New Deep Learning Tool Will Write Code and Develop Apps | Technology - Edgy Labs

Researchers from the Rice University’s Intelligent Software Systems Laboratory developed a deep learning tool that acts as a coding search engine. 

Photo: Edgy Labs

The said AI tool could help programmers write code snippets containing Java application programming interfaces (APIs).

The new system dubbed as BAYOU was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Google.

While the technology is still new, it is considered an artificial intelligence breakthrough that could make coding quicker and easier for human developers. Since Bayou works like a search engine, developers could just enter a few keywords and see codes in JAVA that could help them in their tasks.
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Source: Edgy Labs (blog)

Google Kubeflow, machine learning for Kubernetes, begins to take shape | Enterprise - TechCrunch

"Ever since Google created Kubernetes as an open source container orchestration tool, it has seen it blossom in ways it might never have imagined. As the project gains in popularity, we are seeing many adjunct programs develop" notes Ron Miller, enterprise reporter at TechCrunch.

Photo: Getty Images

Today, Google announced the release of version 0.1 of the Kubeflow open source tool, which is designed to bring machine learning to Kubernetes containers.

While Google has long since moved Kubernetes into the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, it continues to be actively involved, and Kubeflow is one manifestation of that. The project was only first announced at the end of last year at Kubecon in Austin, but it is beginning to gain some momentum.

David Aronchick, who runs Kubeflow for Google, led the Kubernetes team for 2.5 years before moving to Kubeflow. He says the idea behind the project is to enable data scientists to take advantage of running machine learning jobs on Kubernetes clusters. Kubeflow lets machine learning teams take existing jobs and simply attach them to a cluster without a lot of adapting.
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Source: TechCrunch 

Queen’s University: student tips for surviving life on campus | Macleans.ca

Best place for a nap: Grab a booth on the fourth floor of Stauffer Library
Best cheap lunch: Queen’s Pub, or the famous Lazy Scholar
Best hangover breakfast: Tommy’s breakfast poutine wins every time
Favourite watering hole: Stone City Ales is a great place to grab a local pint
Perks of living in this town: Anything you need is just a short walk away, and an even shorter bike ride
Best place to study: Common Ground Coffeehouse or the Tea Room
Weirdest tradition: If weird traditions are your thing, apply to Queen’s engineering
Best campus events: Homecoming and St. Patrick’s Day
Best giveaway: Take a walk through the University District during move-out week
Best live music venue: The Grad Club, right on campus

PROFILE: Queen’s University | Kingston, Ont. | Founded 1841 

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Iain Sherriff-Scott inform, "The best places to study, take a nap or grab a greasy breakfast." 

First-year mathematics and statistics students attend a lab led by Professor Peter Taylor in Geoffrey Hall on campus at Queens University in Kingston, ON. The lab promotes interaction between professor and student enabling a hands on approach that is lost during populous lectures in large rooms.
Photo: Coel Garside

Despite being small geographically, you can’t help but feel like Queen’s University is a big place when you first arrive here. Orientation week at a campus boasting 27,000 students can be dizzying. But as a first-year student, you’ll quickly get accustomed to life in the limestone city. With the Student Wellness Centre set to be completed by spring 2018, campus is becoming more accessible than ever.

The ease of getting involved at Queen’s is one of the university’s greatest assets. The Alma Mater Society, Canada’s oldest student government, offers an incredibly wide variety of clubs, committees, organizations and services. Whether you are passionate about sustainability, human rights, politics or campus journalism, chances are Queen’s has you covered.

As a freshman, you will encounter a host of unique and exciting experiences to supplement your academics. With new degree options, like the interdisciplinary politics, philosophy and economics (PPE) specialization, incoming students can choose a plan with a broader scope. Another way to diversify your experience is to take one of Queen’s’ new certificates. With undergraduate certificates in business and law, students have the opportunity to explore fields unrelated to their degree. If you’re eager to study abroad, dive into life at Queen’s liberal arts campus in East Sussex, England. The centuries-old Herstmonceux Castle hosts a small-scale community of just over 100 students every semester.

