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\"Mesmerizing & fascinating...\" — The Seattle Post-Intelligencer \"The Freakonomics of big data.\" —Stein Kretsinger, founding executive of Advertising.com Award-winning | Used by over 30 universities | Translated into 9 languages An introduction for everyone. In this rich, fascinating — surprisingly accessible — introduction, leading expert Eric Siegel reveals how predictive analytics (aka machine learning) works, and how it affects everyone every day. Rather than a \"how to\" for hands-on techies, the book serves lay readers and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques. Prediction is booming. It reinvents industries and runs the world. Companies, governments, law enforcement, hospitals, and universities are seizing upon the power. These institutions predict whether you're going to click, buy, lie, or die. Why? For good reason: predicting human behavior combats risk, boosts sales, fortifies healthcare, streamlines manufacturing, conquers spam, optimizes social networks, toughens crime fighting, and wins elections. How? Prediction is powered by the world's most potent, flourishing unnatural resource: data. Accumulated in large part as the by-product of routine tasks, data is the unsalted, flavorless residue deposited en masse as organizations churn away. Surprise! This heap of refuse is a gold mine. Big data embodies an extraordinary wealth of experience from which to learn. Predictive analytics (aka machine learning)unleashes the power of data. With this technology, the computer literally learns from data how to predict the future behavior of individuals. Perfect prediction is not possible, but putting odds on the future drives millions of decisions more effectively, determining whom to call, mail, investigate, incarcerate, set up on a date, or medicate. In this lucid, captivating introduction — now in its Revised and Updated edition — former Columbia University professor and Predictive Analytics World founder Eric Siegel reveals the power and perils of prediction: * What type of mortgage risk Chase Bank predicted before the recession. * Predicting which people will drop out of school, cancel a subscription, or get divorced before they even know it themselves. * Why early retirement predicts a shorter life expectancy and vegetarians miss fewer flights. * Five reasons why organizations predict death — including one health insurance company. * How U.S. Bank and Obama for America calculated the way to most strongly persuade each individual. * Why the NSA wants all your data: machine learning supercomputers to fight terrorism. * How IBM's Watson computer used predictive modeling to answer questions and beat the human champs on TV's Jeopardy! * How companies ascertain untold, private truths — how Target figures out you're pregnant and Hewlett-Packard deduces you're about to quit your job. * How judges and parole boards rely on crime-predicting computers to decide how long convicts remain in prison. * 182 examples from Airbnb, the BBC, Citibank, ConEd, Facebook, Ford, Google, the IRS, LinkedIn, Match.com, MTV, Netflix, PayPal, Pfizer, Spotify, Uber, UPS, Wikipedia, and more. How does predictive analytics work? This jam-packed book satisfies by demystifying the intriguing science under the hood. For future hands-on practitioners pursuing a career in the field, it sets a strong foundation, delivers the prerequisite knowledge, and whets your appetite for more. A truly omnipresent science, predictive analytics constantly affects our daily lives. Whether you are a consumer of it — or consumed by it — get a handle on the power of Predictive Analytics.

\"Editor Max Brockman introduces the work of some of today's brightest and most innovative young scientists in this fascinating and exciting collection of writings that describe the very boundaries of our knowledge. Future Science features nineteen young scientists, most of whom are presenting their innovative work and ideas to a general audience for the first time. Featured in this collection are William McEwan, a virologist, discussing his research into the biology of antiviral immunity; Naomi Eisenberger, a neuroscientist, wondering how social rejection affects us physically; Jon Kleinberg, a computer scientist, showing what massive datasets can teach us about society and ourselves; and Anthony Aguirre, a physicist, who gives readers a tantalizing glimpse of infinity\"-- Provided by publisher.

War at the Speed of Light describes the revolutionary and ever-increasing role of directed-energy weapons (such as laser, microwave, electromagnetic pulse, and cyberspace weapons) in warfare. Louis A. Del Monte delineates the threat that such weapons pose to disrupting the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, which has kept the major powers of the world from engaging in nuclear warfare. Potential U.S. adversaries, such as China and Russia, are developing hypersonic missiles and using swarming tactics as a means to defeat the U.S. military. In response, the U.S. Department of Defense established the 2018 National Security Strategy, emphasizing directed-energy weapons, which project devastation at the speed of light and are capable of destroying hypersonic missiles and enemy drones and missile swarms. Del Monte analyzes how modern warfare is changing in three fundamental ways: the pace of war is quickening, the rate at which weapons project devastation is reaching the speed of light, and cyberspace is now officially a battlefield. In this acceleration of combat called \"hyperwar,\" Del Monte shows how disturbingly close the world is to losing any deterrence to nuclear warfare.

