Big Data: The Power To Decide

What's the point of all that data, anyway?  It's to make
decisions.

As reported by MIT Technology Review: Back in 1956, an engineer and a mathematician, William Fair and Earl Isaac, pooled $800 to start a company. Their idea: a score to handicap whether a borrower would repay a loan.

It was all done with pen and paper. Income, gender, and occupation produced numbers that amounted to a prediction about a person’s behavior. By the 1980s the three-digit scores were calculated on computers and instead took account of a person’s actual credit history. Today, Fair Isaac Corp., or FICO, generates about 10 billion credit scores annually, calculating 50 times a year for many Americans.

This machinery hums in the background of our financial lives, so it’s easy to forget that the choice of whether to lend used to be made by a bank manager who knew a man by his handshake. Fair and Isaac understood that all this could change, and that their company didn’t merely sell numbers. “We sell a radically different way of making decisions that flies in the face of tradition,” Fair once said.

This anecdote suggests a way of understanding the era of “big data”—terabytes of information from sensors or social networks, new computer architectures, and clever software. But even supercharged data needs a job to do, and that job is always about a decision.

In this business report, MIT Technology Review explores a big question: how are data and the analytical tools to manipulate it changing decision making today? On Nasdaq, trading bots exchange a billion shares a day. Online, advertisers bid on hundreds of thousands of keywords a minute, in deals greased by heuristic solutions and optimization models rather than two-martini lunches. The number of variables and the speed and volume of transactions are just too much for human decision makers.

When there’s a person in the loop, technology takes a softer approach (see “Software That Augments Human Thinking”). Think of recommendation engines on the Web that suggest products to buy or friends to catch up with. This works because Internet companies maintain statistical models of each of us, our likes and habits, and use them to decide what we see. In this report, we check in with LinkedIn, which maintains the world’s largest database of résumés—more than 200 million of them. One of its newest offerings is University Pages, which crunches résumé data to offer students predictions about where they’ll end up working depending on what college they go to (see “LinkedIn Offers College Choices by the Numbers”).

These smart systems, and their impact, are prosaic next to what’s planned. Take IBM. The company is pouring $1 billion into its Watson computer system, the one that answered questions correctly on the game show Jeopardy! IBM now imagines computers that can carry on intelligent phone calls with customers, or provide expert recommendations after digesting doctors’ notes. IBM wants to provide “cognitive services”—computers that think, or seem to (see “Facing Doubters, IBM Expands Plans for Watson”).

Andrew Jennings, chief analytics officer for FICO, says automating human decisions is only half the story.

Credit scores had another major impact. They gave lenders a new way to measure the state of their portfolios—and to adjust them by balancing riskier loan recipients with safer ones. Now, as other industries get exposed to predictive data, their approach to business strategy is changing, too. In this report, we look at one technique that’s spreading on the Web, called A/B testing. It’s a simple tactic—put up two versions of a Web page and see which one performs better (see “Seeking Edge, Websites Turn to Experiments” and “Startups Embrace a Way to Fail Fast”).


Until recently, such optimization was practiced only by the largest Internet companies. Now, nearly any website can do it. Jennings calls this phenomenon “systematic experimentation” and says it will be a feature of the smartest companies. They will have teams constantly probing the world, trying to learn its shifting rules and deciding on strategies to adapt. “Winners and losers in analytic battles will not be determined simply by which organization has access to more data or which organization has more money,” Jennings has said.

Of course, there’s danger in letting the data decide too much. In this report, Duncan Watts, a Microsoft researcher specializing in social networks, outlines an approach to decision making that avoids the dangers of gut instinct as well as the pitfalls of slavishly obeying data. In short, Watts argues, businesses need to adopt the scientific method (see “Scientific Thinking in Business”).


To do that, they have been hiring a highly trained breed of business skeptics called data scientists. These are the people who create the databases, build the models, reveal the trends, and, increasingly, author the products. And their influence is growing in business. This could be why data science has been called “the sexiest job of the 21st century.” It’s not because mathematics or spreadsheets are particularly attractive. It’s because making decisions is powerful.

