Don’t Trust Your Gut Alone

Please see my new article in The Times of Israel called, “The Snake That Appeals To Your Gut.”

The truth is, following one’s gut feelings alone is a way to avoid confronting or dealing with real data about what’s going on. While it’s true that information can be tough to get as well as to interpret, we certainly have to look not only at people’s words, but also at their deeds. We have to see them over an extended period of time, so we see whether there is consistency and if their integrity holds up under different situations and stressors.

We have hearts and minds and we need to make sure we are using both in making important decisions. Otherwise, see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil—and what do you think you are precisely going to get?

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Information Is Power

Just wanted to share something I heard and liked about data and information:

“Everything is a record, record, record
in a table, table, table.”

Can everything in life really be reduced to lines of records, with fields of data in tables of information?

This is the information age!

Analytics and Big Data rule!

Knowledge is power!

In any conflict, we seek information dominance and supremacy!

Artificial intelligence is the future!

Records are unique with their own sys.id.

Creativity and innovation are also records in the table–even if they are the one in a million. 

The more records and tables–the more dots and connections between them–the more intelligence we can glean. 

Yes, everything is a record, record, record in a table, table, table. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

A Mountain Of Data

So I heard this interesting perspective on information and data analytics…

Basically, it comes down to this: 

“Most organizations are data rich, but information/insight poor.”

Or put another way:

“Data is collected, but not used.”

Hence we don’t know what we don’t know and we end up making bad decisions based on poor information. 

Just imagine if we could actually make sense of all the data points, connect them, visualize them, and get good information from them.

How much better than a pile of rocks is that? 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Twitter BESTS Facebook

Here are six reasons why Twitter bests Facebook and we ain’t seen nothing yet:

– Unadulterated News & Messaging 

Twitter is where you can hear it from the President’s mouth or the Kardashians or anyone else for that matter with no media bias and filtering (their very mission is information sharing), while Facebook is often about reposting stories, pictures, and videos that we find of interest already on the web. What’s even more amazing is that anyone of us can tweet back to @realDonaldTrump or @SpeakerRyan…that is some unbelievable access we now have. 

– Speed of Information To Market

Twitter is now considered the fastest way to get the latest (and greatest) on what’s happening.  From the US Airways jet crash into the Hudson River to up-to-the-minute updates on the Mumbai terrorist attack. You could even watch the election debates or the Walking Dead and get a real-time running commentary. 

– Our Very Social Identity

Twitter is now part of our very social identity, so that everything from our blog writings to our resume has our Twitter handle. Mine is @AndyBlumenthal.  

– It’s Populism As A Movement

Twitter, while not technically as popular in terms of number of users as Facebook, is more popular in terms of the cultural impact. Politicians are putting out policy debates online and fighting it out there too, while celebrities and athletes are sharing personal updates, and the world is truly communicating directly and succinctly in 140 characters or less what’s really important to them. 

– Operating On A Global Open Platform 

Twitter feeds are open to anyone who follows them and tweets are searchable on the web as opposed to Facebook which is predominantly a closed system to the web and you’ve got to be “friends” to get the real scoop with someone. Whether the Iranian Green Revolution or the Syrians Being Bombarded in Aleppo it’s open and on Twitter. 

– Get Your BIG Data and Feed Your Artificial Intelligence

Twitter has about 500 million tweets a day or about 200 billion a year.  Even pulling out the ridiculous “What I had for lunch today” tweets, there is still an unbelievable amount of data to mine for analysis and artificial intelligence. Talking about a potential treasure trove of information and sentiment from over 317 million users, and computer algorithms are already churning through it to make the big data intelligible and usable for decision making. 

Certainly Twitter (and Facebook) need to get their virtual arms around fake news and profiles, but the good thing about it is that others can call b.s. as soon as they see it in 140 characters or less. 😉

(Note: I am so impressed with Twitter’s prospects, I am putting my own money where my mouth is.)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Make Up Your Mind

It all started with the Staples “Easy” button that says robotically when pressed, “That was easy!” 

