02 February 2010

The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures

"Hello, old friends. I am back from dark months of data mining, here now to present my ores. To write this piece, we cataloged over 7,000 photographs on OkCupid.com, analyzing three primary things:
  • Facial Attitude. Is the person smiling? Staring straight ahead? Doing that flirty lip-pursing thing?
  • Photo Context. Is there alcohol? Is there a pet? Is the photo outdoors? Is it in a bedroom?
  • Skin. How much skin is the person showing? How much face? How much breasts? How much ripped abs?


In looking closely at the astonishingly wide variety of ways our users have chosen to represent themselves, we discovered much of the collective wisdom about profile pictures was wrong. For interested readers, I explain our measurement process, and how we collected our data, at the end of the post. All my bar charts are zeroed on the average picture. Now to the data."


Read more: The 4 Myths

Copy from blog.okcupid.com

Personal 3D Food Printer - MIT-media lab


Cornucopia is a concept design for a personal food factory that brings the versatility of the digital world to the realm of cooking. In essence, it is a three dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients.

Cornucopia's cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user's favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate combinations of food. While the deposition takes place, the food is heated or cooled by Cornucopia's chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but it also allows the user to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.

This project is currently starting, at MIT-media lab.

Other interesting projects: electronic popables

Target Point - Chart wars & What is rich income?


A great, short talk by TargetPoint's VP and Director of Research, Alex Lundry, at DC Ignite. He addresses the issues of subjective messaging through visualization, the emergence of open data, some ideal data visualization tools, a set of quick lessons in graphic literacy, and a short list of recommended visualization books, all within the time span of 5 minutes.

Watch the movie below.


Copy from: Information aesteatics



"What is rich income"

- Another interesting article fromTarget point -

The most frequent response, the mode, was $100,000. The median response was $250,000 – that is, half of the country gave an answer above $250K and half were below. The mean is too heavily influenced by extreme values and is a correspondingly inefficient measure of the midpoint. We can also estimate a nationwide consensus at the 75th percentile, where ¾ of the country defines rich below the $500,000 mark.



Still despite the fact that all demographic effects are subsumed by income, we can’t help but point to a number of interesting and fun significant differences in the crosstabs. For instance:
  • GENDER: men’s median response is $250k, while women’s is 200k.
  • IDEOLOGY: conservatives have a higher “rich” threshold, $250k, than liberals, $200k, and moderates line up with conservatives with a median response of $250k.
  • 2008 VOTE: mirroring ideology, “rich” to a McCain voter means an annual income of $250k (median), while an Obama voter sets the bar at $200k.
Finally, it’s important to put these numbers into their proper perspective: median annual household income in the United States is about $44,389 (from 2005 Census Bureau data); if we were to arbitrarily define the rich as the top 20% of household incomes the lower limit would be $88,030 a far cry from our survey’s median of $250,000. Even the top 5% of household incomes begin at $157,176, nearly $100,000 short of our survey’s median response.

Copy from: Target Point

17 January 2010

Knol - Ethics theory

An Introduction the Ethical Reasoning

This knol provides an introductory overview of ethical reasoning as a foundation for professional ethics. It presents some of the philosophical background to ethical thought and attempts to answer the question - "How can we know the difference between right and wrong?".

While the knol is aimed primarily at students in higher education and young IT professionals , it is equally relevant to other disciplines and professions.

Contents


We all have a sense right and wrong - or good and bad. There are things that we feel we (or others) ought to do, and other things that we feel we (or others) ought not to do. Ethics is the study of how we distinguish between these alternatives.

This knol is intended to familiarise students and young professionals with the basic concepts of ethics and ethical reasoning in order to equip them for the responsibilities that accompany professional status.

Read more...

Other interesting links:
* Knol
* "How to Use the Harvard Style of Referencing"
* Gold
* "Laying a house foundation"
* ...

20 December 2009

Northern Europeans are Uniquely Depigmented

Interesting article:
"White," of course, is a a social designation. The question really is, "Why are northern Europeans depigmented?" Here is a map of human skin tone. The natives of northern Europe are oddly light-skinned. They are paler than anyone else on earth.

Read more

12 December 2009

Public statistics



Not sorted


Now debated












06 December 2009

Mapping the Human ‘Diseasome’


Researchers created a map linking different diseases, represented by circles, to the genes they have in common, represented by squares.

25 November 2009

'Secret Agent', the 24th CGChallenge

The mission for 'Secret Agent', the 24th CGChallenge, was to depict characters and events involving espionage, gadgets, guns and evil geniuses, via a still image or video. The field of almost 1,200 undercover artists who took up the challenge did not disappoint.

"Entrants once again astounded us with the quality and breadth of styles of their work. The CGChallenges offer a chart for the evolving excellence, imagination and capability of today's digital artists to produce world class entertainment and art.
Don't miss the Videos: Video1, Video2, Video3

20 November 2009

Harnessing Waste Heat

ScienceDaily (Nov. 19, 2009) — In everything from computer processor chips to car engines to electric powerplants, the need to get rid of excess heat creates a major source of inefficiency. But new research points the way to a technology that might make it possible to harvest much of that wasted heat and turn it into usable electricity.