Data Science and Computational Thinking [inc Big Data and Internet of Things]

Microsoft Power BI is empowering all types of people to tell stories with data. We’ve seen journalists using Power BI to understand and illustrate the news, customers using Power BI to interact with their fans, and business analysts justifying a budget ask from their managers. Modern storytelling requires the effective use of data.

Recently, we showcased Power BI’s storytelling prowess at the Future of StoryTelling Summit (FoST) in New York City. FoST is ‘an exclusive event, gathering a stimulating mix of thinkers and practitioners from diverse fields who are shaping the art, science, and business of storytelling in the 21st century.’ We are always excited to interact with our customers and learn from the ways they are using the tool to achieve more.  At this event we had the opportunity to introduce a variety of creative storytellers to the potential of using data to tell their stories with Power BI.

A deep learning network typically gains proficiency at a task, like controlling a robotic factory arm or keeping a car on the road, through repetition. This is called reinforcement training, and it’s powered by machine learning algorithms.


Google, armed with fancy new algorithms, has eliminated the need for a person to hit the ‘reset button’ when AI fails an experiment.

It might not seem monumental at first glance, but when you watch a stick figure use this upgraded knowledge to make decisions it may evoke a tiny emotional response. It’s hard not to feel bad for the dumb one.

The blockchain is bringing significant opportunities to the enterprise, from financial services to IP protection to job documentation. This ebook explains what the blockchain is, how it works, and the revolutionary impact it’s likely to have on business.

From the ebook:

The blockchain is powerful technology that enables Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and other virtual currencies to be open, anonymous, and secure.

The code also empowers countless innovations beyond cryptocurrency. The blockchain is a database of details about every Bitcoin transaction. Often referred to as a “public ledger,” the log contains metadata about when and how each transaction occurred. The ledger is publicly accessible through APIs and torrent sites. To prevent tampering with current and past transactions, the database is cryptographically secured. Encryption allows developers to trust the transaction history and build applications from and around transaction information.

Why it matters
Virtual currencies offer an alternative to government-issued money. These currencies are exchanged like cash for goods and services. They can also be converted easily by a number of services for traditional currency like dollars, pounds, and euros. Because transaction information is obfuscated, cryptocurrency enables legal, extralegal, and illegal behavior. Using Bitcoin, it’s easy to buy pizza, train tickets, stolen data, drugs, and weapons.

The blockchain is, in theory, future-proof and can be used by private companies and individuals to build private financial networks. This means that a large enterprise could build a financial system internally for use by employees or external vendors. Though most countries require tax to be collected from income, taxing company-to-company virtual currency transactions is tricky.

The blockchain can also be used as an identity system. Onename and Keybase use the blockchain to generate verifiable identification, like a national ID or driver’s license.

Makerspace, Standards and a Look at Computational Thinking – Michael Gorman

As you might know, I believe all transformative practices must be based in the standards. These standards must include both content and process standards (4C’s). Too often, I see wonderful activities that engages students… but also see important standards that could have been incorporated not present in the activity.

The idea behind the Makers Movement includes allowing students to imagine, envision, create, innovate, play, formatively learn, experiment, collaborate, share, and most of all dream of possibilities. The idea of making is not a new concept. In fact, the art of making is at the root and mixed into to the very fabric of our culture. I believe that the amazing innovation we have seen in this country is due to a Maker mentality. We have long been a culture set on dreaming up possibilities, and then taking the action to make it happen. The initial growth of technology has somewhat taken some of our creativity and produced consumption based thinking. We are now past the initial way of thinking, and the Makers movement allows people to finally use the technology to create and make. As we reflect on this… how are you using the Makerspace idea to engage students in content standards while facilitating and assessing process skills?

Pundits have been fretting a lot lately about robots leaving humans behind, taking our jobs and possibly a lot more, as in The Matrix and Terminator films. Christof Koch, my go-to source for brain science for 25 years, has proposed a solution. To keep up with machines, we should boost our cognitive powers with brain implants.

Koch, who directs the Allen Institute for Brain Science, which has an annual budget of more than $100 million, floats this idea in a Wall Street Journal essay, “To Keep Up With AI, We’ll Need High-Tech Brains.” The subhead: “Technologies that enhance the human brain will be essential to avoid a dystopian future fueled by the rise of artificial intelligence.”

Koch looks at non-invasive methods, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, but he doesn’t think those will be sufficient. “Ultimately, to boost our brain power, we need to directly listen to and control individual neurons: the atom of perception, action, memory and consciousness. And for that, we need to directly access brain tissue, requiring (for now) at least some surgery to penetrate the skull.”

Google has undertaken yet another initiative that aims to raise awareness of the importance of protecting the environment. The company has teamed up with envirotech firm Aclima to measure air pollution levels in California and map out the findings on its Earth platform.

The effort will see the two companies release hyperlocal air quality data for the regions of the San Fransisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and Central Valley. To put this information together, the two companies covered more than 100,000 miles over the course of 4,000 hours using Google Street View cars.

