PR-to-scientific sentiment ratio for products

In high school economics we learn that 20th century economic theory was more-or-less based on the assumption of rational actors: people and corporations allocate assets such that overall utility is maximized. A more recent vein of research, behavioral economics, makes an argument that feels self-evident in hindsight: people don't make rational decisions at all times, but are in fact often motivated by completely irrational internal or external factors.

In their recent book (reviewed here), Akerlof and Shiller go further to suggest that people are not only making sometimes irrational decisions but that they are beguiled into thinking they need things they don't. More than that, they argue that the very nature of capitalism guarantees this kind of behavior from companies.

Phishermen know how to give rise to temptations, thus generating novel “needs.”

This has to be a disturbing thought to anyone in the technology industry. Are we fulfilling actual needs people have, or monkey-on-the-shoulder needs invented out of whole cloth?

I think we can safely say that we do need more products that help consumers make better decisions about purchases. One somewhat snarky app I'd like to have would scan a product barcode and do a quick calculation of a lobbyist/PR-to-scientific research sentiment ratio. The higher the ratio the more suspicious the product: a company that spends tons on PR and lobbyists but which scientific research has found to be problematic is probably pushing something that is not in the public's best interest.

Measuring the impact of sports on mental state

I know Steph Curry didn't do this last night. pic.twitter.com/BgIst8oRIj

— Dynamics • £ (@theDYNAMICS) October 6, 2015

Dios Mio. Stephortless.

My favorite thing about this is how ecstatic everyone is.

Sports are often poo-pooed in academia, but they are a big part of most people's lives. Perhaps it would help their legitimacy if we had better data on the extent to which they improve people's moods. This is difficult to get a handle on and might require mining social media posts, etc, to get a rough sense of how being a fan changes people's outlook, emotional state, and overall health.

One thing I suspect is that the negative effects of alcohol might well erase most of the benefits of positive affect. Still, surely enjoying Curry or The Brow over 1 or 2 drinks with friends makes ones life better in a measurable way.

Design pattern recommender

Good artists copy; great artists steal. - P. Picasso (sort of)

Designers, artists, and engineers for that matter are always looking for ideas to integrate into or inspire their own work. This is one reason why Tumblr and Pinterest sites are popular, especially among visual designers: they make it easy for people to mine past work for new ideas.

This research, which uses deep learning to suggest fonts that match those captured in images, can be similarly useful. The difference is that in this case designers can use the real world to not only inspire them but also put them well on their way to utilizing found fonts in their own work.

What other types of recommender systems could be based on image or video recordings of physical objects? Could a photo link you to an architectural design pattern? A chair style? An approach to color use? Layout organization? Dance style?

Clearing up some confusion: Lone Tree Prairie

I am taking a break from ideas to write-up a mystery that I've cleared up for myself.

The Forest of Nisene Marks is a remarkable area, especially for old growth redwoods. Most folks are familiar with the Advocate Tree near the front of the park, but that barely scratches the surface. At any rate, for a long while I've been a little confused about Lone Tree Prairie. Now after revisiting the site at Aptos Creek Fire Road I see that my issue stems from the fact that the Amended General Plan for The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park is riddled with inaccuracies. Chief among them is confusing Lone Tree Prarie with Sheep Camp Meadow.

It is a reasonable mistake to make. There is no prairie at Lone Tree Prairie, only an old growth redwood (which the plan calls the "Hollow Tree" but which everyone else calls Lone Tree). The two combinations of maps shows that this is the case. First, from the USGS:

And now Google Maps:

From these two maps you can see that there is no prairie at Lone Tree Prairie, but there is one further up the trail. This is Sheep Camp Meadow. For verification we can reference Jeff Thomson's guide to the park:

The Plan makes this mistake everywhere, even labeling grassland where there is none:

Again, this mistake surely comes from confusing Lone Tree Prarie and Sheep Camp Meadow.

I think the fact that the Plan is so error prone clears up another point of confusion for me. It notes that there is a virgin redwood 60 feet to the east of the "Hollow Tree". I've explored the are thoroughly: there isn't. However, there is pretty clearly one to the west. A copy editing mistake, I'm now sure.

Update

It looks like OpenStreetMap also gets the location wrong. Huh.

Lists and implicit prioritization

• One problem
• with lists is that
• something has to be first
• and something has to be 
• last.

This fundamental property of lists is useful for priorization, but problematic when all items should be weighted more-or-less the same or when items can't be organized ordinally. For me, this problem has come up most often when listing authors on academic papers. I've co-written several papers on which each author contributed equally, but nonetheless someone had to be listed first (more than once we resorted to coin flips to figure out author order).

For academic papers there might be a somewhat straightforward solution. Authors usually list their affiliation and contact information just below their name. You could use this same space to list their role with respect to the paper. This could be an indicator of contribution level (primary, secondary, etc.) or explicitly refer to roles (intern, mentor, editor, coordinator, implementor, designer, evaluator, etc.). Obviously you'd want to allow authors to add multiple tags, duplicate tags, or ignore them altogether.

I'm not sure this generalizes to all lists, but it's a start.

Neighborhood digital library

It would be great to have something like this, but for digital documents. The Plasma Poster is one approach, but I think the reason this works is because there's not much of value here (and no electrical components to maintain).

But how can we share digital documents at a completely analog kiosk? We need a way of pressing a link to a document (e.g., a QR-code) into paper. One approach might be a light activated stamp ink. That way you could display a QR code on your phone screen, make an impression in the stamp, then stamp a piece of paper that you could leave at the library. Another low-fi approach (from the kiosk's perspective anyway) would be deformable phone screens. The screen could then deform to match a QR code. With a piece of paper placed over the screen and a pencil you could then easily create a rubbing of the code.

Better MOOCs

I think MOOCs are the electric cars of academia: poor performance out-of-the-gate but ultimately better in almost every way. Particularly promising are MOOCs focused on tailored, individualized education recreating "one-on-one tutoring" that students get in office hours. This is an approach that academics should be excited about because adaptive instruction will surely drive up the demand for lecturers. Cost savings to students will come from eliminating the brick-and-morter rubbish (stadiums, amenities, and the admins needed to run them).

I recently witnessed a purely digital course that had some flavor of this new model. Students were engaging with each other, course notes and questions, and the professor more than I've seen in most physical classrooms. One of the great benefits of a pure digital approach is that the professor can easily rearrange everything: a lecture goes to a breakout to a group discussion with a button click. Oh and? There’s no sitting at the back of the room playing Minecraft, etc. (Of course, the quality of the instructor still matters immensely, and in that regard the students of this class were very lucky.)