Objekt Orient

2009-11-05T14:03:00.001+01:00

glaubt jetzt mal ans unterbewusstsein in der tradition der bürgerlichen dämonologie, aka psychoanalyse. am ende des mittelalters gab es ja den grossen nominalismusstreit, ob man aggregierten bezeichnern ueberhaubt trauen darf. die sind sicher ein hilfskonstrukt, eine schlampige heuristik, aber manchmal muss man werkzeuglich damit arbeiten. eigentlich kann man eh nicht anderst, sonst wird jeder gedanke zu einer lebensaufgabe. denke auch das die dahinterliegende werte ungefaehr helfen WENIGER danebenzuliegen als ohne. kann auch schief danebenliegen, und die usanz etwas zu kommunizieren das mittels mehrzahl verwischt werden darf (DIE werte) ist despektierlich: suggestion statt argumentation. aber eigentlich geht es um das psychosomatische. koerperseelenverbindung. Ist das normal? John Sarno sagt ja und kann damit RSI heilen. Lets get some snake oil

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Sarno

Web Innovation

2009-11-02T17:13:00.003+01:00

The innovation cycle in the web is bandwidth driven. That's an assumption i share with

http://www.civ-dis.com/blog/2009/10/12/predicting-when-web-30-will-arrive-the-bandwidth-revolution.html

Web 3.0 in terms of 'semantic web' faces a information economical problem. With advertisment based monetization being the rule, nobody gives you plain data for free. Where is the incentive? But only if vast ranges of datasilos are released to the web, the semantic vision can come to reality. We may hope for the micropayment revolution to come, which seems around the corner if you look at the effort it is invested in it by startups and mayors.

Meanwhile the coming cycle is happening already, bandwidth driven though: mobile bandwidth.

2009-10-29T09:08:00.002+01:00

Currently reading:

Administrative Behavior, Herbert Simon

Models of my Life, Herbert Simon

and a refresh in GTD, David Allen

2009-10-03T18:41:00.001+02:00

"Im fernsehn zaaagens immer nur des gleiche" sagt mein nachbar. Es ist wohl allgemeinplatz das mit dem produkt TV was net stimmt. Es wird sich was veraendern und diese veraenderung ist auch absehbar: Internet kills the TV Star.

Wie schaut das neue Fernsehn aus? Wer schafft es? Apple? Google? Sony? Disney?

Future Money

2009-09-24T21:57:00.003+02:00

Some vague speculation: See the eCash revolution emerging. When moneytransfer via mobile becomes ubiquitous in a not so far future, everyone with fair webprogramming skills could start a bank. Even issuing your own currency seems easy, remember only the linden dollar.

Already several offline experiments with alternative money have been made, one of them is the postwar Freigeld experiment of Wörgl. But this is oviously the monopoly of the state by now. The central banks own the monopoly, and the state gets veeery angry if you don't comply. In Wörgl the government sent the army to force the city council to give up their currency. Will eCash be illegalized by EU or the European countries? Will there be "black money"?

New currencies ultimately lead also to more instability in economics. Stability would be gained through differentiation of the money but expect new currencies to boom to bust and to fail. The internet is fast and spenders could leave a currency within blinks, devaluating the e-currency in a relentless fraction of time.

A Wiki Wolfram Alpha

2009-09-20T09:14:00.002+02:00

The Encyclopedia of everything computable which W|A is, would gain much momentum if a wiki model could be established for it. There is so much that needs to be calculated in this world, total cost of ownership of a car in Italy anyone?

For this we would need an Excel like interface. Excel is the most widespread tool for calculating stuff. If you want to crowdsource algorithm writing, you need to enable the skilled spreadsheet workforce to use your tool.

We would also need to establish tests to prove the algorithm. Automated regression tests to track erroneous modifications and exploration of the solution space. A qualitative peer review is indispensable, though.

The Use of Knowledge in Society

2009-09-19T08:45:00.004+02:00

Hayeks Article shows how the price system works as proxy for local available information, thus reducing complexity in enterpreneurial decision problems. Interesting footnote: Jim Wales names this paper as fundamental for his organisation of Wikipedia.

As Alfred Whitehead has said in another connection, "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.." This is of profound significance in the social field. We make constant use of formulas, symbols, and rules whose meaning we do not understand and through the use of which we avail ourselves of the assistance of knowledge which individually we do not possess. We have developed these practices and institutions by building upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up.
http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/Econ_4970/readings/The%20Use%20of%20Knowledge%20in%20Society.pdf

Value at Risk is the perpetrator

2009-09-09T20:42:00.001+02:00

My friend Nassim Taleb has been invited as expert witness by the Committee. That's a wise choice. Taleb has not only been a real derivatives trader for decades, but crucially has been warning about VaR's potential for destruction for at least 15 years.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pablo-triana/obama-should-stop-by-tale_b_278516.html

Steve Blanks Maxim

2009-09-04T08:44:00.001+02:00

"In a startup no facts exist inside the building, only opinions."