Then came the “B.S.” button that yells out, “That was bullsh*t!”

Now we have the decision and indecisional buttons for “Sorry,” “Yes,” “Maybe,” and “No.”

Very much like organizational decision-making and politics where either we can’t make up our minds, hedge our bets because we simply don’t know, or make decisions on imperfect knowledge or with plenty of biases.

It’s funny-sad how instead of decisions and progress, some people lie and pretend that what they are saying has any reality or basis to it despite proof to the compelte opposite. 

For example, over and over again, we hear some politicians say there is no military solution in Syria, yet Russia has proved that completely false turning the tides of the war in Assad’s favor and driving back the U.S.-backed rebels and recapturing dozens of towns and cities.

You can probably think of plenty more examples as this is the germy spin that we all must swim and navigate in. 

If only, we could just press a “truth” button to get past all the garbage thrown at us then maybe we could get down to business and really get something done. 😉

(Source Photo: Dannielle Blumenthal)

Big Data, Small Moments

There is a definite rhythm to our lives. 

And by analyzing the peak times of Google search terms, we can get a good picture of what it is (as Seth Stephens-Davidowitz notes in the New York Times Sunday Review).

– From starting a new day to taking care of bathroom business, looking for healing, and even goofing off. 

– Midday is some personal time for shopping, travel plans, and a news update. 

– The evening is a nice dinner and maybe some sexual intimacy.

– The night time is scariest with anxiety about health, leading to panic and thoughts of suicide, and easing off with drugs and pornography. 

– As we roll towards the early hours of the next day, we have a philosophical reawakening with contemplation about the meaning of life and our place in it. 

If we can get all this just from some data analytics of Google search terms, can you imagine what else we can learn about the masses and YOU, the individuals that make it up. 😉

(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)

Size And Smell

So apparently data mining can be used for all sorts of research…

In the New York Times today, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz tries his hand with google search results to better understand people’s feelings about sex. 

Though Stephens-Davidowitz doesn’t explain how he gets these google statistics…here are some standouts:

As you might have guessed, the biggest complaint from men–and women–is that they don’t get/have enough sex. 

For both (as you might imagine in a primarily–95%–heterosexual world), traditional surveys show that it’s about once a week.

However, the author says this is exaggerated (yeah, is it surprising that people exaggerate about this?) and it’s actually only about 30 times a year–or once every 12 days.

So there are a lot of search on “sexless” or “won’t have sex with me.”

Observing that “sex can be quite fun,” he questions, “why do we have so little of it?”

And he concludes that it’s because we have “enormous anxiety” and insecurity about our bodies and sexuality.

Again, you probably wouldn’t need data mining to guess the results, but men’s biggest worry is about their penis size, and one of women’s most toxic worries–a “strikingly common concern”–is about the smell of their vagina.

For men, they actually google questions about genital size more often than they have questions about any other body part; in fact, more than “about their lungs, liver, feet, ears, nose, throat, and brain combined.”

So much for health consciousness versus machismo pride. 

The funny thing is apparently women don’t seem to care so much about this with only about 1 search on this topic for every 170 searches that men do on this. 

Surprising to most men, about 40% of the searches women do conduct on this topic is “complaints” that it is too big!

Not that size doesn’t matter to women, but for them it’s about the size of their breasts and butts–and again, bigger being generally considered better.

In this case, most men seem to agree. 

Another issue men are concerned about is premature ejaculation and how to make the experience last longer.

However, here women seem to be looking for information about half and half on how to make men climax more quickly on one hand, and more slowly on the other. 

Overall, men are from Mars and women from Venus, with lot’s of misunderstanding between the sexes.

The conclusion from this big data study…everyone calm down and just try to enjoy each other more.

Amazing the insights we can get from data mining! 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Daniel)

Parole By Analytics

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about parole boards using software to predict repeat offenders before letting someone go free.

