Data Mining and Custom Advertising

Have you noticed how ads you see on your Facebook page or on web sites while browsing the internet are somehow similar to what you searched for and browsed? Did you receive a catalog or coupons of a product by mail from a company even when you have never requested their catalog?

I believe we are now in the second stage of the computer era. In the first stage, computers were used to store data, process the data and retrieve simple information from the stored data. Databases are the best example of this stage of computing. Computers now can store vast amount of data and can collect data from different geographical locations and store it in one place (e.g., cloud computing). Based on this huge amount of data (i.e., big data) we can analyze a pattern or even predict the future of an event or a purchasing behavior. This is the second stage of the computer era.

Data Mining, a part of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, is responsible for finding patterns and predicting information from data. Netflix, Target, Facebook, Credit Card companies and many others use data mining to understand and predict their customers’ movies preference, purchasing pattern or shopping behavior.

Here is an interesting video about how advertisers use data mining to customize their ads:

A masterpiece underwater

Meet the artist and lover. Enjoy!

“They’ve been called the crop circles of the ocean floor—seven-foot diameter patterned circles that were first spotted in 1995 off the coast of southern Japan. But their origin was an enigma, and local divers termed them “mystery circles.”

The mystery persisted until 2011 when the culprit, a male pufferfish just five inches long, was finally caught in the act. And recently scientists studied the process of how the species creates these elaborate designs in order to woo females.” [source]

Girls Lead in Science Exam, Especially in Jordan

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/04/science/girls-lead-in-science-exam-but-not-in-the-united-states.html?hp

“We see that very early in childhood — around age 4 — gender roles in occupations appear to be formed,” said Christianne Corbett, co-author of the 2010 report “Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.” “Women are less likely to go into science careers, although they are clearly capable of succeeding.”

Researchers say these cultural forces are strong in the United States, Britain and Canada but far less pervasive in Russia, Asia and the Middle East, which have a much higher proportion of women in science and engineering. In Jordan, for example, girls score more than 8 percent better in science than boys do.

“For girls in some Arab countries, education is the only way to move up the social structure,” Mr. Schleicher said. “It is one way to earn social mobility.” [source]

Although girls in Jordan scored much better than boys their score is much less than girls in many other countries. Nevertheless, this difference says a lot about women in Jordan. I salute their determination to become better and improve their lives.