How Watson Works

Originally Published: February 16, 2011

Link: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/113291/20110216/watson-jeopardy-robot-eric-nyberg-cmu.htm

Eric Nyberg knows a thing or two about Watson, IBM's super intelligent computer competing on Jeopardy! and why the robot has owned the classic quiz game show.

Watson, which is equipped with question answering technology, has taken Jeopardy! by storm by dominating his opponents, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. At the end of the second day of a three day competition, Watson has $35,734 while Rutter and Jennings have $10,400 and $4,800 respectively. The competition will conclude tonight as Watson and his competitors Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings will play one last entire game of Jeopardy!, and add their cumulative scores.

The winner will get $1 million. IBM has said it will donate their winnings to charity, while Jennings and Rutter will donate half of their winnings.

Nyberg, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor, led a team of researchers at the university's Language Technologies Institute, to assist IBM in the development of the Open Advancement of Question-Answering Initiative (OAQA) architecture and methodology. Two of Nyberg's CMU students even worked on Watson directly as interns this past summer.

"I'm satisfied with what we've seen on TV," Nyberg said. "I think its representative of Watson's capabilities."

Nyberg, who once got a chance to compete against Watson himself, says the robot has definite strengths and weaknesses. Despite what people watching at home might believe, the robot isn't perfect. Watson, which is made up of 90 IBM Power 750 servers using 15 terabytes of RAM and 2,880 processor cores, is at its best when the clues are easier.

"You have to remember Watson is fundamentally different from humans. If I know an answer, I can buzz in and I have a few seconds to retrieve it. Contestants will do this. Watson will not buzz in unless it has the answer. By the time it has buzzed in, it already has a high-confidence answer. Where Watson is dominating is when the clues are easy, it can get a high-confidence answer quickly," Nyberg said.

Whereby humans may take a few seconds to process a question and the clues, if Watson knows the answer, it's almost automatic. With all of its processing CPU power, Watson can scan two million pages of data in three seconds.

However, Watson is not the perfect machine. "When the clues are hard to understand or it doesn't have good resources, it comes up with answers you and I would never give. It doesn't dominate, it still has weak spots," Nyberg said.

Yesterday, Watson screwed up on the final Jeopardy! question and show its weaknesses. The answer was, "This city's largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle." The question was, "What is Chicago?" Both Jennings and Rutter answered correctly, while Watson answered, "What is Toronto?" While there are U.S. cities named Toronto, they are not large enough to have two airports.

David Ferrucci, the manager of the Watson project at IBM Research and someone Nyberg has worked with extensively, gave multiple reasons for the odd screwup. He said Watson downgrades the significance of category titles and since "what U.S. City" wasn't in the question; it probably didn't know it had to be in America.

Also, Ferrucci said Watson was likely confused because there is a city named Toronto in the United States and the Toronto in Canada has an American League baseball team. Ferrucci was pleased with how much Watson bet.

As far as Watson's next frontier is concerned, IBM and Nyberg say it could be in healthcare. In fact, IBM has already begun working on Watson based healthcare applications.

"Physicians might be able to use a Watson MD when there are questions about strange symptoms with unusual conditions. You can have Watson sit through textual information about what treatments there are and what kinds of patients have had it. This is important. Most of the information about patients is written in free text, difficult to leverage that without a tool like Watson," Nyberg said.

Influence Of Violent Video Games Still Up For Debate

Originally Published: September 17, 2010

Link: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/63462/20100917/video-games-xbox-nintendo-mario-influence-violent-games.htm

While the video game industry celebrates the 25th birthday of one of its landmark titles, it continues to face lingering challenges from government and advocacy groups regarding its influence on children.

In terms of technology, video games have clearly come a long way since the original Super Mario Brothers debuted on September 13, 1985. However as the hardware and software continually has evolved, many perceptions on the industry have remained stagnant. The most damning is that video games, specifically violent ones, have had a bad influence on children.

Common Sense Media, a parents advocacy group, released a study recently that said 72 percent of adults support the ban of ultraviolent video games. More than half of the parents surveyed rated the industry poorly, with 75 percent saying it does not do enough to protect violent games from kids.

"The results of this poll clearly show that not only do the effects of ultraviolent or sexually violent games weigh heavily on the minds of parents, but also that parents feel that the video game industry isn't doing nearly enough to protect kids from accessing the most ultraviolent games," James Steyer, chief executive office and founder, Common Sense Media, said in a statement.