What used to be a decision based on good behavior during time served, showing remorse to the parole board, and intuition is being augmented with “automated assessments” that include inmate interviews, age of first arrest, type of crime, and so forth.

At least 15 states have adopted “modern risk assessment methods” to determine the potential for recidivism.

Individuals are marked as higher risk if they are:

– Young–age 18-23 (and impulsive)
– Offense was drug-related
– Suspended or expelled from school
– Quit a job prior to having another one
– Single or separated
– Diagnosed with a mental disorder
– Believes that it’s not possible to overcome their past.

Surprisingly, violent criminals (rapists and murders) are actually considered lower risk those guilty of nonviolent property crimes–the thinking being the someone convicted of robbery is more likely to repeat the criminal behavior because the crime is one that “reflects planning and intent.”

Honestly, I think it is more than ridiculous that we should rank violent criminals less risky than thieves and release them because they had what is considered an “emotional outburst.”

Would you rather have some thieves back on the street or murders and rapists–rhetorical question!

But it just shows that even the best of systems that are supposed to help make better decisions–can instead be misused or abused.

This happens when there is either bad data (such as from data-entry mistakes, deceptive responses, and missing relevant information) or from poorly designed decision rules/algorithms are applied.

The Compas system is one of the main correctional software suites being used, and the company Northpointe (a unit of Volaris) themselves advise that officials should “override the system’s decisions at rates of 8% to 15%.”

While even a 1/7 error rate may be an improvement over intuition, we need to still do better, especially if that 1 person commits a violent hideous crime that hurts someone else in society, and this could’ve been prevented.

It’s certainly not easy to expect a parole board to make a decision of whether to let someone out/free in 20 minutes, but think about the impact to someone hurt or killed or to their family, if the wrong decision is made.

This is a critical governance process that needs:

– Sufficient time to make important decisions
– More investment in tools to aid the decision process
– Refinement of the rules that support release or imprisonment
– Collection of a broad base of interviews, history, and relevant data points tied to repeat behavior
– Validation of information to limit deception or error.

Aside from predicting whether someone is likely to be repeat offenders, parole boards also need to consider whether the person has been both punished in accordance with the severity of the crime and rehabilitated to lead a productive life going forward.

We need to decide people’s fates fairly for them, justly for the victims, and safely for society–systems can help, but it’s not enough to just “have faith in the computer.” 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Can a Computer Run the Economy?

I am nottalking about socialism or totalitarianism, but about computers and artificial intelligence.

For a long time, we have seen political infighting and finger-pointing stall progress on creating jobs, balancing trade, taming the deficits, and sparking innovation.

But what if we somehow took out the quest for power and influence from navigating our prosperity?

In politics, unfortunately no one seems to want to give the other side the upper hand–a political win with voters or a leg-up on with their platform.

But through the disciplines of economics, finance, organizational behavior, industrial psychology, sociology, geopolitics, and more–can we program a computer to steer the economy using facts rather than fighting and fear?

Every day, we need to make decisions, big and small, on everything from interests rates, tax rates, borrowing, defense spending, entitlements, pricing strategies, regulating critical industries, trade pacts, and more.

Left in the hands of politicians, we inject personal biases and even hatreds, powerplays, band-standing, bickering, and “pork-barrel” decision making, rather than rational acting based on analysis of alternatives, cost-benefits, risk management, and underlying ethics.

We thumb our noises (rightfully) at global actors on the political stages, saying who is rational and who is perhaps just plain crazy enough to hit “the button.”

But back here at home, we can argue about whether or not the button of economic destructionism has already been hit with the clock ticking down as the national deficit spirals upward, education scores plummet, and jobs are lost overseas?

Bloomberg BusinessWeek(30 August 2012) suggests using gaming as a way to get past the political infighting and instead focus on small (diverse) groups to make unambiguous trade-off decisions to guide the economy rather than “get reelected”–the results pleasantly were cooperation and collaboration.

