Online Readings-4

(Disclaimer: This is dedicated to some Technology stuff I read and found interesting over the past two weeks..)

A couple of weeks back, I saw this blog post called “The evolution of search in six minutes”, with a video attached. To me, it is a very well-made, down to earth post on, well, the evolution of search as we use it now…and how it might be in the future. I feel its a must watch for everyone irrespective of their search-technology awareness.

And yes, although I cannot understand a bit about “Quantum Computing”, this article on “Machine Learning with quantum algorithms”, on google research blog, made an interesting read. May be, at some point of time, if I can manage to understand the science behind it, I might try to put it forth in a more common-manish way . Thanks to Praneeth for sharing this.

For a couple of days in the past fortnight, I was addicted to the idea of “Forensic Linguistics”. I was searching for some Applications of linguistics (rather…Applied Linguistics) and this video, although not “extraordinarily” shot, made me more curious about the subject. I even managed to get a book introducing the concepts of Forensic Linguistics (online)…but, its so easy to drift when you don’t know so many things

Although I was fascinated by “Wolfram Alpha” when it was first announced, I soon drifted…well…I just told you why. But again, this particular blog post on Wolfram Alpha site, on handling/solving permutations related queries, fascinated me a lot

And then, I work in applying Language Technologies for Language Learning. I found something similar, but not related to “Language”, on the Communications of the ACM pages today. It is titled “Massive scale data mining for Education”. It talks about the use of massive math-query logs of students to predict clusters of difficult math problems, ways to track the progress of students etc. Yes, like they say, if it works, it will really be a massive scale student modeling. I loved the way the article ended. “We experiment, try different students on different problems, discover which exercises cause similar difficulties, and which help students break out of those difficulties. We learn paths in the data and models of the students. We learn to teach.” – It’d be interesting to see how it goes!

Back to CACM again, this piece on the duality of defining computing as an “instrument for human mind” (of a human mind and by a human mind too?? )… and connecting it to Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie ….was interesting too.

Lastly, again on CACM, there was this extremely insightful and well-written article on “Natural” Search User Interfaces by Marti Hearst. I just loved reading it and would recommend it to everyone interested in “Search”. Its a bit long…but surely worth it, IMHO.

Jai Hind, for now!!