Q1) Report on two prediction markets other than intrade.com.The first prediction market under report, PredictIt.org, is operated from the University of Wellington in Victoria, New Zealand with permission of the CFTC. It brokers a broad array of political election and world issue outcomes. It features identity checking against a government issued ID and will not register users that it cannot verify. According to James Carville, Political Pundit, "PredictIt is the most exciting engine in terms of political opinion."
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| PredictIt.org |
One example is the contracts for Democratic nominee for the US 2020 election. Amy Klobuchar, whose visibility increased after the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, stood in the snow campaigning when she announced. This was not enough to put her flush with the top contracts, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris who are tied at 21 cents a share. Bernie announced his run 3 days ago at this writing, while Kamala Harris has been in the race for 32 days. Bernie is doing pretty well given that Harris had a 29 day head-start in terms of announcing, he was trailing by a penny yesterday and has caught up in just 3 days.
Klobuchar entered 12 days ago and Cory Booker 20 days ago, so they could be headed for the "also ran" category. I jump immediately to the specifics of current politics because it shows the power of prediction markets. When a tool allows us to focus on our problem, rather than its own usage, it becomes a true utility. With InTrade.com in the rear-view mirror we see the power of prediction markets to themselves become influencers of public opinion and participation. Joe Biden has not announced, and is sitting at a 18 cent share, down 2 cents from yesterday. Maybe the markets know something that Joe doesn't! I find this all very exciting. Drilling down past first impressions we obtain the full ranking of US 2020 Democratic Candidates sorted by share price.
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| PredictIt.org |
Taking today's figures and summing them by party we obtain that, if everyone shows up to vote, the odds are 59/41 in favor of a Democratic president in the next election. Honestly, this makes me feel more at ease for some reason. But there is reason for anxiety and here's why: Right now, it's a toss up between Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders. If the ticket splits because of people we admire like Jessica DeLoach Sabin saying that Bernie isn't a 'real' Democrat, then the odds shift to 46/41/14, Democrat, Republican, Bernie respectively. Bernie loses instantly and the outcome of the election bogs down into the noise signal, with a possible repetition of the 2016 outcome.
The 'second' prediction under report is an ensemble of of three emerging prediction markets (PM) surveyed by Ian Edwards in his Medium article.
Here is a comparison table generated from the information in the article:
Ian makes an interesting remark/distinction:
"The new generation of prediction market platforms are using trustless, public blockchains, such as Ethereum and Bitcoin, to allow for, in theory, greater transparency and remove the need for a central operator."This lack of human control, a complete delegation to the blockchain is a change of paradigm whose effects are yet to be fully realized. I dispute the term trustless. Blockchain algorithms achieve public confidence (aka trust) by the distributed accounting ledger and proof-of-work functions that serve as stand-ins for traditional human / institutional trust and replace them with redundant error-correcting codes and watts expended creating hash codes.
In the three panels below a terse screen capture is provided of the three sites reviewed:
The Augur.net site while functioning, lacks the sophisticated user-interface of PredictIt.org. It supports politics and sports prediction contracts:
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| Auger.net |
The Gnosis website and its Olympia application is not yet functioning.
The stox.com site functions, but also lacks the sophisticated user-interface of PredictIt.org. It hosts mostly sports predictions from Europe, and NBA basketball in the US.
Q2) Critique the prediction market idea. Why might their predictions be wrong?
The InTrade.com Romney incident in 2013, covered in class, showed that people will try to manipulate prediction markets even if it costs them a great deal of money. In the Romney incident, one broker ran the table to the tune of more than four million dollars... and lost it all! So the prediction was wrong, but the system rewarded those who bet the right way. So even when prediction markets are wrong, they reward those who see things correctly.
Q3) Pausch claims, "... when you do the right thing, good stuff has a way of happening." And later, "It's not about how to achieve your dreams, it's about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you [i.e., will happen automatically]."
This is an example of something called the "just world hypothesis." On the other hand, there is a well known book entitled When Bad Things Happen to Good People. And recall that Pausch himself gave this lecture after being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Discuss your opinions on this important issue.The event I always return to when weighing the "just world" idea is the Jewish Holocaust of WWII. Six million Jews were murdered by the German Nazis and more than twenty million Russians died. There is no "just world" in these situations and as I heard one Memorial attendee say, "It is beyond theology". Since that time there has been the Pol Pot genocide where nearly two million Cambodians, doctors, lawyers and intellectuals (25% of the population) were murdered. There was the Rwandan genocide where nearly a million Tutsi were murdered at the hands of the Hutu. These and many more genocides throughout the world are enumerated with more clarity here. My point is, that in a just world, mass genocides do not pop up every few years. So there is no just world at the world scope of human affairs.