Yes, a game is just a game, but there is lesson that we can learn from this–economic decision-making can be made (more) rationally by rewarding teamwork and compromise, rather than by an all or nothing, fall on your sword, party against party, winner takes no prisoner-politics.

I would suggest that gaming is a good example for how we can improve our economy, but I can see a time coming where “bid data,” analytics, artificial intelligence, modeling and simulation, and high-performance computing, takes this a whole lot further–where computers, guided and inspired by people, help us make rational economic choices,thereby trumping decisions by gut, intuition, politics, and subjective whims .

True, computers are programmed by human beings–so won’t we just introduce our biases and conflict into the systems we develop and deploy?

The idea here is to filter out those biases using diverse teams of rational decision-makers, working together applying subject matter expertise and best practices and then have the computers learn over time in order to improve performance–this, separate from the desire and process to get votes and get elected.

Running the economy should not be about catering to constituencies, getting and keeping power for power sakes, but rather about rational decision-making for society–where the greatest good is provided to the greatest numbers, where the future takes center stage, where individuals preferences and rights are respected and upheld, and where ethics and morality underpin every decision we make.

The final question is whether we will be ready to course-correct with collaboration and advances in technology to get out of this economic mess before this economic mess gets even more seriously at us?

(Source Photo: herewith attribution to Erik Charlton)

Technology Forecast 2013

I am an avid follower of everything technology and trends, but am tired of hearing about cloud, mobile, and social computing.

It’s time to get over it with the agenda of the past and get on with it with the future of technology.

In the attached graph is my Technology Forecast 2013, and here is where I see us going forward:

1) Service Provision–Cost-cutting and consolidation into the cloud is a wonderful idea and it has had it’s time, but the future will follow consumer products, where one flavor does not fit all, and we need to have globalization with a local flavor to provide for distinct customer requirements and service differentiators, as well as classified, proprietary and private systems and information.

2) Service Delivery–Mobile is here and the iPhone is supreme, but the future belongs to those that deliver services not only to remote devices, but in wearable, implantable, and even human augmentation.

3) Human Interaction–Social computing epitomized by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more is a cool way in interact with others virtually, but wall posts, email, and chats are getting cliche–next up conjoining with others with capabilities such as telepathic communication, mind melding collaboration, and even virtual sex for the outlandish.

4) Robotics and Artificial Intelligence–With something like 10,000 drones flying the friendly and not-so friendly skies and even drones that autonomously land on aircraft carriers, the next robot is coming to the ground near you–drones will become (an)droids and will eventually have the AI to become part of our everyday society.

5) Service Assurance–Enough playing defense with a sprinkling of offense against our worst enemies–it’s past time to move from trying to stop-gap infiltrators and do damage control once we’ve been robbed blind, and instead move to a hunter-killer mentality and capability–the price of being a bad boy on the Internet goes way up and happens in realtime.

6) Data Analytics–Big data isn’t a solution, it’s the problem. The solution is not snapshot pretty graphics, but realtime augmented reality–where data is ingrained in everything and transparent realtime–and this becomes part of our moment-by-moment decision processes.

7) Biotechnology–Biometrics sounds real cool–and you get a free palm reading at the same time, but the real game changer here is not reading people’s bio signatures, but in creating new ones–with not only medical cures, but also new bio-technological capabilities.

8) Nanotechnology–Still emerging, quantum mechanics is helping us delve into the mysteries of the universe, with applications for new and advanced materials, but the new buzzword will be nano-dust, where atomic and molecular building blocks can be used on-the-fly to build anything, be anywhere, and then recycled into the next use.

Overall, I see us moving from mass produced, point-to-point solutions to more integrated end-to-end solutions that fit individual needs–whether through continued combinations of hardware, software, and services, man-machine interfaces/integration, and building blocks that can be shaped and reused again and again.

From my perspective, there a seeming lull in innovation, but the next big leap is around the corner.

(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)