Bluetooth Hackers Allegedly Skimmed Millions at Gas Stations

As reported by Wired: Thirteen suspects have been indicted in New York on a gas station skimming scheme that netted them more than $2 million, according to court documents.

The skimming devices, placed on card readers at gas station pumps throughout the southern U.S., recorded credit and debit card data, as well as PINs, which the thieves then used to withdraw more than $2 million from ATMs. They then tried to launder the money through at least 70 different bank accounts, according to the district attorney’s office in New York County.

Some of the skimming devices were placed on pumps at Raceway and Racetrac gas stations throughout Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina. The devices were Bluetooth enabled, so the thieves could simply download the stolen data from the skimming device without having to remove it.

Between March 2012 to March 2013, they used forged cards embossed with the stolen account data to withdraw cash at ATMs in Manhattan, then deposited the money into bank accounts in New York. Co-conspirators in California and Nevada then withdrew the money from ATMs in those states. During that year, the defendants allegedly laundered about $2.1 million.

Garegin Spartalyan, 40, Aram Martirosian, 34, Hayk Dzhandzhapanyan, 40, and Davit Kudugulyan, 42 are the lead defendants in the 426-count indictment charging them with, among other things, money laundering, possession of stolen property, and possession of a forgery device.

The other defendants are each charged with two counts of money laundering.

Living In The Driverless City

As reported by Live Mint:  At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month, the roulette wheel of innovation landed on something rather old-fashioned and unexpected: the automobile.

In recent decades, cars have been undergoing a gradual transformation from the kinds of mechanical systems Henry Ford might have imagined into computers on wheels. And that transformation is bringing with it a new wave of digital advances—above all, autonomous driving.

The first autonomous (or self-driving) cars date back to the late twentieth century. But recent increases in sophistication and reductions in cost—reflected, for example, in cheap LIDAR systems, which can “see” a street in 3D in a way similar to that of the human eye—are now bringing driverless cars closer to the market.

As we saw last week, several manufacturers are working toward integrating such systems into their fleets, and expect to start selling premium cars with different degrees of autonomy as early as 2016. According to a just-released IHS report, “sometime after 2050” virtually all vehicles on the road might be self-driving.

But what is the drive behind self-driving cars? Are there meaningful benefits beyond the convenience of keeping your hands off the steering wheel and thus being able to read a book, take a nap, or guiltlessly text?

At the CES, journalists were busy snapping pictures of driverless vehicles zooming through the streets of Vegas. But, had they turned their cameras around, they might have captured something far more interesting: the stage upon which the drama of self-driving will take place—the street itself.

Self-driving vehicles promise to have a dramatic impact on urban life, because they will blur the distinction between private and public modes of transportation. “Your” car could give you a lift to work in the morning and then, rather than sitting idle in a parking lot, give a lift to someone else in your family – or, for that matter, to anyone else in your neighbourhood, social-media community, or city.

A recent paper by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s SMART Future Mobility team shows that the mobility demand of a city like Singapore—potentially host to the world’s first publicly-accessible feet of self-driving cars—could be met with 30% of its existing vehicles. Furthermore, other researchers in the same group suggest that this number could be cut by another 40% if passengers travelling similar routes at the same time were willing to share a vehicle—an estimate supported by an analysis of New York City Taxis shareability networks. This implies a city in which everyone can travel on demand with just one-fifth of the number of cars in use today.

Such reductions in car numbers would dramatically lower the cost of our mobility infrastructure and the embodied energy associated with building and maintaining it. Fewer cars may also mean shorter travel times, less congestion, and a smaller environmental impact.

The deployment of more intelligent transportation systems promises to deliver similar benefits. Real-time data planning and smart routing are already a reality. Tomorrow’s autonomous vehicles will prompt another wave of innovation, from optimization of road capacity to intersection management. Imagine a world without traffic lights, where vehicular flows “magically” pass through one another and avoid collision.

