MetaFilter posts tagged with reduction

Papers and More on Data Mining

JoeXIII007 — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:15:30 -0800

It has applications in health care, pharmaceuticals, facial recognition, economics/related areas, and of course, much much more. Previously, MeFi discussed controversial homeland security applications, and the nexus between social networking and mobile devices that further contributes to the pool. With plenty to dig into, let's talk Data Mining in more detail. First, some High School Primer on AI previously shown on MeFi. Second, and more important, introductions to key concepts:

Dimension Reduction: Principle Components Analysis and, for distance (not just geographical) based dimension reduction, Multidimensional Scaling. Algorithms and methods that take multivariate datasets and attempt to find a what's most important/influential within a dataset.
Classification: Linear / Quadratic / Bayesian Quadratic Discriminant Analysis (LDA, QDA, BQDA). Add some paper on PCA vs. LDA. The Naive Bayes Classifier for a 'feature' based approach. Lastly, but certainly not leastly, Support Vector Machines.
Clustering: when you have no labels, make them, with, for example, K-means Clustering.

To complete this, a good book on the topic: Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning by Chris M. Bishop.

Needle Exchange in the USA

circle_b — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 13:37:16 -0800

The history of needle exchanges in the United States starts in 1986 with Jon Parker, a dyslexic Yale medical student and former IDU (intravenous drug user), who was arrested time and time again for providing sterile needles and supplies to drug users, to prevent infection and spread of disease. David Purchase started the first organized (and illegal) needle exchange in Tacoma Washington in 1988, which still exists 21 years later. Needle Exchanges fit into a harm reduction model of public health policy and drug treatment. Harm reduction approaches are being embraced by religious groups as a moral imperative, and are even recommended for jail administrators, showing that this evidence-based practice is gaining traction. Despite scientific evidence and support demonstrating utility and cost [pdf] effectiveness, there has been no federal funding for clean needle exchanges because of this text, in every House Appropriations funding act for the fiscal year, for the last 20 years: Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, no funds appropriated in this Act shall be used to carry out any program of distributing sterile needles or syringes for the hypodermic injection of any illegal drug. One of President Obama's campaign promises has been to remove this text from the apropriations bill: however, the initial 2010 bill maintained the original language preventing needle exchanges from receiving federal funding. This language was then repealed, allowing federal money to go to needle exchange and disease prevention programs for the first time in 20 years. Days later, a highly restrictive amendment was added to the House Appropriations bill, which may jeopardize funding in urban areas, particularly the DC metro area. This amendment prohibits funding of needle exchanges in any area within 1,000 feet of almost any location where children gather.

The Ethics of Infertility

lalex — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 02:44:13 -0800

The ethics of infertility: After taking fertility drug Clomid, Ryan and Brianna Morrison conceived sextuplets. Their religious beliefs steered them away from undergoing a selective reduction procedure in favor of bringing all six fetuses to term. Four of their newborns have died; the remaining two are in critical condition. This mother of multiples says that while she's grateful that insurance and Medicaid covered her million-dollar hospital bill, her "quest to have a family resulted in a significant drain on society's resources."

daver — Mon, 03 Jun 2002 21:09:19 -0800

What would you do to live to 150? (more inside)