One, Three, Zero

TEDxSV 2009

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:25:28 -0800

I’ll be at the TED event at Stanford on Dec 12, 2009.

You should too!

Just Dance - Gary Go feat. Mr. Dialysis (Lady Gaga Cover) (via...

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:11:15 -0700

Just Dance - Gary Go feat. Mr. Dialysis (Lady Gaga Cover) (via denversc17)

A totally awesome find via Andrew Polins.

livejamie: Tom Hodge - Aerodynamic Who knew Daft Punk could...

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:04:00 -0700

livejamie:

Tom Hodge - Aerodynamic

Who knew Daft Punk could sound like this?

Last one for the evening.

UPDATE: To appreciate the arrangement, you should probably check out the original version of this song if you’re not familiar with Daft Punk.

ylizabeth: kids in technicolour - coldplay vs. mgmt. vs. daft...

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:02:49 -0700

ylizabeth:

kids in technicolour - coldplay vs. mgmt. vs. daft punk (knights remix)

Another pretty awesome mashup.

copycats: Night Beatle by Go Home ProductionsNightvisions by...

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:57:30 -0700

copycats:

Night Beatle by Go Home Productions
Nightvisions by Daft Punk + When I’m Sixty-Four by The Beatles
(via ilictronix)

Pretty awesome combination.

Elements of Statistical Learning (New Edition) now online for free

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:05:49 -0700

Holy crap. This is awesome. Profs Hastie, Friedman and Tibshirani have put the new (2009) version of their definitive text, Elements of Statistical Learning, online for free. At 700+ pages (and a lot of megabytes), its still far easier to use the paper copy. Hopefully something will appear in Google Books soon.

Given that a professor in my department has just won the Nobel Prize in Economics — now seems...

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:09:29 -0700

Given that a professor in my department has just won the Nobel Prize in Economics — now seems like a good time to mention: I’ve left full-time employment at Google to start a PhD at Berkeley.

Best (and most succinct) defense of the Economics profession

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:18:00 -0700

Economists have come under a lot of scrutiny for having not predicted the recession and financial crisis (and for not offering useful advice once the panics were underway). Here are some interesting thoughts from Hal:

Many economists recognized that housing prices were out of line. What we didn’t recognize is how screwed up the mortgage market was. If you had ask 100 economists, “what would happen if mortgage lenders based their loans on self-declared income?” I think that 90% of them would say, “mortgage quality would deteriorate.” Similarly if you asked what the consequences would be of investment banks taking on leverage factors of 30+, they would answer, “you would get an increase in asset volatility.” The problem is that few people outside the industries were aware of these practices. As Warren Buffet puts it, “you don’t know who is wearing a bathing suit until the tide goes out.”

Actually, I’m willing to bet that a lot of people who are not economists could have made those same predictions. So the question is: Whose job is it to uncover these basic facts and sound the alarms? Seems like journalists, consultants, counterparties and investors are equally (or more) responsible for this kind of investigation.

Unfortunate Quote of the Day

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:08:00 -0700

“‘She lost her husband. Her job. Her identity,” she said. ‘She’s working on getting that back, and she’s a beautiful woman, inside and out. She did get the shaft really bad.’” — San Francisco Weekly on Ruby Rippley Tourk. Emphasis mine.

Quote of the day

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:04:00 -0700

“Have you ever seen a preference? If you have, please take a picture of it for me. Since we like to assert that economics is an emperical science, we would like the theoritical primitives to be observable, at least in principle, otherwise we’re only engaged in a very mathematically rigorous form of theology.” David Ahn’s PhD microeconomics course notes.

Google's R Style Guide

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 08:16:00 -0700

Here are the rules we’ve come up with at Google for our programs running in R.

The goal of the R Programming Style Guide is to make our R code easier to read, share, and verify. The rules below were designed in collaboration with the entire R user community at Google.

Style guides are often useful for larger groups of people collaborating on code together. Have a look at the style guide here.

"The Golden Age of Statistical Graphics"

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:47:01 -0700

Cool paper in Statistical Science from Steve the Bayesian arguing that the golden era of statistical graphics was about a century ago.

