Don Kasprzak

Latest Read: The Data Detective

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date November 3, 2021

The Data Detective Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics by Tim Harford. Tim is a member of the Financial Times editorial board writing the column The Undercover Economist. Tim also hosts the BBC Podcast on statistics called More or Less.

This is a very good book providing much needed insights to understand the flood of statistics that are available online everywhere today from news organizations to non-profits, and especially marketing firms representing various clients.

Tim certainly presents solid lessons addressing today’s numerous infographics that dominate many webpages and blogs.

This can certainly viewed as an updated version of How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff. Ultimately, Tim wants readers to better understand data from the world that is pushed into our browsers everyday.

In this book, readers will understand truth with statistics. Tim provides ten rules to interpret statistics. Presenting data without understanding the ground rules can (and often) misdirects the reader. Sometimes on purpose.

In addition, Tim provides great insights and stories that help reveal how to overcome types of statistics that play upon one’s emotional intelligence.

Tags statistics, The Data Detective, Tim Harford

Artificial Intelligence Education Google Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: Artificial Intelligence

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date October 28, 2021

Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell. Melanie holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Michigan. Melanie is a professor of computer science at Portland State University. In addition, she is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

It is certainly very rare that a book makes an impact like Melanie’s effort. Actually, this is one rare event: I would recommend everyone read her prologue “Terrified” regardless of their life’s path. Yes, this book is that powerful.

Furthermore, Melanie studied with a leading cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter at Michigan and collaborated to create the Copycat program, which makes creative analogies in an idealized world.

Upon finishing the prologue, everyone should certainly continue reading. This is an easy to read, yet deep examination of the current state of artificial intelligence.

In addition, Melanie provides a good history of artificial intelligence (AI), from inception in 1954 to multiple “freezes” in AI funding to the promise of amazing breakthroughs and shocking failures. Every element for better or worse is evenly written. Bravo!

Certainly the most impressive points across each chapter is how Melanie grounds user’s expectations of AI versus the hype. This is both from the consumer to artificial intelligence engineers.

Tags Artificial Intelligence, Melanie Mitchell

Artificial Intelligence Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: How Smart Machines Think

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date October 23, 2021

How Smart Machines Think by Sean Gerrish. Sean is a Senior Engineering Manager at Google leading machine learning and data science teams. He holds a PhD in machine learning from Princeton.

This book is providing readers with a wonderful overview to advances in artificial intelligence, and specifically how machine leaning is now the most popular subset of AI.

How Smart Machines Think is addressing three key areas that reveal the leaps in advancements of machine learning development: The DAPRA Grand Challenge, the Netflix recommendation engine, and Neural Networks.

Each section is well written, providing above all, deep insights tied to objectives driving new business models.

While Sean is certainly providing a solid grounding in algorithms and their methodologies, I was certainly surprised at the depth of autonomous vehicles, recommendation engines, and game-playing. The larger lessons from his book include amazing progress in neural networks.

Machine Learning for autonomous vehicles

Clearly Sean understands the full picture of how this emerging technology began. The 2004 initial contest found team only to achieve a small distance, perhaps less than twenty five percent of the course before their AI systems failed.

Tags Artificial Intelligence, Innovation, machine learning, Sean Gerrish, Smart Machines

Artificial Intelligence Education Network Reading

Latest Read: Grokking AI Algorithms

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date October 16, 2021

Grokking Artificial Intelligen ce Algorithms: Understand and apply the core algorithms of deep learning and artificial intelligence by Rishal Hurbans. Rishal is a technologist, founder, and international speaker.

He previously launched Viszen, a SaaS platform in his native South Africa. Today Rishal is a Business Solutions Manager at Entelect. In addition, Rishal founded Artificial Intelligence South Africa (AISA).

The Grokking series from Manning is certainly a wonderfully illustrated series of books helping users of all ages embrace algorithms.

At the same time I would recommend the Grokking series to long time computer users. The reason for their success is indeed a combination of illustrations with code examples. This is providing readers with multiple views of the numerous algorithms that provide the base structure of algorithms.

In addition, the series is a very plain-language approach. This makes learning a certainly challenging topic perfect for readers of any age, providing easy to learn concepts and terms. Rishal has even all the python code from this book online.

The code provided allows easy experimentation. In addition, Grokking Artificial Intelligence Algorithms uses illustrations, exercises, and jargon-free explanations to teach fundamental AI concepts. Okay, it may be fair to say you will be recalling high school algebra.

Tags Aditya Y. Bhargava, Artificial Intelligence, Grokking Algorithms, python

Education Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: How Innovation Works

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date October 14, 2021

How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley. Matt is a British journalist best known for his writings on science, the environment, and economics in The Times. He holds a seat in the British House of Lords.

Matt is certainly writing against government regulation and big business across many established and emerging fields: energy, transportation, food, and computing. Regulation and big businesses are hampering innovation due to oversight. He also addresses early innovations including farming and taming animals including dogs.

Every chapter is certainly intriguing. Vast amounts of stories and historical facts drove each innovation. Matt obviously makes it certainly clear that innovation is within democratic countries where freedom allows for ideas to flourish, leading to inventions.

Chapter 2, focusing upon Public Health innovation certainly reminds the reader how vaccines developed to curb the loss of lives across many continents in our global history. A very refreshing chapter for our COVID era. On the other hand, this would be publishing in May 2020, at the beginning of our pandemic.

The first airplane

Chapter 3, Transport has a particularly great recollection of The Wright Brothers innovation. Unquestionably, this storyline is parallel to Simon Sinek’s Start With Why, and reveals more details to the road both brothers took in finding success at Kitty Hawk.

Many readers will be captivated by the research Matt delivers in round after round of amazing stories of innovation not by the inventor, but rather by those who saw a vision of how inventions lay the foundation of innovations.

Tags Eniac, Innovation, Matt Ridley