The blockchain is the shared database technology that underlies Bitcoin and Ethereum, and it is set to disrupt many industries in the coming decade. It’s already getting used in banking and payments, but most people don’t realize that this same technology can be used to solve the major environmental problems we are facing today on our planet. If adopted globally, it can even help stop or reverse climate change.
As permanent, tamper-proof databases that are shared by a community without a centralized owner, blockchains they are particularly interesting for environmental causes. They make it possible to track and verify transactions and interactions without a centralized authority. This can significantly increase transparency, accountability, and efficiency of environmental projects.

If you’re a self-taught engineer or bootcamp grad, you owe it to yourself to learn computer science. Thankfully, you can give yourself a world-class CS education without investing years and a small fortune in a degree program �.

There are plenty of resources out there, but some are better than others. You don’t need yet another “200+ Free Online Courses” listicle. You need answers to these questions:

Which subjects should you learn, and why?
What is the best book or video lecture series for each subject?
This guide is our attempt to definitively answer these questions.

TL;DR:

Study all nine subjects below, in roughly the presented order, using either the suggested textbook or video lecture series, but ideally both. Aim for 100-200 hours of study of each topic, then revist favorites throughout your career �.

To see your current blockchain, enter blockchain or bc into the command prompt. You should see a block like the image below. Every blockchain will start with the� Genesis Block. As you will see…

Here's a piece from Gartner that makes some good points about data storytelling. https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/use-data-and-analytics-to-tell-a-story/

James Richardson, is research director at Gartner. By some of his comments, my guess is that he is most likely not a trained business storyteller, but someone who has acquired skills in storytelling over the years. So some of his points need a bit more clarification.

First, data visualization is not data storytelling. On that we agree. Data visualization however, whether simple or complex, helps us make sense of data, but rarely generates insights that stimulate action. 

Industrial robots have existed since the 1960s, when the first Unimate robotic arm was installed at a General Motors plant in the United States. Nearly six decades on, why don’t we have capable robots in our homes, beyond a few simple domestic gadgets?

One of the reasons is that the rules and conventions that govern our everyday lives are not as perfect as the rules that govern the process of, say, assembling a car.

Our everyday rules do not cover all possible scenarios. This makes them filled with inconsistencies that will render useless any robot that strictly follows them.

Artificial intelligence turbocharged by machine learning techniques gets smarter every second of the day and the Australian government is being prodded to stir its own grey matter on the implications of ubiquitous AI, especially weaponised systems.

Prominent figures such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have been piling in on the AI debate of late which has been goosed along by the potential advent of so-called ‘killer robots’, gun platforms with some degree of autonomy on who they terminate with extreme prejudice.

Saudi Arabia has recognised a humanoid robot as a citizen of its country, marking the first time in history that an AI device has been awarded such status.

Now an AI that is able to separate the voices of multiple speakers in real time promises to give automatic speech recognition a big boost, and could soon find its way into an elevator near you.

The technology, developed by researchers at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was demonstrated in public for the first time at this month’s Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies show in Tokyo.

It uses a machine learning technique the team calls “deep clustering” to identifies unique features in the “voiceprint” of multiple speakers. It then groups the distinct features from each speaker’s voice together, allowing it to disentangle multiple voices and then reconstruct what each person was saying. “It was trained using 100 English speakers, but it can separate voices even if a speaker is Japanese,” says Niels Meinke, a spokesperson for Mitsubishi Electric.

A university professor nicknamed the ‘Dr Who of AI in education’ is developing a robot teaching assistant named Colin to help lighten teachers’ workloads.
Professor Rose Luckin, a professor at UCL’s institute of education, has been working on the artificially intelligent Colin for over 20 years and the parts are finally ready to be combined.

Colin will assist with organising starter activities, collating daily student performance records and providing teachers with a detailed analysis of how well a learner is engaging with lessons – as well as their mental state. Rather than taking on physical form, however, Colin will be software-based.

Scientists have discovered a quantum material that could represent the future of artificial intelligence – not because it retains vast amounts of data, but precisely because it doesn't.

The human brain is often singled out as being the most complex and powerful computer that scientists know of, and one of the mechanisms that enables this complexity is our ability to forget things – a phenomenon that can be mimicked in a material called samarium nickelate.

"The brain has limited capacity, and it can only function efficiently because it is able to forget," says one of the researchers, nanoscientist Subramanian Sankaranarayanan from the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory (ANL).

"It's hard to create a non-living material that shows a pattern resembling a kind of forgetfulness, but the specific material we were working with can actually mimic that kind of behaviour."

The progression from big data to analytics to machine learning to artificial intelligence is designed, in the operational and financial context, to make information more productive more quickly, optimizing the knowledge gleaned by enhancing its accuracy and applicability.

Which, in turn, makes the enterprises utilizing such tools more productive as well. JL

Browsing through the depths of Reddit not so long ago, my eyes caught sight of an intriguing project called SpyPi: An (un)ethical hacking station specifically designed to educate people about the importance of data protection by putting them in the shoes of the attacker.

What impressed me even more though was that, despite the complexity and scope of the project, the device was entirely built by a high school student. In fact, the SpyPi was their graduation assignment – a requirement every student needs to fulfil before receiving their diploma.