The following is a new version of the About Page. Gradually getting this website organized the way I want it. I have always been fascinated with prediction. As an undergraduate I made stock predictors on the first PCs and lost money in 1987. Studied maths, statistics and started a PhD in ecological prediction. Developed betting systems and lost money. Studied algorithms for predicting species distributions and developed GARP which other people used for cool things like finding new species of Read more [...] none

The paper by S.J. Phillips, R.P. Anderson, and R.E. Schapire -- A maximum entropy approach to species distribution modeling -- introduces to niche modelers for the first time the Maximum Entropy approach well known in machine learning. They also provide the Maxent software for predicting species distribution using Maxent, and evaluate against a well know method called DesktopGARP in predicting the distribution of two Neotropical mammals, a sloth Bradypus variegatus and a rodent Microryzomys minutus. The Read more [...] 6 com

Finally, one journalist has the message right: Duane Freese in his article -- “Hockey Stick Shortened?” -- at TechCentralStation reports on the National Academy of Sciences report "Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years". Repetition of the consensus view of strong evidence of recent global warming is not newsworthy. Increase in the uncertainty of the Millennial temperature record is. He says: The most gratifying thing about the National Academy of Science panel Read more [...] 14 com

The trial of Hwang Woo Suk has begun, and it would be a good time to clarify some of the issues to be adjudicated. Hwang was indicted on charges of fraud, embezzlement and bioethics violations. Hwang has admitted ethical lapses in human egg procurement for his research. As to embezzlement charges, prosecutors say Hwang used bank accounts held by relatives and subordinates in 2002 and 2003 to receive contributions from private organizations, laundered the money by withdrawing it all in cash, breaking Read more [...] 4 com

What is 'results management'? Accountants and auditors are often concerned with various kinds of alteration of figures, a practice euphemistically called 'earnings management'. For example in "An Assessment of the Change in the Incidence of Earnings Management around the Enron-Andersen Episode" - Mark Nigrini In 2001 Enron filed amended financial statements setting off a chain of events starting with its bankruptcy filing and including the conviction of Arthur Andersen for obstruction of justice. Read more [...] 2 com

The NAS report has been chastised here and here for concluding that it is “plausible” that the “Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium” while at the same time conceding that every statistical criticism of MBH is correct, disowning MBH claims to statistical skill for individual decades and years, and finding little confidence in reconstructions of surface temperatures from Read more [...] 19 com

The play by Rolin Jones "The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow" is a tale of science fueled by post-adolescent angst with a brilliant young woman who excels at rocket science but can’t leave her bedroom. Driven by a real life quest to find her biological mother, she pilfers parts from her government rocket project and builds a replica of herself, named Jenny Chow to meet her real birth mother in China, by proxy. <img src="http://www.yale.edu/opa/v33.n7/story7.jpg" The publicity Read more [...] 46 com

The seasons are natural climate variations, a word derived from the Latin satin, act of sowing, from satus, past participle of serere, to plant. Seasonings enhance the flavor of food, add zest to speeches, make us competent through trials and troops seasoned by battle. The variability of our environment keeps life interesting. Eagerly awaited is the release on Thursday, June 22 of the report of the National Academy of Sciences on ' Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years', Read more [...] none

Resources: Controversial Topics -- a source for new important information on Ecological Niche Modeling emerging from nightly searches for new images, web pages, videos, news articles and scientific articles. Downloads: Peer-reviewed PDF's on niche modelling theory, practice, biodiversity and information infrastructure. David R.B. Stockwell, Improving ecological niche models by data mining large environmental datasets for surrogate models, Ecological Modelling 192 (2006) 188–196. PDF Stockwell, Read more [...] 9 com

Summary: Predictive modelling shows the response of the BTS is an asymptotic function of precipitation, with no real upper limit. It would therefore be a threat to all tropical areas no matter how high the rainfall. Resources: Controversial Topics -- a source for new important information on Brown Tree Snake emerging from nightly searches for new images, web pages, videos, news articles and scientific articles. The Brown Tree Snake (BTS) is a significant threat to many native species where it has Read more [...] 3 com

Avian flu (also "bird flu", "avian influenza", etc), is a flu from Influenza A viruses that have adapted to birds. As of 2006, "avian flu" refers to a particular subtype of Influenza A, H5N1, currently the world's major flu pandemic threat. "Though human-to-human transmission of avian flu still has not been confirmed scientifically, you need to take precautions while covering the issue in the field,” Professor Luhur Suroso. While human-to-human transmission has not been confirmed (although Read more [...] one

Stung by a string of controversies, corrections and frauds, and inspired we hope by the work of science bloggers in reinstating a culture of broad scientific debate, Nature magazine has instituted a what it calls a 'Peer Review Trial'. In Nature's peer review trial, lasting for three months, authors can choose to have their submissions posted on a preprint server for open comments, in parallel with the conventional peer review process. Anyone in the field may then post comments, provided they are Read more [...] none

Here is another prediction quiz, again suggested by Demetris Koutsoyiannis, a little different to the one that challenged readers here. In this case the quiz is not to guess the underlying model (exact solution) but to find an assumed model or technique of any type that can give good predictions based on the past statistical behaviour, autocorrelation, or perhaps reconstructed dynamics (in case of ANN or chaotic nonlinear methods). The time series given in the text file neomail.txt (500 values) Read more [...] none

Predictive models for business analytics often involve very complex data-mining and other statistical techniques. Here is a simple, efficient way of predicting using images that reduces the prediction process to its bare essentials. All models are essentially generalizations -- simplifications into patterns that enable extrapolation into the unknown. As such, one of the simplest forms of generalization is categorization, where a large number of dissimilar items are sorted into a smaller number of Read more [...] none

The conventional approach to information systems is 'three-tiered': consisting of a database, and analysis system and a presentation system. For example, a low-cost system for predictive business analytics might use a MySQL database, the statistics languge R for analytics, and a browser for presentation of results. While there are advantages in partitioning clearly delineating levels, inefficiencies and errors introduced when transferring data between levels, particularly in the reading and writing Read more [...] none

Business decision-making using information such as customer profiles to predict returns on investment is coming to be know as the Predictive Enterprise (PE). While business analytics -- or 'quants' -- are not new, engineering a greater a degree of sophistication and integration of predictive modeling into business processes and structures is showing high returns for many industries. A range of software tools for the predictive enterprise are beginning to be available. Well known vendors like SPSS Read more [...] one

Hans Erren brought to my notice a study he did on artifacts in the Quelccaya ice core record, first observed by Steve McIntyre (of climateaudit.org). I thought I would run this through benford() to see if it could pick up the problem. The study is here at Hans' home site and the dataset is here at the NOAA data archive. Here the original figure with the artifact shown as fanned out lines. According to Hans' study the artifact is caused by rounding up of the accumulation results to whole Read more [...] 4 com