The poll comes in advance of an upcoming Supreme Court decision. In 2005, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill into law prohibiting the sale of ultraviolent video games to minors. However, the video game industry was able to fight it and bring the case to the Supreme Court, where it will be decided in early November.

"The Supreme Court's decision in this case is going to have a huge impact on families and kids across the United States, and what we've learned from this poll is that parents want to be the ones deciding which games their kids play, not the video game industry," Steyer said.

However, academics who've studied the impact of violent video games on children are unconvinced of such an impact. Cheryl Olson, a clinical assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and author of the book, "Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do," is one such skeptic. Her years of research on the effects of electronic games on preteens and teens led her to one prevailing thought.

"Playing video games is normal kid behavior. If you're an otherwise good kid with a balanced life with friends and you take out the trash and are generally respectful, these games will not negatively impact you," Olson said.

Instead, Olson said studies need to be done on video games' influence on non-typical kids, for instance those who are developmentally delayed. She said this kind of research could shed light of any potential impact for these kids.

"We've barely scratched the surface there," Olson said.

Scott Steinberg, video game analyst and host of the web-based show, "Game Theory," says most of the misconceptions on the industry come from an age gap. While gaming has evolved to include older generations, he says stereotyping still lingers.

"There is a generational gap," Steinberg said. "A lot of people still consider video game to be a kid's game, when in reality the average gamer is 35. Baby boomers and older still believe in the stereotype that gamers are kids. It's not intentional, it's just lingering misinformation. In the past there was a similar stigma to rock and roll and comic books."

Steinberg says the growing popularity of games like Farmville and Pet Society have permeated those older generations. Olson pointed to Guitar Hero and a number of Nintendo Wii titles as examples of family-based video games. Yet despite this, violent video games remain a hot button issue.

Olson said beyond a generational gap, the violent game influence debate has remained in place because politicians will use it as a way to get voters riled up. "Issues like parenting, bad neighborhoods and child abuse, those can't be solved in two years. But if you say something like, 'I've seen videos of these video games, they are violent and I want to protect your children from them,' you win points," Olson said.

Violent video games are no worse than violent movies says Steinberg. "This U.S. made Saw IV the number one movie in America, it's really hypocritical to take a small subsection meant for mature audiences and attempt to make the entire industry a scapegoat," he said.

Private Space Exploration: The Next Frontier

Originally Published: July 19, 2011

Link: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/183212/20110719/nasa-space-shuttle-space-exploration-spacex-space-adventures.htm

As NASA wraps up its final mission of the space shuttle program, many are left wondering what will come of space exploration.

The probable answer? The private sector.

Even NASA is in on it, as the agency recently awarded contracts to companies like Lockheed Martin to built new age spacecrafts. Other companies like Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and The Boeing Company were awarded NASA contracts as well.

"With NASA's support, SpaceX will be ready to fly its first manned mission in 2014," SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk said recently.

SpaceX is working on a spacecraft it has called the Dragon. The company says it can carry seven astronauts at a time to the space station at a cost of $20 million a seat. Spacex's Falcon 9 became the first non Shuttle rocket to be man-rated for space exploration in 2010.

Like NASA, the company even has its sights set on Mars. While NASA is looking to send a man to Mars by the 2030s, Musk says it can happen in 10-20 years.

Other companies are similarly looking at private space exploration. Space Adventures President Tom Shelley said the company has already sent seven private citizens into space on eight missions and has plans for much more.

"We were the first company to arrange for a private citizen to fly into space when we sent Dennis Tito up into space in 2001," Shelley said. "We were the start of the private space industry and I think over the next few years you'll see space travel dominated by private companies sending more and more people into space."

Space Adventures uses Russian Soyuz spacecraft to travel into space. However, in has already partnered with Boeing to sell seats on future Boeing spacecraft trips.

The Common Man and Space

There are essentially two types of space travel packages for the common man. There is the super expensive and time costly one: approximately $50 million for a trip to the international space station and lots of training. While some people may do that option, he says it's likely that people will do the cheaper one.

"The sub-orbital space flight costs about $110,000. You go 110 kilometers above the earth's surface, you see the curvature and beauty of the earth, spend about five minutes there floating in weightlessness and then go back down," Shelley said.

He says space travel will eventually become affordable to the common man but it will be "a few decades" before it's as low as something like a transcontinental flight.

"It's because of physics, gravity is holding us down," he said.

Shelley is among the many which look to create a space tourism industry. There are also other private companies looking to get into space all on their own without help from NASA. Billionaire mogul Richard Branson is one of the men leading this charge with his company Virgin Galactic. In a previous interview with CBS News, Branson said he was inspired by the moon landing.

