the Pearson correlation coefficient : a statistical measure to calculate “nearness” of items for collaborative filtering, a la “people who bought this also bought this”. wonder if this would make a good Bayes p-value combiner in SpamAssassin
(tags: algorithms statistics via:fergal ruby recommendations correlation nearness collaborative-filtering)Home taping didn’t kill music – Bad Science : ‘SABIP refused to answer my questions in emails, insisted on a phone call (always a warning sign), told me that they had taken steps but wouldn’t say what, explained something about how they couldn’t be held responsible for lazy journalism, then, bizarrely, after ten minutes, tried to tell me retrospectively that the whole call was actually off the record, that I wasn’t allowed to use the information in my piece, but that they had answered my questions, and so they didn’t need to answer on the record, but I wasn’t allowed to use the answers, and I couldn’t say they hadn’t answered, I just couldn’t say what the answers were. Then the PR man from SABIP demanded that I acknowledge, in our phone call, formally, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, that he had been helpful. [..] Like I said: as far as I’m concerned, every [dodgy figure] from the [music] industry is false, until proven otherwise.’
(tags: science journalism p2p mp3 music copyright piracy pr statistics figures spin bullshit)Backing Up Flickr : using “flickrtouchr”, a handy script by colmmacc
(tags: flickr backup tips howto python small-world)