But, while the world’s mobility challenges will increasingly be met with silicon rather than asphalt, encouraging widespread adoption requires guaranteeing that our streets are as safe—or safer—than they are today. That means that various redundancies must be introduced to ensure that if one component fails, another seamlessly takes over.

Traffic accidents, though rarer, would still be a possibility; in fact, they might be one of the main impediments to implementation of autonomous systems, demanding a restructuring of insurance and liability that could sustain armies of lawyers for years to come.

Finally, there is the fresh issue of digital security. We are all familiar with viruses crashing our computers. But what if the same virus crashes our cars?

All of these issues are urgent, but none of them is insurmountable. They will be resolved in the coming years as autonomy redefines mobility and sparks the next generation of innovations in the field. At that point, the smart money might favor something even more old-fashioned than cars: the city itself.

By 2018, Vehicles Could Be Self-Aware

As reported by Computerworld: As the amount of information being fed into in-car telematics systems grows through mobile connectivity, vehicles will expand their ability to capture and share not only internal systems status and location data, but also changes in surroundings in real time.

Cars will be able to communicate with other vehicles, or even traffic lights, and predict how conditions will affect a commute, adjusting in-vehicle navigation or even taking over control from the driver, if so desired.

"Cars will become the first robot most of us experience in our lifetime," said Gartner analyst Thilo Koslowski.
Koslowski, who was speaking at the Consumer Telematics Show in Las Vegas today, said a major theme this year will be service providers, such as ISPs and mobile carriers, expanding their ecosystems into the auto telematics supply chain - providing the connectivity and apps required for a full-mobile user experience.

Like OS and app upgrades on mobile devices today, software upgrades to infotainment systems will happen automatically and wirelessly, he said. Vehicles will be connected to the cloud, enabling users to upload data from wearable devices as well as access personal data stored at home or through cloud services.

Ultimately, your car will become just another part of your mobile data plan.

"AT&T has already said they will have that in GM vehicles going forward," Koslowski said. "Cars will be the predominant platform for the Internet of Things. It may even be mandated that your car have connectivity, instead of it being a luxury."

There could even come a day when cars will be discounted -- or free -- depending on how long consumers are willing to commit to a data plan, Kowlowski said. "Maybe you'll get a car for free if you sign up for lifetime data contract," he said. "If you change this to something a little less dramatic, and talk about a discounted vehicle purchase with an eight-year contract..., how many people would be interested in this?

"I was surprised to see quite a few [of those surveyed] were interested in this - 38%," he continued.

"Obviously, you're not going to get a Ferrari or Porsche or Audi heavily discounted because you sign up for a data contract, but a smaller vehicle, absolutely."

Kevin Link, general manager of Verizon's Telematics division, said telematics systems have developed from a first iteration of on-board help services, such as GM's OnStar system, to vehicle diagnostics that provide manufacturers with data about mechanical performance.

The next generation of connected cars, or "telematics 3.0," will expand the value chain beyond the obvious, offering traffic condition info to the car as well as emissions data to the driver.

Telematics 3.0 will also offer service providers a great deal of information they can use for marketing purposes. For example, the systems will be able to tell streaming media services what you're listening to, and point of interest (POI) services in on-board GPS systems will tell companies when a driver has searched for them, and whether the driver stopped in.

A driver who visits a particular coffee shop or a golf course might be targeted for marketing and advertising via mobile apps available through the car's telematics system.

"Why is Google getting into the auto space? If you think about what Google has and what they don't have, location is one of the missing elements of the Google model," Link said. "They know everything else, except where we transact."

Car manufacturers falling behind

In the meantime, vehicle manufacturers risk falling behind or even being left out of the mobile telematics equation. "I'm a little worried these big Internet companies may dominate this space and leave very little for automotive companies," Koslowski added.

He pointed to Google's announcement Monday of an Open Automotive Alliance, aimed at bringing Android OS to the telematics systems of several vehicle manufacturers. Google announced plans to bring Android to cars by the end of this year.

Audi, General Motors (GM), Honda, Hyundai and chip maker Nvidia were all part of the launch of the Open Automotive Alliance.

