of statistical tests, and an everyday and business example. |
Mon, 7 July 2014
In this week's episode, we discuss applied solutions to big data problem with big data engineer Jay Shankar. The episode explores approaches and design philosophy to solving real world big data business problems, and the exploration of the wide array of tools available.
Direct download: Data_Skeptic_Podcast_-_Big_Data_Tools.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am PDT |
Fri, 27 June 2014
In this minisode, we discuss Bayesian Updating - the process by which one can calculate the most likely hypothesis might be true given one's older / prior belief and all new evidence. |
Fri, 20 June 2014
In the second full length episode of the podcast, we discuss the current state of personalized medicine and the advancements in genetics that have made it possible.
Direct download: Data_Skeptic_Podcast_ep_004_-_Personalized_Medicine_with_Niki_Athanasiadou.mp3
Category:medicine -- posted at: 6:00am PDT |