NYU Data Science newsletter – May 19, 2016

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A federal watchdog agency is examining whether financial regulators are doing enough to collaborate and share information to prevent another economic crisis, a senior agency official told Reuters on Wednesday.

As part of its investigation, the U.S. Government Accountability Office is considering whether some regulators ought to be merged to function better, Orice Williams Brown, managing director of financial markets and community investment at the GAO, told the Reuters Financial Regulation Summit in Washington.

There’s been no shortage of hype about the relationship between cities and data, especially so-called big data. For large numbers of tech companies, cities, and even a growing number of urbanists, data promises to solve all manner of urban problems, from predictive policing to improving traffic flow to promoting energy efficiency.

An even bigger potential role for new kinds of data lies in helping researchers and policy-makers better understand how cities and neighborhoods grow and evolve—but only if done right.

Also: in interdisciplinary urban data research:

The fourth urban revolution (May 15, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Opinion)

Use our infographics to explore the rise of the urban planet (May 19, Science, Latest News)

The big reveals from the technology giant’s annual developer conference.

Sundar Pichai, who takes the I/O stage for the first time since becoming CEO in October, says he’s on a “journey” from mobile to AI. Good thing he has an assistant.

Also, from Google I/O:

“Aw, so cute!”: Allo helps you respond to shared photos (May 18, Google Research Blog, Ariel Fuxman)

Google’s Making Its Own Chips Now. Time for Intel to Freak Out (May 19, WIRED, Business)

Android N, Daydream VR, Google Home and more: Everything announced at Google I/O 2016 (May 18, CNET)

Annotated slides from Mike Kuniavsky’s recent presentation.

New research from Learning House aims to help colleges and universities think about the future of higher education. While many of the findings should not be a surprise to those inside the evolving educational landscape, Growth Opportunities in Higher Education: Degrees and Alternate Pathways, may provide some external validation of strategic plans at colleges and universities across the country.

The report projects high-demand online bachelor’s, master’s, MBA and doctoral degree programs of the future, along with alternative learning pathways that are bound to gain in popularity.

What does Peter Norvig do exactly at Google?

One of the great things at Google is that there’s always something new; you can’t really fall into a set routine. That’s true on a week-to-week basis as we respond to a fast-paced world, and it is certainly true on a year-to-year basis as my role has changed. I’ve varied from having two to two hundred people reporting to me, which means that sometimes I have very clear technical insight for every one of the projects I’m involved with, and sometimes I have a higher-level view, and I have to trust my teams to do the right thing. In those cases, my role is more one of communication and matchmaker

We invite you to submit a paper to be presented, or to submit your name as discussant or as an attendee, at the seventh annual research conference on “New Directions in Analyzing Text as Data” that will be held at Northeastern University on October 14-15, 2016.

Boston, MA Friday-Saturday, October 14-15 at Northeastern University.

Deadline for abstract submissions is Monday, June 20.

Many application development platforms market themselves as true “low-code” or “no-code” options for business, but few can actually pull it off. Appian Quick Apps—a new capability in the latest release of the Appian business process management (BPM) platform—lets users create a fully functioning web or mobile app in a completely visual interface without typing a single line of code.

If you’ve been thinking about trying the big-data capabilities of Microsoft R Server but wanted to check out the documentation first, you’re in luck: the complete Microsoft R Server documentation is now available on MSDN (and is accessible to anyone).