How to solve it

2009-09-03T23:39:00.002+02:00

I need to peek into the Polya algorithm for solving a problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pólya

Pensiero Geek des Tages

2009-09-01T22:11:00.001+02:00

Da sich die Koerpergroesse von Erwachsenen normalverteilt und sich die Normalverteilung als Summierung unabhaengiger gleicher Zufallsexperimenente beschreiben laesst: ist dann der dahinterliegende Mechanismus eben ein solches Generat? Wenn einem da nur nicht der Zentrale Grenzwertsatz einen Strich durch die Rechnung macht... Kapiert?

Customer Development

2009-08-31T13:47:00.004+02:00

Dear Innovators,

Ein neuer Hype pfeift durch die Strassen Silicon Valleys und der Nebel San Franciscos lichtet sich. Einen "Algorithmus zum Startup" soll es geben. Was es ist: eine radikale Standpunktveränderung. Und eigentlich ja logisch. Aus Product Development wird Customer Development, denn wie wir alle wissen: der Kunde zahlt. Nur war uns das nie so ganz klar. Wir träumten ja schon längst von unserem Produkt. Der lästige Kunde wirds dann kaufen. Denn es ist gut. Verdammt gut.

Was ist gut? Fragen wir doch lieber den Kunden, und finden wir den richtigen Kunden und bauen es für ihn, das Produkt.

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/08/30/the-long-lost-formula-for-start-up-success-no-really/

2009-07-30T14:01:00.000+02:00

The big win of Graffiti was that the Graffiti recognizer was simple - perhaps an order of magnitude simpler than Newton's, maybe more like two. If you invested the small amount of mental effort to learn Graffiti, which was not at all out of proportion to the cost or utility of the Palm, you had a predictable and reliable control mapping with a low error rate, because your brain's internal model of Graffiti was reasonably close to the actual algorithm. Moreover, the process of learning it was actually kind of fun.

Applying this realization to put a good UI on Wolfram Alpha would not be difficult at all. It would not even require removing the giant electronic brain, which could remain as a toy or exploratory feature. Again, it is a perfectly decent toy, and it may even be a reasonable way to explore the space of visualization tools and datasets that WA provides.

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/wolfram-alpha-and-hubristic-user.html

Wonga

2009-07-21T15:50:00.002+02:00

What’s awesome about the Internet is how it breaks up monopolistic markets where middlemen unfairly gobble up outsized fees, leaving us little choice but to keep paying them.

- Techcrunch about Wonga credit service

Thats my vision too. Digital real estate agents anyone? One click Tax-advisor? WWW plumber?

A new debate

2009-07-19T20:59:00.003+02:00

WSJ is jerking around with the Internet.

The way to start a passionate debate today is make a statement no longer than three words, i.e.:
The Future is Free
The Internet is Dead

Great comment Mr. Ben Atlas

2009-07-10T14:51:00.003+02:00

People always knew it, Google is a browser

Seriously

60m east-europeans less

2009-07-07T20:08:00.005+02:00

Europe’s 2008 population of 736 million is projected
to decline to 685 million by 2050 because
of its low country-level TFRs and in spite of
continuing net immigration. The decline, however,
is expected to take place primarily in eastern
and southern Europe. Eastern Europe’s 2008
population of 295 million is projected to decrease
to 231 million by mid-century, while southern
Europe is projected to decrease from 155 million
to 150 million.

http://www.prb.org/pdf08/63.3highlights.pdf

Some thoughts on that:

Austrian economy, that highly gained from the new EU member states, will suffer this demographic shift.

Western and Northern Europe are stable, but require higher automatisation of semis-skilled labor.

More semi-skilled immigration from the south - racist parties gain but society is to old for Nazi-cruelties.

US still dominates the century, due its founding myth its open to skilled labor immigration and is highly competitive.

India, Brazil are the new force, if China doesn't make it to become a mature service economy before it grows too old. Russia will decline.

The Law of Small Numbers

2009-06-29T08:10:00.002+02:00

In this groundbreaking work Ladislaus von Bortkewitsch shows that rare events are Poisson-distributed.

http://www.archive.org/stream/dasgesetzderklei00bortrich#page/n5/mode/2up

The Science of Better

2009-06-25T22:13:00.003+02:00

Damn, it was Operations Research what we were looking for all the time.

http://www.scienceofbetter.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_Research

About the power of innovation

2009-06-07T13:57:00.005+02:00

Advocates of innovation describe it as necessary tool in a recession to regain prosperity.