\"Science fact, not science fiction, on the cutting-edge developments that are already changing the course of our future\"--Back cover.

The days of large force-on-force engagements with conventional fielded armies are seemingly gone. Today's persistent conflict, conducted among civilian populations and fought by small bands of combatants, will be remembered for this alteration in the tapestry of war and for the first large-scale use of unmanned vehicles. According to M. Shane Riza, this \"war among the people\" and the trend toward robotic warfare has outpaced deliberate thought and debate about the deep moral issues affecting justice and the warrior spirit. The pace of change, Riza explains, is revolutionizing warfare in vitally important ways. A key development is risk inversion, a shifting of risk away from technologically superior combatants and onto all noncombatants. For the first time in history, warriors are not the ones primarily shouldering the dangers and horrors of battle. This inversion and the search for impunity undermine the idea that how we win actually matters as much as winning itself. Though warfare involves human fallibility, there are ethics in striving that give meaning to war on a personal level. In just war theory, this sense of purpose imposes a practical limit on what belligerents can and should do to their opponents. Contemporary robotic warfare, however, may remove combatants' moral equivalence and it adversely affects the mutual respect upon which to build a lasting peace.Killing without Heartpostulates today's technological wars of combatant impunity may ultimately render unmanned weapons useless with the realization that robotic lethality undermines our strategic objectives. Riza has crafted a timely examination of the moral, ethical, and legal implications of the U.S. military's future course toward armed unmanned and autonomous robotic warfare. This is a book that will change the way we look at warfare-both for today and well into the future.

Renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku details the developments in computer technology, artificial intelligence, medicine, space travel, and more, that are poised to happen over the next hundred years. He also considers how these inventions will affect the world economy, addressing the key questions: Who will have jobs? Which nations will prosper? Kaku interviews three hundred of the world's top scientists- working in their labs on astonishing prototypes. He also takes into account the rigorous scientific principles that regulate how quickly, how safely, and how far technologies can advance. In this book, Kaku forecasts a century of earthshaking advances in technology that could make even the last centuries' leaps and bounds seem insignificant. -- from Back Cover

Librarianship is both an art and a science. Librarians study the science of information and how to work with clients to help them find solutions to their information needs. They also learn quickly that there is an art to working with people, to finding the answers to tough questions using the resources available and knowing which information resources to use to find the information being sought in short order. But, what technical skills do librarians need to be successful in the future? How can library managers best develop their staffs for success? Developing Librarian Competencies for the Digital Age explores questions such as: What is the composition of a modern library collection? Will that collection look different in the future? What are the information sources and how do we manage those? What are the technical skills needed for a 21st century librarian? How will reference services change and adapt to embrace new ways to interact with library patrons or clients? What kinds of library skills are needed for the librarian of today to grow and thrive, now and into the future? How will service models change to existing clients and how will the model change going into the future of librarianship?What kinds of budgeting challenges are there for libraries and the administrators who oversee these libraries?What do the library professional organizations see as the core skills needed for new graduates and those practicing in the profession going into the future? In answering those questions, the book identifies specific digital skills needed for success, ways of developing those skills, and ways of assessing them.

\"The latest volume in the bestselling series from Edge.org--dubbed \"the world's smartest website\" by The Guardian--brings together 175 of the world's most innovative and brilliant thinkers to discuss recent scientific breakthroughs that will shape the future. Scientific developments radically alter our understanding of the world. Whether it's technology, climate change, health research, or the latest revelations of neuroscience, physics, or psychology, science has, as Edge editor John Brockman says, \"become a big story, if not the big story.\" In that spirit, this new addition to Edge.org's fascinating series asks a powerful and provocative question: What do you consider the most interesting and important recent scientific news?\"--Amazon.com.

An enduring question in the philosophy of science is the question of whether a scientific theory deserves more credit for its successful predictions than it does for accommodating data that was already known when the theory was developed. In The Paradox of Predictivism, Eric Barnes argues that the successful prediction of evidence testifies to the general credibility of the predictor in a way that evidence does not when the evidence is used in the process of endorsing the theory. He illustrates his argument with an important episode from nineteenth-century chemistry, Mendeleev's Periodic Law and its successful predictions of the existence of various elements. The consequences of this account of predictivism for the realist/anti-realist debate are considerable, and strengthen the status of the 'no miracle' argument for scientific realism. Barnes's important and original contribution to the debate will interest a wide range of readers in philosophy of science.