NYU Data Science newsletter – September 1, 2015

GROUP CURATION: N/A

“There is a paradigm shift in the treatment of cancer as we move to precision medicine,” said Dr. Lincoln Nadauld of Intermountain Healthcare, a large system of hospitals and clinics based in Utah. “But that doesn’t mean the outcomes are going to be perfect in every case.”

If there’s one skill almost everyone agrees schools should be teaching, it’s critical thinking, although what, exactly, critical thinking consists of is conveniently left undefined. For the longest time, I preferred to believe that it meant learning to be skeptical about words, specifically the arguments, exhortations, and beguilements foisted upon the public by politicians, advertisers, corporations, and the dodgier elements of the press. As a former English major, I figured I had this one nailed; if there was anything I mastered in college, it’s the ability to find the hidden and sometimes manipulative meanings in language.

If you believe you use data to improve lives in the New York City area, we need to hear your voice. In early 2016, BetaNYC will convene the metropolitan area’s open data users and host a two day conference placing data at the service of community.

Complete the Metropolitan School of Data Census

In today’s application-centric business world, nothing matters more than an application’s performance and ability to handle massive data growth. The problem is that Content Management Systems (CMS), which are integral to many applications, are increasingly burdened by performance and scale issues. It’s not their fault, though. In the case of WordPress and Drupal?—?which, together, make up over 70 percent of the CMS platform market and run 25 percent of all web sites?—?the culprit is their backend MySQL database.

MySQL has inherent limitations around concurrent uploads, indexing and scaling, and difficulties handling heavy inquiries and plug-ins?—?all of which get in the way of Drupal- and WordPress-based applications performing optimally.

… Many of the base hardware technologies on which robots depend—particularly computing, data storage, and communications—have been improving at exponential growth rates. Two newly blossoming technologies—Cloud Robotics and Deep Learning—could leverage these base technologies in a virtuous cycle of explosive growth.

We cover many emerging markets in the startup ecosystem. Previously, we published posts that summarized Financial Technology, Internet of Things, Bitcoin, and MarTech in six visuals. This week, we do the same with Artificial Intelligence (AI). At this time, we are tracking 855 AI companies across 13 categories, with a combined funding amount of $8.75billion.

… from a human rights and human security perspective, knowledge gaps have emerged, particularly for situations that extend beyond crisis response or where aggregate data is inadequate. Take human trafficking, for example, which infringes on fundamental rights, and has broader security implications. What if mobile phone records or online data could be collected and analyzed in real time to locate someone who is being exploited or the perpetrator of the violation? At what point should these individuals be identified, how can the information be verified, how should the data be shared, who should have access, and what would count as evidence in a prosecution?