I have been busy trying to help educate and inform all on what goes on today and what the issues are. I have my series called the Attack of the Killer Algorithms and if you have not looked, there's links to 47 other posts that talk about every day occurences to where consumers are denied care, services, credit, you name it. It's the battle that the Occupy Movement could not identify as it works behind the scenes and affects all of us.
Flawed data is on the rise and the middle class today on our own dime does all the chasing to fix what corporate America and others have on file about us and it's getting worse. I'm a data person so where I go and explain is beyond where the normal consumer can go but I try to bring it to a level to where it is understandable.
Here's the entire series if you want to look around and you may find that you too have had some of these things happen.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/...
Here's a series of 3 videos that I recommend watching as they are folks smarter than me that say the same thing I do. Financial reform is a must and when you dig back to formulas that were created from fiction, how do you recover? This first video is from Professor Siefe who wrote the book "Proofiness, the Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception" and you will get a real life explanation of the crap that you see out there with polls and surveys, not to mention studies. I like the one portion to where you can see the formula extended to where women will be running at the speed of light in a few years, and the point in case here is the formulas, they are flawed and this goes into the financial areas. How many times did we see Jamie Dimon on video saying "I don't know" when asked about the business models they use...we all get Algo Duped.
Next video up is from Kevin Slavin who will also tell you about how algorithms affect your life and he's entertaining too on his presentation. Scientists have gone to work on Wall Street, the science of formulas and math that created "desired" result that sometimes have little or no consideration for "accuracy" but they move money and those who control the code are controlling the world and the money.
Lat but not least is the documentary which I have posted before but including in case you missed it. Listen to the software designer that built the "refinance" software. As he says it was a good system but was never meant to be modeled by the banks the way it was and we all know what happened after that. There's also a tech in that I assume was maybe with Lehman and is now paying 60k to learn how to become a Quant. Myself in a side comment here relate to him a bit when he talks about going places again and seeing the light of day as years ago I went through a stage like that when writing a medical records system, the time it takes is phenomenal and thus I tell everyone that the "short order code kitchen burned down a long time ago". I had a few years where I swear I didn't see much day as I was at the computer programming and learning and researching and debugging.
When you hear talk today about turning Medicare into a voucher system, know in your hearts that it is simply not possible in a time frame spoken of. Social Security IT infrastructure has been work in progress to update for about 12 years or so and use that as a comparison. To rewrite Medicare with a voucher system from the ground up is looking to be a 7 to 8 year project as the IT infrastructure to run it would be complex and you would need truckolads of developers and in jest I say we would have to outsource to both India and China.
Again, when politicians make promises as such they themselves are not literate of the complexities of IT infrastructures and have no clue when the sound off. Certain portions can be adapted and re-written but the entire repeal as some talk about is just about impossible and I would want no part of the project as it would never be right with the complexities we deal with today and again 7 to 8 years...the politicians think we still run out to short order code kitchen...again it's gone:)
Here's how the formulas and business models get written, the quants tell you and they also say that the complexities of math in financials is way too complicated and he also says that yes, CEOs can't understand it..only the quants know for sure. They do have an attitude of being smarter and the one admits it as again as I related to above, the hours and time of developing anything is huge, so on another note appreciate your Microsoft and Apple operating systems, a lot of work there.
Now I have an idea here too that I will pass along and that is to excise tax the data sellers and I'll give you a link if you want to read up as I think about this every time I pay an excise tax to put a tire on my car to support the highways so I can get to that lesser paying job. I'll use Walgreens as an example to show how much profit banks, companies, etc. are making. in 2010 Walgreens made short of $800 million, selling data only, so it does not include their other business, just selling you and I. Billions are made and this is part of the reason so many companies are so profitable. Why would a company expand and hire employees and build manufacturing plants when they can hire a few geeks, write some code, mine data, query it and create information for sale. They don't in this age of uncertainty and opt out to mine and sell data as there's overhead and no accountability or questions asked on the integrity of what they are selling. Everyone is again Algo Duped as they show you formulas. Revert back to video number one and Siefe covers that really good.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/...
So again I'm trying to help here and cut out the drama queen stuff that fills the media and does nothing for us and does nothing for making strides for holding companies, banks, etc. accountable. It just is what it is and we have to fight back with some of the same knowledge and tools used by the financial markets and this is it, math and formulas and at least the knowledge there of. It's an invisible foe here as you can't see them, talk to them, half the time get a customer service rep who understand them with their own company and so on, but errors are found it's on your back and dime and you are guilty until you correct it and they can just keep assigning risk with flawed data that hurts all of us. It's not right.
I think it was my Chapter 46 of the Attack of the Killer Algorithm series where I talked about one of my situations to where I sold my house in January. A couple weeks ago I received my annual mileage statement from my car insurance company and talk about mining and flawed data...there was a second driver assigned on my policy and I have not had not had a second driver in at least 25 years. The agent was a little uneasy and could not explain why or how the new owner of my former home was listed as a second driver, how much data are they mining and selling.
Obviously they connected data based on the address as the agent had my new address right away and everything was current and accurate. He could only explain that they have 2 divisions and the other one maybe didn't update their records yet..and no I was not buying it with the research I do on data mining and the fact that so much credible data is being combined with non credible data to form incredibly flawed data. The mined it and the algorithm made the error:) So keep this in mind and just know billions are made doing this, something we need to tax and license. In addition a federal website requiring data sellers to list what kind of data they sell and to who would be required as well. What consumer doesn't want that information! Congress can't regulate this or control by law as the technology is way above what they can do. Unfortunately when some of them are over whelmed we end up with ridiculous drama queen crap in the news, like the 50 shades of rape.
That is one of the most visible examples of being Algo Duped in thinking that formulas are correct all the time and are a cure all, they are not. Italy outdid the US though this week with convicting the scientists, that's how Algo Duped they are thinking tha the scientists working with that data should have the formulas and capabilities to predict..so see how this goes...
The videos included are lengthy but well worth watching if you want to learn about the roots of what is really happening beyond the "drama queens" out there that distract and disrupt. If we stay on this crash course, it is not good and things will deteriorate and as Keven Slavin says in the second video "the future looks quite bright if you are an algorithm, not so if you are a human"...so we need balance, credibility and ethics to return as our butts are kicked with those using math, formulas and algorithms to take our money. Well that's enough said and I hope some of this proves to be useful.