Shed no doubt on it, but this is a macro-economics truth. For a company it does not make sense at all: the innovation bears a risk and we know from the market equilibrium theory that the risk surcharge is such that the utility equals non-risk investments.

A good theory but do I know my risks? Donald Rumsfeld once made an epistemological speech about unknown unknowns. The probability of innovation taking off, in the end is unknown. But theory behave as they would know, they just don't know that they don't know. So in the end its a Rumsfeld-ian "unknown unknown"?

As always, listen to Mr. Taleb carefully. He designates revenue from innovation in the fourth quadrant.

Flippant Juror

2009-06-05T19:26:00.004+02:00

During lunch I exercised on the "Flippant Juror Problem"

a jury of 3 jurors decides by majority
two jurors are serious experts, they make a right decision with the probability p
one is a jerk, he just flips a coin with probability for head q=1/2 to decide

Is this jury better than a single person who also makes a right decision with the probability p?

The solution is they are equal. Thats indeed counterintuitive! The jerk sabotages the jury.

Annotation: If they would all flip a coin with majority vote it would be also equal to one flip

This leads to a question related to the electoral process with majority vote in general.

Given N voters, how many "coinflippers" M it takes to reduce their probability for right decision to one decision, hmm try to solve that....

Architecture is about the 'Form follows Function' principle

2009-06-01T12:18:00.004+02:00

Functionality should determine the Structure.
If hardware would be perfect, if CPUs would process instantly an infinite amount of input for an extremely complex algorithm. If connectivity would allow for instant access to an infinite amount of data. If our programs could be proven right, never crashed. If nobody could eavesdropping or tamper our system, if one programmer could change the system in every direction at no time... we would not need to think about an architecture. The internal structure of a system would be of no concern.

The limits of given technologies demand counter-measures to support functions, therefore we employ architectural patterns and tactics to circumvent undesired limitations.

Not all technology hurdles can be circumvent in this way, and some functionalities remain unimplementable. Thus a quantum computer would allow more functionality but demand new architectures.

In the next post I will outline the Quality Attribute approach, to design the architecture of a software system out of business functions, given technological constraints

Somebody becomes rich just by luck

2009-05-22T21:08:00.036+02:00

Whenever one is concerned with rare events, events with small probability of occurrence, the Poisson distribution shows up in a natural way. - Falk, Hülser, Reiss

Lets spread some rice corns on a table, each cell represents a person.

Do we expect equal wealth for everyone, given that all have the same virtue and skill?

The Poisson distribution tells us 16 persons get nothing, the probability that you are one of them is 26%.
Over fifty percent get zero or one corn - means they are poor.
Thirtyfour percent are "two or tree corn" people, forming a middle class .

A person on the sunny side of life get four and two very lucky ones get even 5 corns, They are the rich five percent of society

#corn	#people	P(X=corn)
0	16	26%
1	14	35%
2	10	23%
3	6	11%
4	1	4%
5	2	1%	upper-crust

Random distribution of wealth leads to substancial inequality. Some people just make it, while most struggle. Is this the secret formula of "the american dream"?

Representativeness Heuristic

2009-05-17T19:51:00.006+02:00

Finally I concede myself to start with "Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases" even though not finished with the development part of the Bayesian Network book.

The introductory chapter starts promising: the first cognitive antipattern (bias) discussed

Representativeness

When people are asked to judge if:
A belongs to class B
A originates from B
A follows from B

they use representativeness, or similiarity ommiting factors that should influence our judgement

Steve is very shy and withdrawn, helpful, but with little interest in people. He has a need for order and passion for detail.

How do people asess if Steve is engaged in a particular occupation (for example farmer, salesman, librarian, physician)?
They compare the description with the stereotype of e.g. a librarian.
Now have a look at the first fallacy with that: we ommit prior probability of outcomes, in fact we should consider that there are many more farmers than librarians before using the stereotype approach.

We fail to take into account prior probability, especially when given worthless evidence, neither wrong nor suggestive but simply worthless. With prior knowledge of a population of two laywers per engineer and the description

Dick is a 30 years old man. He is married with no children. A man of high ability and high motivation, he promises to be quite succesfull in his field. He is well liked by his colleagues.

The experiment shows that overall, the sample judged the chance of Dick being an engineer is fifty fifty!
Prior probabilities play an important role in Bayesian Networks, thus fixing our biased judgement.

"Over Christmas, Allen Newell and I created a thinking machine"

2009-05-05T02:59:00.005+02:00

A quote honoring Pittsburgh and its "son" Herbert Simon, who also said (in 1971!): What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. Actually I desperately need his biography, he seems to be a crucial proponent with the study of human decision-making, behavioral economics and AI.

Best lecture I saw today.