Abstract. Statistical graphics and data visualization have long histories, but their modern forms began only in the early 1800s. Between roughly 1850 and 1900 (±10), an explosive growth occurred in both the general use of graphic methods and the range of topics to which they were applied. Innovations were prodigious and some of the most exquisite graphics ever produced appeared, resulting in what may be called the “Golden Age of Statistical Graphics.” In this article I trace the origins of this period in terms of the infrastructure required to produce this explosive growth: recognition of the importance of systematic data collection by the state; the rise of statistical theory and statistical thinking; enabling developments of technology; and inventions of novel methods to portray statistical data. To illustrate, I describe some specific contributions that give rise to the appellation “Golden Age.”

Check the PDF for some nice graphics.

Google App Engine

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:46:00 -0700

I probably shouldn’t review my own employer’s products too often here, since I suppose I have a conflict of interest. However, I tried Google App Engine today. If you’re a moderately competent Python programmer (or, in the future, Java), this is an easy way of creating a highly scalable web application. Impressive.

Why I love Google Voice

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:13:50 -0700

I’ve been raving about Google Voice to whomever will listen. Its time I put into writing why I think its so great. Before I go there, let me address the #1 concern people have when they hear about the service: “Do I have to change my number?” The answer is no. Google Voice is essentially a fancy forwarding service, with a few cool features added on top. You’ll get a new number, but your old one won’t go away. People who saved it will still be able to reach you. Your new number comes with substantial benefits, which I’ll get into next. These benefits will encourage you to use your “new” number for outgoing calls and texts. At first, your friends will be getting calls from an unexpected number. If you sign your texts (ie, “Where are we meeting? -Bo”) and encourage your friends to save the number, they will eventually store it alongside your other one. So what are these benefits that’ll motivate you to use your Google Voice number? Here are my favorite:

Free outgoing texts to anywhere in the world when sent from a Google Voice app on your phone or computer.
Free incoming texts from anywhere in the world. If you have them forwarded to your phone, then your carrier will still charge you. But why do that when you can check for new texts over the internet using your data connection? Incoming and outgoing texts are basically free if you have a data connection.
Text from any internet connected computer. Its a pain to send texts from a tiny phone keypad. With Google Voice, you can send a text to any phone from any internet enabled computer — including the you work at for 8 hours per day with an easier keyboard. You don’t need to look up a special email address. The text will come from your Google Voice number. When the person calls back, it’ll ring your phone. If he/she texts back, it’ll come to your number.
It knows your phone numbers already While you’re texting/calling from the browser version of Google Voice, you don’t need to type in the digits of your buddy — just start typing his/her name and it’ll figure it out using your Google Contacts list. If your Google Contacts are empty, use this application to import your iPhone contacts. Use this application to import your Blackberry contacts. Click here to figure out contact sync options for other phones.

The application will become even more powerful once there are applications running on your phone to interact with the service. This will allow you to place outbound calls from your cellphone using your GV number, and send texts more easily using your data connection.

Digitizing Itemized Receipts: Someone Solve this Problem!

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:08:50 -0700

Thanks to services like Mint and Wesabe, my credit card statements and bank bills are much more useful. But they could be even moreso.

When my credit card says I spent $40 at Target, thats aggregated over a whole lot of different items. It’d be totally useful to have those individual purchases separated out online somewhere between the toothpaste, office supplies and magazines I bought.

Getting a feed of that data probably requires the consent of the vendor — and I presume vendors would be reluctant to share the data. If enough customers were aggregating Target’s purchase through Mint (or a comparable service), Mint would have pretty good insight into Target’s business — and wouldn’t necessarily be bound by any agreements about how to share it.

The other option might be to enable consumers to scan the receipts easily. This would require some discipline by the consumer that’s probably doesn’t have a very immediate return. Someone needs to figure this out!

Here’s the graph of my social network, as generated by...

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:28:42 -0700

Here’s the graph of my social network, as generated by Nexus (a facebook app you can install here).

Zoom in for a closer look, but you can already see a few patterns emerging. Specifically, the relationships form three natural clusters. On the bottom right are my friends from Google. On the bottom left are my friends from undergraduate at Stanford (and to a lesser extent, my MS there). At the top are my friends from Kentucky, where I grew up — a very dense social network with few links to my two other networks of friends.

Boss/Team in Wired

Fri, 22 May 2009 23:29:21 -0700

My boss/team got a big article in Wired. They interviewed me for it, but I didn’t make it into the article :(

Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability

Doesn't that feel nicer?

Fri, 22 May 2009 23:18:56 -0700

This website has had the same design almost since 2003. It was time for change.