"It was one of those momentous moments in your life. I was absolutely sure I would go to the moon sure thereafter and the years ran by, it seemed clear NASA hadn't really got a big interest in sending you or me or Joe Public up into space, and so I was determined to do something about it," Branson said.

To Shelley, there will be a scientific element to private citizens going into space. He sees private space stations being built and companies paying for citizens to conduct experiments while there.

The biggest mission for private space explorers will be Mars but the one that's closest to happening? The moon. It's been a while since man has been close to the moon but Shelley and Space Adventures are looking to get back there.

"We've sold one ticket for the mission and we need to sell another to get it going. Once we do, it will be about three years of training but the next person who is even close to the moon will be a private citizen. That's pretty cool," Shelley said.

The Math Is In: Red Sox, Yankees Will Top MLB In Wins

Originally Published: April; 1, 2011

Link: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/129766/20110401/mlb-baseball-season-predictions-mathematics-njit-bruce-bukiet.htm

Forget traditional scouting reports; in order to predict the 2011 MLB season, one New Jersey Institute of Technology professor says all you need to know is math.

Bruce Bukiet, associate professor and associate dean of mathematical sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, uses applied mathematics to determine which MLB teams will have the best year. After a wave of high-profile free agency moves including acquiring sluggers Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez, the Boston Red Sox are Bukiet's team of choice along with their archrivals, the New York Yankees, as both, he says will win 97 games apiece.

Along with the Red Sox and Yankees, Bukiet has the Tigers and Rangers each winning their divisions to earn a playoff spot. In the NL, he has the Phillies, Braves, Cardinals and last year's World Series champ, the Giants, in the playoffs.

Bukiet uses a linear algebra algorithm which works off the best batting order for a team and the likelihood each player will single, double, triple, hit a home run, strike out or make an infield out during an at-bat. For each batter, he computes the likelihood that batter will hit in certain situations. Using those numbers he can calculates how many runs the team will score. Then for entire teams he computes how their lineup would fare against others.

Once he factors in pitchers and the team's bench, he figures out how often one team will win against others, and factors in home-field advantage. At the end of his series of calculations he gets the team's total win count.

"For each team, to run through the whole season takes me about five minutes," Bukiet said. "My son, who started doing this with me when he was 15 and is now 26, has done a lot to help me automate it. He's written it on the internet, put in a file of each player's data, who is there and who is not there, etc. For the first few years, I was doing it by hand. Now it's automated."

While the idea to use math to predict the baseball season has been his head since 1988, Bukiet has been applying his methodology for 10 years and says for the most part it has been effective. Out of the 10 years, his method has been better than those of the oddsmakers seven of them. The other three years he was slightly off. Bukiet has published an enhanced model of the method in the International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sports.

Over the years, he has tinkered with the methodology, adding other factors along the way. For pitchers, he calculates their effectiveness through two-thirds of a game. He then applies the team's bullpen average for the rest of a game. Unlike other sports, Bukiet says baseball works very well.

"There's a lot of data associated with the sport and the one thing that makes baseball doable is there are a lot of one-on-one battles. In basketball, there are five guys. In football, there are 11 guys on each side," Bukiet said.

At the end of each season, Bukiet describes the probability for each postseason series. He doesn't do this in the beginning of the season because of the likelihood there will be trades. Or as Bukiet, a longtime Mets fan, said, "Teams like the Yankees will just buy people."

Unlike the regular season, he says his method is not as effective for the postseason. This is because the series are shorter and random factors play a larger role. All of his results, including how he has fared in the past, are published at http://www.egrandslam.com.

Over the past few years, numbers have become an increasingly important part of baseball. A 2003 book written by Michael Lewis called Moneyball detailed how Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane used number crunching to build his team. In addition, every year, MIT hosts the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, on the role statistics play in helping sports teams build a succesful franchise.

Japanese Earthquake Likely Moved The Earth’s Axis

Originally Published: March 15, 2011

Link: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/123060/20110315/japan-earthquake-earth-s-axis-rotation-nasa-jet-propulsion-laboratory.htm

The Japanese earthquake shook the Earth so violently that it likely moved its axis and shortened the day, according to new research.

While the change from the earthquake isn't noticeable -- no need to reset your watch -- it was the largest calculated by Dr. Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It's not all that surprising considering the earthquake was the fifth largest measured since 1900. He found that the day is shorter by 1.8 millionths of a second, and the Earth's axis shifted by 17 centimeters (6.5 inches).

