Sponsorised links
This year
Statistical Data Mining Tutorials
by karlcow
set of tutorials on many aspects of statistical data mining, including the foundations of probability, the foundations of statistical data analysis, and most of the classic machine learning and data mining algorithms.
2008
Conditional Random Fields
by ogrisel
(via)
Conditional random fields (CRFs) are a probabilistic framework for labeling and segmenting structured data, such as sequences, trees and lattices. The underlying idea is that of defining a conditional probability distribution over label sequences given a particular observation sequence, rather than a joint distribution over both label and observation sequences. The primary advantage of CRFs over hidden Markov models is their conditional nature, resulting in the relaxation of the independence assumptions required by HMMs in order to ensure tractable inference. Additionally, CRFs avoid the label bias problem, a weakness exhibited by maximum entropy Markov models (MEMMs) and other conditional Markov models based on directed graphical models. CRFs outperform both MEMMs and HMMs on a number of real-world tasks in many fields, including bioinformatics, computational linguistics and speech recognition.
2007
Statistical Data Mining Tutorials
by greut
The following links point to a set of tutorials on many aspects of statistical data mining, including the foundations of probability, the foundations of statistical data analysis, and most of the classic machine learning and data mining algorithms.
Nick Szabo -- Introduction to Algorithmic Information Theory
by ogrisel
(via)
Recent discoveries have unified the fields of computer science and information theory into the field of algorithmic information theory. This field is also known by its main result, Kolmogorov complexity. Kolmogorov complexity gives us a new way to grasp the mathematics of information, which is used to describe the structures of the world. Information is used to describe the cultural structures of science, legal and market institutions, art, music, knowledge, and beliefs. Information is also used in describing the structures and processes of biological phenomena, and phenomena of the physical world. The most obvious application of information is to the engineering domains of computers and communications. This essay will provide an overview of the field; only passing knowledge of computer science and probability theory is required of the reader.
An Intuitive Explanation of the Information Entropy of a Random Variable
by ogrisel
There is a popular game called twenty questions that works like this. One person is the "Knower" and picks a point out of the probability space of all objects (thinks of an object). The other is the "Guesser" and asks the Knower to evaluate various random variables (questions) at that point (answer the questions of the object). The Guesser wins if he can guess the object the Knower is thinking about by asking at most twenty questions.
Photobucket JWidget
by cyberien
& 1 other
Are you looking to offer free image & video hosting and sharing capabilities on your website?
The Photobucket Jwidget is an industry-first tool that will enable your website users to access and share their Photobucket images and video without ever leaving your site.
What is the Jwidget?
It is a free plugin that can be implemented in minutes giving any website free image and video hosting and publishing functionality at no additional cost. It's a simple IFRAME that lives on your website, allowing your members to upload as well as publish content from their Photobucket account without leaving your site.
Why should you use it?
If your site accepts direct links and you want to enable your members to publish user-generated image and video content, the Photobucket Jwidget is for you. It will create a much more content rich engaging experience for your users while leveraging Photobucket's world class infrastructure, storage, bandwidth, and industry leading content moderation system. With Photobucket's 19 million members, there is a high probability that your users are already using Photobucket. The Jwidget will make it much easier for your users to link their Photobucket content onto your site.
If you want to earn money from the traffic you generate from your Jwidget, join the Photobucket Affiliate Program!. You can earn $10 for every user that upgrades to a Photobucket premium account. To learn more about the affiliate program,
Ddrescue - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)
by pvergain
& 2 others
GNU ddrescue is a data recovery tool. It copies data from one file or block device (hard disc, cdrom, etc) to another, trying hard to rescue data in case of read errors.
Ddrescue does not truncate the output file if not asked to. So, every time you run it on the same output file, it tries to fill in the gaps.
The basic operation of ddrescue is fully automatic. That is, you don't have to wait for an error, stop the program, read the log, run it in reverse mode, etc.
If you use the logfile feature of ddrescue, the data is rescued very efficiently (only the needed blocks are read). Also you can interrupt the rescue at any time and resume it later at the same point.
Automatic merging of backups: If you have two or more damaged copies of a file, cdrom, etc, and run ddrescue on all of them, one at a time, with the same output file, you will probably obtain a complete and error-free file. This is so because the probability of having damaged areas at the same places on different input files is very low. Using the logfile, only the needed blocks are read from the second and successive copies.
The logfile is periodically saved to disc. So in case of a crash you can resume the rescue with little recopying.
Also, the same logfile can be used for multiple commands that copy different areas of the file, and for multiple recovery attempts over different subsets.