"Having your own secure cloud of information connected to your vehicle, that's what Google's...announcement was all about," Koslowski said.

For example, the owner of a car would be able to connect his or her Android smartphone and any cloud services enabled through that. At the same time, if another family member wanted to borrow the car, they, too, could use Android by simply connecting their smartphone to the car's telematics system.


Tech companies such as Google are expected to have increasing influence in the mobile options vehicle makers can offer - and consumers want it that way.

According to a Gartner survey released today, 57% of vehicle owners said they want technology vendors to influence decisions about their car's mobile capabilities in the years ahead. Forty-three percent want automakers to be the main influencer of mobile tech.

The survey also revealed that 47% of respondents want to use mobile apps while driving. At the same time, 89% said they're concerned that access to in-vehicle mobile apps will be a driving distraction.

Jaguar, Land Rover add mobile apps to telematics

Peter Vrik, head of connected technologies and apps for Jaguar, said his company will now be offering iOS and Android mobile apps natively on its infotainment systems through a partnership with Bosch SoftTec and its mySPIN app integration software.

Jaguar's InControl Apps mobile application platform connects a car's telematics and infotainment system to a mobile phone or tablet through the use of a standard USB cord. Once connected, apps that have been enabled through Bosh SoftTec's in-vehicle integration software automatically show up for use on the infotainment system.

For example, iHeart Radio streaming music service, parking location assist Parkopedia and real-time traffic navigation system INRIX will all be available in upcoming vehicles, Vrik said. Vrik listed 11 apps that are currently available, but said that list will continue to expand.

"By 2010, we target to have 20 million smartphones connected via mySPIN," said Dietmar Meister, director smartphone and cloud solutions at Bosch

"Customers want the latest apps and updates in their car. They want to use the apps that are already there," Vrik said. "Users want to make sure the app has the DNA of the original app. Don't try to make them look different."

India Certifies GAGAN for En Route and NPA Flight Operations

As reported by GNSS: India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) provisionally certified the nation's Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS) — the GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) system — to RNP0.1 (Required Navigation Performance, 0.1  Nautical Mile) service level on December 30, 2013.

The certification will enable aircraft fitted with SBAS equipment to use the GAGAN signal in space for en-route navigation and non-precision approaches without vertical guidance over Indian air space. India is the fourth country to offer safety of life, space-based satellite navigation services to the global aviation sector. The availability of GAGAN signals in space will bridge the gap between the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) and Japan's  MTSAT-based Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS) coverage areas, thereby contributing to seamless navigation across the regions.

The GAGAN infrastructure includes 15 reference stations, three uplink stations, mission control centers, navigation payloads on two geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) transmitting GPS corrections in C and L bands, and associated software and communication links.

GAGAN's service area includes India, the Bay of Bengal, South East Asia and the Middle East expanding up to Africa.

The GAGAN System, jointly developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Airports Authority of India (AAI) is scheduled for additional enhancement in the days to come, including the APV1/1.5 level of certification in the near future to offer precision approach services over the Indian land mass. The GAGAN signal is being broadcast through its GSAT8 and GSAT10 GEOs, covering the entire Indian Flight Information Region (FIR) and beyond. An on-orbit spare GAGAN transponder will be flown on GSAT-15.

Hot Technology: Smart Radio Chips

The smartphone battle moves from software to hardware with
crucial components to cut power consumption while allowing
faster data transmission.

As reported by MIT Technology Review:
Beyond the glitz of the International Consumer Electronics Show, the wireless industry faces a fundamental problem: more features and faster data transmission are draining phones’ batteries faster than ever. 

Fortunately, there’s room for improvement inside the devices, in parts known as power amplifiers that turn electricity into radio energy. In phones, they typically consume more power than any other component but waste half of it along the way, as lots of people can attest if they’ve watched their battery die (and their phone get warm) after an hour of streaming video. The same problem bedevils wireless networks’ base stations, which send and receive signals to and from individual phones.