So don’t be intimidated by the fanfare of frosh week. You’ll find a unique place here to explore your interests and passions.
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Source: Macleans.ca

Math department will not retain lecturers for financial actuarial courses | Campus - Daily Bruin

"Students and faculty in the financial actuarial mathematics major have expressed anger and confusion over the Department of Mathematics’ decision to not rehire any of the eight lecturers in the program" inform Allison Ong, Daily Bruin Reporter.

Photo: Daily Bruin

The department announced changes to the FAM program to students by email on March 12 and April 11. It said introducing new courses in fall 2018 would improve the financial math curriculum and emphasize the growing role of data science in the field. Some new classes, such as Topics in Financial Engineering, have revised their syllabuses to reflect the changes in the program.

As part of the overhaul, the department is also replacing all lecturers in the program with ladder faculty, which is faculty with tenure or on track to receive tenure, said UCLA spokesperson Ricardo Vazquez.

Loong Kong, assistant adjunct professor and program director, said he thinks the administration delivered conflicting and inaccurate reports of the changes, at times rescinding statements it made on the rehiring decision that were announced at previous meetings.

Kong said he first learned about the decision in a Jan. 23 meeting with William Duke, the chair of the mathematics department, and Don Blasius, undergraduate vice chair of the mathematics department. There, he was told that FAM lecturers would not be reappointed once they reached a 12-quarter teaching limit, and was later told that the lecturers’ union imposed the term limit on the department. Two lecturers would be immediately terminated before spring 2018, including one who had been scheduled to teach, he said.

Patty Boyle, chair of the Actuarial Advisory Council, which is composed of graduates and industry actuaries that advise the program, said she called the lecturers’ union, University Council-American Federation of Teachers, asking whether they were involved in the decision to not rehire the lecturers. A union spokesperson told her they were not, she said.

Vazquez said UCLA cannot comment on personnel matters, and that departments make re-hiring decisions annually based on collective bargaining provisions with the lecturers’ union. He added the department is searching for replacements with doctoral degrees in financial mathematics.

Students and faculty said they think actuarial-certified teachers can give students real-world insight into actuarial careers.
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Source: Daily Bruin

When it comes to math, attitude is everything | Roanoke Times

"When it comes to math, attitude is everything" says Esther J. Cepeda, The Washington Post Writers Group.

Photo: ADAM ZYGLIS | The Buffalo News

I’m not going to name names or call anyone out (you know who you are), but if I hear one more educator mindlessly say, “I hate math,” I think I’m going to explode.

I’m not just talking about saying “I hate math” in the teachers’ lounge or at professional-development sessions — though, trust me, I’ve heard it a ton in these places. I mean right in front of students — at school assemblies, in the hallways and, yes, in classrooms.

The last complaint I heard went like this: “I hate math because there’s only one right answer.”

“Yes,” I scream inside my head as I clench my fists in frustration. “But, almost always, there are several methods to finding that answer. Probably even one that would make perfect sense to you if you’d just stop telling yourself you ‘hate math’!”

The reason for math’s bad rap is that the very same teachers and parents who have psychic scars from their own inability to correctly memorize their multiplication tables in the fourth grade are today completely flummoxed by elementary school kids’ homework.

Contemporary math involves learning alternative ways of performing operations. For instance, multiplication is practiced by using tools like grouping, the Box Method, and a host of other avenues for doing multi-digit multiplication.

This causes non-math teachers and parents endless frustration. Just ask cartoon superhero Mr. Incredible, who, in the trailer for “Incredibles 2,” gets angry about not being able to help young Dash with his homework and snaps: “Why would they change math? Math is math!”...

Researchers at the Stanford School of Medicine recently made a direct causal link between a positive attitude toward math and achievement in the subject.

They surveyed children 7 to 10, on a variety of factors and gave them arithmetic problems and even MRI brain scans. The researchers found that “math performance correlated with a positive attitude toward math even after statistically controlling for IQ, working memory, math anxiety, general anxiety and general attitude toward academics ... Children with poor attitudes toward math rarely performed well in the subject, while those with strongly positive attitudes had a range of math achievement.”...

Follow this easy rule: If you can’t say anything nice about math, just don’t say anything at all.
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Source: Roanoke Times (blog) 

Millions of Brits underestimating life expectancy by a decade | The Actuary

"Millions of UK adults aged 40-54 are underestimating how long they are likely to live by around a decade, potentially leaving their financial security at risk in later life" according to Chris Seekings, News reporter.