Ddrescue aligns its I/O buffer to the sector size so that it can be used to read from raw devices. For efficiency reasons, also aligns it to the memory page size if page size is a multiple of sector size.
Sponsorised links
2006
Photobucket JWidget
by cyberien
(via)
Are you looking to offer free image & video hosting and sharing capabilities on your website?
The Photobucket Jwidget is an industry-first tool that will enable your website users to access and share their Photobucket images and video without ever leaving your site.
What is the Jwidget?
It is a free plugin that can be implemented in minutes giving any website free image and video hosting and publishing functionality at no additional cost. It's a simple IFRAME that lives on your website, allowing your members to upload as well as publish content from their Photobucket account without leaving your site.
Why should you use it?
If your site accepts direct links and you want to enable your members to publish user-generated image and video content, the Photobucket Jwidget is for you. It will create a much more content rich engaging experience for your users while leveraging Photobucket's world class infrastructure, storage, bandwidth, and industry leading content moderation system. With Photobucket's 19 million members, there is a high probability that your users are already using Photobucket. The Jwidget will make it much easier for your users to link their Photobucket content onto your site.
If you want to earn money from the traffic you generate from your Jwidget, join the Photobucket Affiliate Program!. You can earn $10 for every user that upgrades to a Photobucket premium account. To learn more about the affiliate program, click here
Low Probability of Racoons - Hypertext and Flash animated poems
by jlesage
uses the duration of video to make kinetic poetry that has a narrative in the words and beyond them; nice example for students of simple form with complex effects
Ddrescue - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)
by ogrisel
& 2 others
(via)
GNU ddrescue is a data recovery tool. It copies data from one file or block device (hard disc, cdrom, etc) to another, trying hard to rescue data in case of read errors.
Ddrescue does not truncate the output file if not asked to. So, every time you run it on the same output file, it tries to fill in the gaps.
The basic operation of ddrescue is fully automatic. That is, you don't have to wait for an error, stop the program, read the log, run it in reverse mode, etc.
If you use the logfile feature of ddrescue, the data is rescued very efficiently (only the needed blocks are read). Also you can interrupt the rescue at any time and resume it later at the same point.
Automatic merging of backups: If you have two or more damaged copies of a file, cdrom, etc, and run ddrescue on all of them, one at a time, with the same output file, you will probably obtain a complete and error-free file. This is so because the probability of having damaged areas at the same places on different input files is very low. Using the logfile, only the needed blocks are read from the second and successive copies.
The logfile is periodically saved to disc. So in case of a crash you can resume the rescue with little recopying.
Also, the same logfile can be used for multiple commands that copy different areas of the file, and for multiple recovery attempts over different subsets.
Ddrescue aligns its I/O buffer to the sector size so that it can be used to read from raw devices. For efficiency reasons, also aligns it to the memory page size if page size is a multiple of sector size.
Poisson distribution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
by YukuanMark
In probability theory and statistics, the Poisson distribution is a discrete probability distribution. It expresses the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed period of time if these events occur with a known average rate, and are independ
Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products, 2006
by nhoizey
(via)
Through 2008, less than 10 percent of Global 1000 companies will deploy open-source portals at the enterprise level because of lack of compelling advantages in cost, support, functionality and finish (0.8 probability). However, Gartner does not expect this trend to continue indefinitely. The technology in Java-based horizontal OSS portals, such as that provided by JBoss (recently acquired by Red Hat), is maturing, and vendor-independent portal standards, such as JSR 168, are reducing concerns about vendor lock-in. Additionally, some large ISVs have continued to exploit OSS technology in their portals, highlighted by Sun Microsystems' new strategy of open sourcing its entire infrastructure stack, including its portal. Open-source portal solutions could pose a threat to large ISVs' traditional license sales. At the same time, open source provides large ISVs with opportunities to generate revenue from services supporting open-source initiatives.
Boing Boing: Psychology of bad probability estimation: why lottos and terrorists matter
by multilinko
(via)
Here's the audio from a South By Southwest 2006 presentation by Harvard's Daniel Gilbert on the psychology of probability estimation. This is important stuff -- it explains why we're socially willing to commit nigh-infinite social resources to fighting terrorism, though statistically, terrorist attacks almost never happen; though we barely lift a finger to help save people from routine traffic accidents, backyard pool drownings, and asthma, which mow down our neighbors by the thousands. It explains why people buy lottery tickets. It explains a great deal about many kinds of human activity.
2005
Villainy, Inc. Middle School Math
by knann
(via)
This site contains activities that explore statistics and probability, algebra, geometry, decimals, percents, negative numbers, and more. Students take on the role of a secret agent and use their math skills to thwart the corporate menace, Villainy, Inc!
