CogZest – Thrive in the Sea of Knowledge Let the Dataset Change the Mindset I was born and raised in California, but there has never been a time when I haven’t felt, in the deepest part of the very core of my being, that I was made for New York City. When the stars aligned and life finally permitted a visit, everything between touching down at LaGuardia and my last evening in Midtown was exactly how I always dreamed it would be: like coming home. So maybe you can imagine the mixture of joy, pressure, and sheer anxiety I felt after being asked to write an article about two Con Edison employees, and how they used information design to help rebuild Manhattan after September 11th. “Find the story, Chelsi,” urged my team. Find the story. So here we go. Manhattan, I Love You After a chat with another Con Edison employee, Systems Specialist David Hill, it was decided that a mind map was in order. Information, You Are Beautiful Getting lost in information is easier with each passing day, so yeah, maps make a lot of sense. Below is a visualization of the political spectrum.
Negotiation Examples: How Crisis Negotiators Use Text Messaging In their negotiation training, police and professional hostage negotiators are taught skills that will help them defuse tense situations over the course of long phone calls, such as engaging in active listening, determining the person’s emotions from his or her inflection, and trust building. These crisis negotiators are being put to the test by young criminal suspects and others in crisis, whose first instinct increasingly seems to be texting rather than talking, according to an Associated Press article. Back in 2014, Red Bank, Tennessee, police chief Tim Christol told the Associated Press that the usual negotiation skills he teaches don’t translate to texting, such as emotional labeling in the form of a statement such as “You sound angry.” When a hostage taker or other person in crisis insists on texting, crisis negotiators, with no obvious alternative, have little choice but to comply. What are your takeaways from this negotiation example?
FlowingData | Data Visualization, Infographics, and Statistics Drawing on the right side of the brain: A voxel-based morphometry analysis of observational drawing Highlights We measure structural differences in GM and WM in art students and non-art students. We correlate GM and WM volume and performance on drawing tasks. Drawing skill linked to increased GM in the cerebellum and medial frontal gyrus. Drawing relates to changes in fine motor structures in art and non-art students. Abstract Structural brain differences in relation to expertise have been demonstrated in a number of domains including visual perception, spatial navigation, complex motor skills and musical ability. Keywords Art Drawing Cerebellum Expertise Voxel-based morphometry View full text Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc.
Drowning in Data? Drowning in Data? In today’s working environment we have to deal with receiving information from many different sources, in multiple formats, which we are struggling to manage, digest and navigate the information to get to what is relevant. Something as simple as searching for information can waste a lot of time and have a big effect on our own productivity, and in turn can affect performance and job satisfaction. We decided to conduct some research into this issue of information overload, with the aim of quantifying how much of a problem this is proving for office workers and consequently businesses today. View our infographic of UK results On the back of these interesting results, we have created our very own Data Mass Index Calculator that allows you to see how much information from different sources you are having to deal with each day, providing tips on how you can deal with information in a more effective way, and prevent you from “drowning in data!” Related
Brainwave Experiment Visualizes Storytelling's Effects on the Mind Image courtesy the artists. Screencaps via What happens inside the brain when you're reading? To explore that question, Latvian interactive art lab Connection Codes equipped participants with EEG headpieces to collect brainwave data as they listened to others read books aloud, including A.A. With Reader, Connection Code wanted to see the intersection between reading and technology in a different way—beyond ebooks. The Reader from CONNECTION on Vimeo. Related: Artist Manipulates 48 Pools of Water with Her Mind Brain Activity Changes The Colors Of This Crystal Headpiece Artists 3D Print the Brain's Response to Love
Project Nightingale: What Does Google Know About Your Health? The Wall Street Journal reports Google’s ‘Project Nightingale’ Gathers Personal Health Data on Millions of Americans. Google is engaged with one of the U.S.’s largest health-care systems on a project to collect and crunch the detailed personal-health information of millions of people across 21 states. The initiative, code-named “Project Nightingale,” appears to be the biggest effort yet by a Silicon Valley giant to gain a toehold in the health-care industry through the handling of patients’ medical data. Federal Inquiry Underway A Federal Inquiry into Google’s ‘Project Nightingale’ is now underway. Google’s project with the country’s second-largest health system to collect detailed health information on 50 million American patients sparked a federal inquiry and criticism from patients and lawmakers. HIPAA Violation? Please consider What Information is Protected Under HIPAA Law? Who Has Access to What? Sign Here Please Does anyone even know? Did Ascension get signatures from all its patients?
A New Media Approach For Improved Sense-Making Through Physiological Coherence The simple exercise you were just introduced to is designed to help create a physiological heart brain connection that has been shown to improve memory, learning, problem-solving and discernment. Since 2009, Collective Evolution has been committed to forging a radically new approach to media and the discussion of current events.This new approach was developed by our founder Joe Martino, and collectively refined as years went on. Over the years scientific research has come to support the approach we have been taking to help improve the way people consume and synthesize information in order to make meaningful choices in their lives and in society. This discussion is worthy of consideration as most platforms either focus on simple ‘feel good’ or ‘well being’ based content, or focus on news from a purely journalistic sense, often with a political bias. Coherence & Optimal Function Research from The Institute of HeartMath illustrating the difference in coherent and incoherent heart rhythms.
| Doing Data for Good Right As an organization focused on using data science to support humanitarian issues, DataKind knows that ethics are of the utmost importance. In this blog, DataKind UK outlines the ethical principles their community has created. Read on and see what you think. Is this a code you’d adopt? Guest blog: Christine Henry and the DataKind UK team "Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do." - Potter Stewart As data scientists volunteering to help nonprofits, we hope that our work will have a positive impact on those around us. DataKind’s projects often lead to a nonprofit partner reallocating scarce resources (money, food, or even advocacy and attention), and this may mean that some groups will go unsupported. At DataKind UK, we’ve been thinking about some of these tough ethical questions. We believe the best way to act ethically as an organisation is to directly confront these hard ethical questions and to support open, frank discussions.
Science Reveals Artists Really Do Have Different Brains We might now have neurological proof that artists actually are different creatures from everyone else on the planet. According to a study published in Neurolmage, researchers believe that artists have brains that are structurally different from non-artists. It appears that there's now justifiable support for the idiom "she's just wired differently, idk." The study, titled "Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Analysis Of Observational Drawing," included 44 graduate and post-grad art students and non-art students who were asked to complete various drawing tasks. The scans depicted that the artist group had more grey matter in the area of the brain called the precuneus in the parietal lobe. Lead author Rebecca Chamberlain from KU Leuven, Belgium noted, "The people who are better at drawing really seem to have more developed structures in regions of the brain that control for fine motor performance and what we call procedural memory." Image via h/t BBC @zachsokol
Data Ethics - What Is It Good For? Data ethics might be complicated, but it is essential to business success The field of data ethics (or tech ethics, or AI ethics, or responsible AI…) has been having something of a moment. A recent study showed there were close to 100 sets of data or AI ethics principles out there. There’s been enough of a trend that it has already got its own backlash on various grounds: that the ethics are good but not practical enough to make decisions (and so we need tools…); that (some) organisations are building principles in an attempt to avoid regulation (ethics washing); that human rights legislation already protects people and the attempt to make AI rules look like a different thing is to duck engaging with that, as well as contributing in itself to a story about the inevitability and power of tech. Given all this, if you’re in the tech business, what do you (or might you) get out of having data ethics in your organisation? Protecting public reputation When data and ethics collide