"It's the only earthquake we have had a chance to measure, with the other earthquakes, the effect has been too small to calculate," Gross said.

To find out how the 9.0 magnitude earthquake affected the Earth's rotation, Gross used a United States Geological Survey estimate for how the fault responsible for the earthquake slipped. From there, he applied a complex model to perform a preliminary theoretical calculation.

He found was that the earthquake in Japan shifted its axis towards 133 degrees east longitude, a line that runs through eastern China and Siberia.

At the base of these complex calculations was the earth's mass. "I started by determining how mass is distributed within the earth. And then I looked at the seismic estimates on how much the fault slipped - that tells me what force was applied to the earth at the position of the earthquake that caused it to deform. That deformation, which happens everywhere, is what I'm computing," Gross said.

Essentially, Gross calculated how the earthquake rearranged the earth's mass. Any change in mass will have an effect on the earth's axial tilt and will affect its rotation. The end result is a change in the day's length.

"It's like a spinning ice skater. If her arms are closer to her body, it changes how her mass is distributed. If her mass is closer to her body, she will spin faster," Gross said.

Gross' calculations do come with a caveat. He calculated the location of the Earth's figure axis, which is the line drawn through the center of the earth based on its distribution of mass. It is always changing because of atmospheric winds and oceanic currents. These effects are bigger than anything that an earthquake can cause. This differs from its north-south axis, which is the one around which the Earth rotates. The difference between the two does create a tiny "wobble" which is why the length of the day isn't absolutely uniform.

"Over the course of a year, the length of the day increases and decreases by about a millisecond, or about 550 times larger than the change caused by the Japanese earthquake. The position of Earth's figure axis also changes all the time, by about 1 meter (3.3 feet) over the course of a year, or about six times more than the change that should have been caused by the Japan quake," Gross said.

What Gross and other research scientists will have to do is measure the effects of the atmosphere and ocean on Earth's rotation during the time of the earthquake and remove them from the equation. Even when these calculations are completed, Gross says it's likely that impact will still be measurable -- an impressive feat for an earthquake.

Apple Engineer Rebuilds Ancient Computer -- With Legos

Originally Published: December 14, 2010

Link: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/91963/20101214/legos-andrew-carol.htm

Legos are not just for kids' toys: an engineer at Apple has proven they can be used for a technological history lesson.

Andrew Carol, an engineer at Apple, recently used his spare time to build the Antikythera Mechanism out of Lego bricks. The Antikythera Mechanism is an Ancient Greek mechanical computer used to calculate astronomical positions. It is his second major lego project after building a Babbage Difference Engine, the 19^th century automatic, mechanical calculator used to tabulate polynomial functions.

"I've spent about 5-6 years on this kind of thing," Carol said. "The original inspiration was in the early 1990s, Scientific America had a Babbage engine that they built for a science museum. I thought it would be amazing if you do that in Legos. About five years ago, I thought I could do it. I made the first engine and then sat on it a while. I then recently went back made it more streamlined and faster."

He said it took him five months to work on the first one, using up his free time to get it done. Carol used a modular technique, creating one difference engine and duplicating it three times. The machine was able to calculate second order differential equations to three digits. He also said it was impossible to draw up instructions for people that wanted to build one on their own -- the process was too complicated.

The second generation took a similar amount of time but using fewer parts Carol found it was easier to construct. It also calculated to third order differences to four-digit accuracy. The third generation, the latest one, he said is five times faster than the second generation.

While Carol was working on the second generation of the difference engine, an editor at Nature magazine emailed him and asked if making a Lego version of the Antikythera Mechanism would be possible. While Carol said he had heard about the ancient device before, he had no idea how complex and sophisticated it was. Still, he went to work and found it easier to construct than the difference engine.

"The main issue with this one was coming up with gear ratios, which is an easier problem to solve than what I had to deal with the difference engine. That was fundamentally analog, figuring out how to increase engine smoothness and efficiency. The Antikythera Mechanism was much more straightforward," Carol said.

Carol said he gained an appreciation for the Greeks while working on the Antikythera Mechanism, adding it stands alone for its sophistication and quality for the period in which it was created. The device is able to calculate 18 years, or 223 lunar months, of solar eclipses. He even created labels for the Lego Antikythera Mechanism, which indicated when eclipses would happen.