Unrealistic life expectancies
Photo: Shutterstock

Research by Just Group has found that men of this age expect to live to 78.9 on average, despite government projections suggesting they are likely to live closer to 87.5.

Women in this ‘Generation X’ age bracket expect to live to 80.5 instead of the official forecast of 90.1, with Just Group communications director, Stephen Lowe, warning that underestimating could have “toxic consequences”.

“Nearly a million members of Generation X are set to arrive at age 55 every year for the next decade or so, and will face crucial decisions about whether to take pension money or leave it to keep growing,” he said.

“Without a realistic idea of how long they will need that pension fund to last, it will be difficult to make an informed decision – many people already seem to be making decisions their older selves are going to regret.”

The research shows that life expectancies become more realistic as people get older, with the estimates of those over 70 not far off official projections.

It was found that men aged between 40 and 44 underestimate their life expectancy by approximately 12.1 years on average, but actually overestimate by half a year once they are 75-79 years old.
Similarly, women aged 40-44 predict they will live 10.4 years less than the government projections suggest, with this narrowing to 2.1 years once they are aged 75-79.
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Source: The Actuary

We need to move to a 'Digital Insurance 2.0' world, it is urged | Insurance Business

Photo: Lucy Hook

"Ready for a makeover? Well that’s exactly what the industry needs, according to one firm which says that a transition is needed from ‘Insurance 1.0’ to ‘Digital Insurance 2.0’" notes Lucy Hook, currently a news editor at Insurance Business.

Photo: Insurance Business

According to software and services provider Majesco, change and disruption in the industry – affecting people, technology and market boundaries – is pressuring insurers to adapt and embrace new business models and opportunities – an example of ‘digital Darwinism.’

In the rapid shift to the digital age, the insurance industry is being pushed towards a new incarnation in which new products, channels, services and business models are being introduced, according to the firm. In order to survive and win, industry players will need to architect and build a ‘Digital Insurance 2.0’ business model that will make today’s model obsolete.

The industry in its current form – ‘Insurance 1.0’ – has been built around a traditional operating model and a set of basic market assumptions that were widely based on the previous generations’ behaviours, attendees of an MGAA market briefing in London were told this week.

But significant change is now happening at an unprecedented pace.
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Source: Insurance Business 

How to Lie with Information Security Statistics | Big Data - Computer Business Review

A lack of good data plagues security metrics… 

Photo: Computer Business Review

Any business enthusiast for constructive ambiguity might blanch at the uncompromisingly direct title “How To Lie With Statistics“; although they probably read this short and powerful text on their MBA course. Maybe, like me, they read it many years ago: the dated examples just add to the book’s charm (it was published in 1954).

This text was my introduction to critical thinking. For starters, here’s how to deal with crime: “Theodore Roosevelt, as president of the reform Police Board, was seriously embarrassed. He put an end to the crime wave simply by asking Steffens and Riis to lay off. It had all come about simply because the reporters, led by those two, had got into competition as to who could dig up the most burglaries and whatnot. The official police record showed no increase at all.”

The graphical presentational tricks in Darrell Huff’s text are so well-known these days that you can’t get away with them on the professional stage any more (“for that, this chart lacks schmaltz. Chop off the bottom”). But there are enough new tricks around to make any statistician hop with rage – the misuse of colour being one.  Even a simple traffic-light chart may fail in front of an international audience, but colours have cultural significance. My US counterpart keeps me honest: he is colour-blind. 

The worst statistical lies are the one you can’t see, because the information is missing from the report. This could be biased samples, tiny samples, insignificant variations, or unstated bases for comparison, for example. These are all traps into which the well-intentioned may fall.

There’s really only one good use of statistics in information security, and that’s to improve a critical security process that you own. Your aim may be to speed up security patching, or to eliminate bottlenecks in incident response. The statistical part is harder than it looks, as anyone who has tried to construct a security dashboard will know – even when you are trying to present a true and fair account. You just need to…
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Source: Computer Business Review

Seeing the Sublime in Mathematics | Books & Arts - The Weekly Standard

David Guaspari, writer in Ithaca, New York review the David Stipp’s short book, A Most Elegant Equation.
  

Photo: Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty 
Detail from a painting of the mathematician Leonhard Euler by J.F.A. Darbès.