Now a major effort is under way to develop smarter power amplifiers that significantly reduce waste. Eta Devices, an MIT spinoff based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is preparing a base station module and a chip that it says not only decrease battery drain but work well in high-bandwidth applications for 4G LTE and future ultrafast technologies.

The fundamental problem is that the power needed for radio output fluctuates rapidly when a device is transmitting data at high rates. Existing power amplifiers maintain their voltage at a fairly high level at all times to be prepared for peak needs—but this is wasteful. Newer approaches adjust that level on the fly, following the “envelope” of the actual radio signal.

Such “envelope tracking,” or ET, technologies are the hottest hardware development in the mobile-phone industry. Last fall Qualcomm became the first company to ship a chip with such technology, which it says is the industry’s first for 3G and 4G LTE mobile devices.

The company says the chip helps lower electricity consumption by 20 percent and helps reduce a related problem—heat generation—by up to 30 percent, “allowing for longer battery life for end users, as well as enabling manufacturers to shrink the size of their devices,” says Peter Carson, Qualcomm’s senior director of marketing.

The envelope tracker is already in 10 phones, including the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Nexus 5. Many other component makers are scrambling to catch up, including Mediatek, RF Micro Devices, Skyworks, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Nujira, and Eta Devices.

The difficulty with ET, though, is that its efficiency plunges at higher data rates. Envelope trackers often require a relatively large capacitor to store and release bursts of energy while maintaining smooth and continuous voltage changes.

Eta Devices takes a radically different approach, favoring fast, abrupt changes with a smaller capacitor. Using a smaller capacitor is more efficient; the downside is that the changes in energy cause more noise in a wireless signal. That problem is overcome by cutting-edge digital signal processing, says Joel Dawson, one of two MIT electrical engineering professors who cofounded the company.

Mattias Åström, the company president, reaches for an automotive analogy to compare the two approaches. “Envelope tracking is basically a continuous variable transmission, compared to our manual gearbox,” he says. “Fuel consumption is always better when you have a manual gearbox.”

The company’s work hasn’t been published and the chip is now being fabricated for the first time, but the concept has been built out for base stations and may be commercialized this year. The Eta module, a little smaller than a shoebox, is the first 4G LTE transmitter in the world to achieve average efficiency greater than 70 percent, a big jump from the 45 to 55 percent in currently available technology, says Dawson.

Vanu, a company that makes low-power wireless base stations (see “A Tiny Cell-Phone Transmitter Takes Root in Rural Africa”), is testing the technology and may become an early customer. “We think this can give us a ‘green’ benefit as well as an operating cost advantage,” says David Bither, direct of platform engineering at Vanu.

The result could be to expand connectivity and make it affordable to more people in the developing world, where expensive diesel fuel powers at least 640,000 remote base stations at a cost of $15 billion.
The Eta technology was first revealed as a lab-bench setup in late 2012 (see “Efficiency Breakthrough Promises Smartphones That Use Half the Power”). The company was funded by $6 million from Ray Stata, cofounder of Analog Devices, and his venture firm, Stata Venture Partners.

California Court Dismisses Google Glass Traffic Ticket

As reported by ComputerWorld:  A court in Southern California has dismissed what was apparently the first-ever traffic citation issued for wearing Google Glass while driving.

Cecilia Abadie was stopped for speeding in late October. When a California Highway Patrol officer approached her, he noticed she was wearing the Google Glass device and issued a second ticket for that.

Section 27602 of California's vehicle code bans video screens in the view of the driver, with the exception of GPS-style car navigation devices.

On Thursday, a court commissioner in San Diego dismissed the Google Glass ticket, saying he could find no evidence that the device was in use while Abadie was driving, according to several local news reports.

The CHP officer apparently saw the light from the screen, but Abadie said the headset activated when she looked up as the officer approached.

The initial incident and Thursday's dismissal have attracted a lot of media attention, and it may not be the last time the issue plays out.

While dismissing the ticket, the commissioner said he does believe Google Glass falls under the definition of a video screen in state law.