"The Babylonians and Egyptians figured out timing, they figured out an 18 year cycle. The genius of the Greeks is they made a mechanical device. Think about this: there was no other device that was a complicated as this until the 1300s. They made this in 100 B.C., and for 1,400 years there wasn't something as sophisticated as this machine," Carol said.

As for why he likes to use legos to create some of these complex machines, Carol said the toys are readily available and easier to use than metal, which requires bending. There is also a certain degree of nostalgia attached. Plus, it allows him to show his appreciation for the mechanical side of computing.

"I like the mechanical side over electronics. An eighth grader can write a tic-tac-toe code for a computer. It's not really that cool. Mechanically you can do a lot of cool things. I don't think there's an appreciation for what the Ancient Greeks could do mechanically," Carol said.

Tic-tac-toe will actually be the subject of his next lego project. He is looking to create a Lego version of a tic-tac-toe board, where the machine makes an automatic response to a player's move.

iPad 2, iPad Boost Recommerce Industry

Originally Published: March 4, 2010

Link: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/119052/20110304/ipad-ipad-2-apple-gazelle-buy-back-best-buy-ebay.htm

It's not even out yet, and already the iPad 2 is changing at least one industry: recommerce, or as it's more commonly known, buying things back.

Gazelle, a Boston based company, buys back old gadgets from consumers looking to sell an outdated device for money that will go to an upgrade. Kristina Kennedy, Gazelle's director of Brand and Communications, says the company works with large Web and big box retailers such as Wal-Mart, NewEgg.com, Office Depot and Costco, and powers their buy-back programs. It also has a direct-to-consumer business, which she says is its most profitable. Old devices that are bought back can be re-sold at a profit -- sometimes a large one.

They tend to appeal to the early adopters, people who must have the first versions of a product, and then must upgrade. To date, the company has received approximately 350,000 devices, with 252,000 going back to the retailers.

With the emergence of the iPad 2, Kennedy says the best is yet to come. Already less than four days in, she says the amount of people buying back their iPad has gotten off to a roaring start, better than any other product ever.

"Last week I said the iPad might be even bigger than the iPhone in terms of buy-back. This week I get to say I told you so. Last June, when the iPhone 4 came out, we saw 1,200 iPhones bought back the first day. The other day, we had 2,000 iPads bought back the day the iPad 2 was unveiled," Kennedy said.

Already the number of people sending their original iPad to her has doubled to 4,000, Kennedy says. Te popularity of buyback programs for the original iPad can be attributed to the high prices consumers can get for them, which on Gazelle's site range from $300-$500. Also, she says, timing has been important.

"Apple announced that it was going to be available quickly, 10 days from when it was announced," Kennedy said. That's good for recommerce, because we have a 30-day price lock, which means you have 30 days to send it from when you sell it online. That means people won't have to go anytime without a new iPad."

Beyond people buying back the iPad to get an iPad 2, Gazelle says the entire recommerce industry could see a boost. Kennedy says the early returns have shown a 45 percent "halo effect," which is product buybacks that have been helped by the iPad. She said the number of people signing up for buyback programs for their iPhones has doubled in the past two days.

Already, the industry has gained steam with the emergence of programs from Best Buy and eBay. The money consumers see on Best Buy's buyback program is a bit different from Gazelle's, as it's based on when it was bought. Products bought six or fewer months ago get half their original value, six months to a year get 40 percent and so on. Regardless of the method, the money may start pouring in for buy backers thanks to the iPad.

"This will be the biggest recommerce product ever, thus far it's had the highest percentage of a group of people utilizing a trade in for an upgrade, so that will definitely be the case," Kennedy said.

Welcome To My Portfolio

Hello,

A bit about myself before we get going. I'm 24 years old, living in the NYC area (shortly dropping the area as I move from North Jersey to one of the boroughs) and I'm a professional writer. I know a lot of people call themselves a "writer," but my living is literally dependent on my ability to construct the English word into a fluid sentence. If I couldn't do that, I'd be waiting tables.

This isn't really a blog I plan on updating with wacky thoughts, funny quips or observations on my beloved Boston Celtics. I have a blog like that already (www.employee8.blogspot.com).

Rather, I'm going to update this one with my published work. This will include articles I've written for my current full-time job at the International Business Times, past jobs, my freelance gigs (always changing, hopefully expanding) and on a rare occasion, some original stuff. The original stuff will be stuff I'm interested in (professional stuff, books, movies, interesting subjects) that wouldn't fit in my personal blog.

I hope you enjoy and if you have any questions, hit me up at gabriel.perna1@gmail.com

Thanks,
Gabe Perna