David Stipp’s short book, A Most Elegant Equation , aims to persuade the “math-averse” that “great mathematics is as provocative, beautiful, and deep as great art or literature.” His exemplar is Euler’s identity, which can be written as the gnomic formula e^iπ + 1 = 0. Stipp offers to explain what it means, why it’s true, and why it is significant as science and as art. The discussion, he says, will take pains to assume no mathematical prerequisites beyond checkbook arithmetic, and he isn’t kidding. For example, every algebraic manipulation that crops up is accompanied by a verbal paraphrase (often lengthy). A 101-word footnote on page 15 is devoted to explaining why “x = −1” means the same thing as “x + 1 = 0.”

“Euler” is Leonhard Euler, the master mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest of all time—also the most prolific. Publication of his collected works, begun in 1911 and ongoing, will total more than 80 large volumes. He is by all accounts an appealing character—a pious family man who, according to one contemporary, could work happily with “a child on his knees, a cat on his back.” Euler was generous in his dealings with other scholars, a good teacher, and something of a polymath who, in addition to his native German, knew Latin, Russian, French, and English and published works on mathematics, science, philosophy, and music. He could recite the entire Aeneid from memory. Euler began to lose his sight at an early age but blindness seemed if anything to increase his productivity: He worked things out in his head and dictated the results.

The exotic ingredient in Euler’s identity is e^iπ: π is what you think, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter; e and i need considerable explaining, as does the use of iπ as an exponent (“raising e to the power iπ”). Without rehearsing those lengthy explanations it’s possible to scan the terrain in which that intellectual adventure takes place...

The final chapter, called “The Meaning of It All,” asks what makes it beautiful. Stipp begins by noting qualities that mathematicians have attributed to beautiful results. From G. H. Hardy, for example, he gets this famous list: seriousness, generality, depth, unexpectedness, inevitability, and economy. Such reflections will help those who already sense beauty in mathematics to articulate their experience; they won’t persuade others that beauty is there to be found. But persuasion is not Stipp’s aim. His book is not a work of philosophy. 
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Additional resources

A Most Elegant Equation:
Eulers Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics

Source: The Weekly Standard

Why Today's Young Professionals Are Turning To Knowledge Entrepreneurship | Entrepreneur

"The key factors behind the rise of knowledge entrepreneurship, and why now's the perfect time to pursue such a career path." continues Entrepreneur. 

Photo: Shutterstock

In light of innovations disrupting the world nowadays, it's clear that the world is shifting from the industrial age to the knowledge age. Nearly every career and business are now impacted by the phenomenally growing 'knowledge industry.'

Today, young professionals with remarkable versatility and strong personal brands are highly valued beyond those who merely have degrees from one prestigious institution or another, particularly when it comes to opportunities and careers as we've come to an era where digital aptitude is the most crucial skill.

Call it synchronicity, kismet, or just being in the right place at the right time. Successful entrepreneurs understand this paradigm shift and are doing everything to make the most of it. Fortunately, digital technology makes it so easy that anyone can create and/or consume as much as possible on-demand knowledge with just a few clicks online.

In essence, these trends are converging to render a new type of entrepreneurship- knowledge commerce. "If the industrial economy ran on coal and iron ore, the fuel of today's economy is knowledge," as aptly put by Erik Stam and Elizabeth Garnsey of the University of Cambridge.

Let's consider the key factors behind the rise of knowledge entrepreneurship, and why now's the perfect time to pursue such a career path, which helps feed a workforce that's hungry for dynamic competency.

1. Today's young professionals have a lock on digital traits
Most young professionals today have key traits that make knowledge-based careers a natural fit. Firstly, they grew up being at ease consuming information online very quickly and fluently, sifting through digital resources and using them to hone their skills and further their careers. More so, their generation brings online personal branding into life by promoting their core competencies beyond what they learn in class...

2. The workplace demands competence, not degrees
The workplace itself favors this trend. It, in fact, demands it. Many businesses have realized the harmful effects of degree inflation. According to Harvard Business School's Dismissed by Degrees Research Report, employers pay between 11% and 30% more when they hire college graduates. Yet they also find that non-graduates with experience perform equally well on dimensions like productivity, time to promotion, and the amount of management and oversight required. 
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Source: Entrepreneur