Kaiser Fung, founder of Principal Analytics Prep, comments on the fake data and fraud problem in digital advertising, and calls on data scientists and analysts to rise up to the challenge.
Kaiser Fung, founder of Principal Analytics Prep, comments on the fake data and fraud problem in digital advertising, and calls on data scientists and analysts to rise up to the challenge.
Kaiser Fung, founder of Junk Charts and Principal Analytics Prep, the next-gen data analytics bootcamp, discusses ethical issues concerning Uber's collection of user data from smartphone apps.
Kaiser Fung, founder of Principal Analytics Prep and author of Numbersense, discusses a recent legal ruling against LinkedIn's technologies that restricts web scraping.
Kaiser Fung, founder of Principal Analytics Prep and founding director of Applied Analytics at Columbia, calls for reform in the digital advertising industry to address concerns about measurability and accountability
Kaiser Fung, founder of Principal Analytics Prep and author of Numbersense, reacts to the news that Roomba captures detailed maps of people's homes.
Scott Pruitt, the EPA chief, continues to make innumerate comments about his personal views on climate change science. His chief accusation - chanted often - is that we need more "precision". In his view, achieving 100% precision is necessary because it removes all uncertainty, allowing lawmakers to take action. This post is inspired by his latest interview in which he is encouraging a TV debate event to air out the…
New York Times reports that Harvard rescinded admission offers to 10 students (link). These kids allegedly engaged in horrible behavior on "private" chatrooms online. Not reported is how Harvard admission officers got a hold of such information. Is it possible there are jealous classmates? I am not condoning the bad behavior - I put this link up to remind people: (a) no data are private, not even "deleted" data (b)…
The New York Times Magazine has been publishing some pieces that directly relate to a couple of my blog posts. In this article, Amanda Hess noticed that "privacy became a commodity for the rich and powerful." This echoes my blog post on "Data is the next frontier of equal rights." Hess discussed the asymmetry and hypocrisy of the situation whereby the same businesses and business executives that are wantonly stripping…
When Hillary Clinton unexpectedly lost the election in November 2016, it was high time for pundits to espouse their pet theories for the shocking losses suffered by the Democrats at all levels of government. The usual suspects were put on parade, such as “Bernie Bros” who abstained from voting and the “deplorables” who voted against their own interests. For the first time, two unlikely entities faced scrutiny: the social-media giant,…
There has been a barrage of negative publicity related to Uber recently. The latest salvo is a long article in the New York Times (link). This piece focuses on Uber's CEO, who was trained as a computer engineer, but my interest lies primarily in several revelations about how Uber collects and uses customer data. The key episode picked up by various outlets (e.g. TechCrunch, Wired) involves Uber "secretly identifying and…