There is also no justice in the regional scopes where those who carry more military, political, wealth, or religious influence are in control. We see the military and political injustices in Central America, with kidnappings, murders, extortion of those who do not toe the line. In this country we see that those with wealth encounter a different flavor of justice than those without the means to assemble "Dream Teams" of legal defense attorneys when they are charged. Many get caught in a revolving door of contact with the justice system when they do not pay punitive fines for minor offenses. Those caught in a web of religious influence like those who have been sexually abused by 6000 priests in the US Catholic Church and 700 victims in the Southern Baptist denomination.
Those who are lawyers or have legal training can gain more latitude in legal matters, they can exploit loopholes in the law to their own benefit, that those who are not so trained cannot. So there is no just-world for those without legal expertise or the means to secure it.
Physicians and those with specialized medical training are able to marshal knowledge, supplies, drugs, and clinical tests for themselves and their families, that those without access cannot. Their domain expertise confers on them an advantage, both in times of political stability and social turmoil. Further they are financially equipped to relocate whereas those with fewer resources cannot. Consequently there is no just-world for those without medical expertise or the resources to pay for it.
I find it implausible, let me sharpen that, I find it impossible that any significant number of the victims in the the genocide, abuse, and injustice cases deserved what happened to them. So the world is not a just place, and there is no reason to believe anything has changed that will fix that, or that it will ever be fixed. Injustice is hard-wired into the system. So we must attempt to survive in the presence of it.
So does this injustice give us permission to emulate it? By no means. The first objective of any reasonable caring and moral person is to obstruct the harm that is in the world, and the harm that fulments these situations. Reducing harm is the single most important thing any of us can do. As Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
I have also noticed a peculiar 'complementarity' as Niels Bohr (1885-1962) put it, almost a conservation principle regarding the duality of good and evil (wave and particle nature of physics). When awful things are happening in one place, equal and oppositely wonderful things are happening in another place. So the trick, if there is one, is to stay in the arena of the wonderful and avoid the arena of horror. But for many wonderful people, that has not been possible to do. As for myself, with limited time, I focus on the wonderful, hoping the evil will eat itself. Often, if one is patient, it does.
Q4) How your project topic will affect your personal future.I have five candidate projects and I have not heard a preference expressed for any of them. Soon the wave-function of five will collapse to one or possibly two. For the time being I will pursue this multi-processing illusion and answer the question for each of them.
PMTMS: Permanent Magnet Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
I do not know. On the positive side it could help me focus or provide some kind of therapeutic effect, or possibly lead to some kind of computer-brain interface. On the negative side, there is always the possibility of an accident, a memory erasure or injury of some kind.
CNN: feature extension of the TensorFlow Neural Network Playground
The effect that working with the Convolutional Neural Networks in the Tensorflow playground has had on me is this: I have already seen it, understood it, and extended it. This proved my assertion about basis functions mentioned in a previous homework. Executing this project helped me become familiar with Typescript, Node.js, and npm, the JavaScript package manager for node.js. Npm is in widespread use. This helps improve, extend and maintain my machine learning literacy.
My objective in choosing this project would be to transmit that benefit to other computer and information science students.
RNN: predicting signals over time using machine learning.
The effect that working with the Recurrent Neural Networks in Tensorflow and Python Jupyter notebooks has had on me is this: I have seen it, understood it, and am in the process of codifying, extending and generalizing it.
I have done a lot of work in time and frequency domain signal processing. In fact I have written a book on it. What interests me about RNN's is that they constitute a smart predictive filter that is calibrated using data, but is not limited to a specific choice of basis functions, say like Fourier analysis is. The machine learning model is trained against a very general set of signal inputs and learns to output the most likely signal as a result. That is a deeply powerful tool whose application could benefit me and others.
My objective in choosing this project would be to transmit that benefit to other computer and information science students.
SGL: Soft Gate Logic as a future computing architecture
The effect that defining and articulating Soft Gate Logic has had on me is this: I have defined it, solved some theoretical problems necessary for its correct definition, understood it, and am in the process of codifying and using it.
What interests me about SGL is that it constitutes a dramatic extension to Boolean logic, that in all cases reverts to current computing, but enables fuzzy computing. It is also a gateway to quantum computing, both in terms of understanding and using.
My objective in choosing this project would be to participate in the revolution that such an extension would provide.
WQC: Warm Quantum Computer
The effect that defining and articulating Warm Quantum Computer has had on me is this: I have defined some key pieces of it, have proposed how those might be built, but I'm just at the very beginning of understanding its potential impact. My hope is that it could be used to create a more powerful imaging technology, a quantum camera, if you will that would have applications in medicine, photography, videography, communication and entertainment.
What interests me about WQC is that it could conceivably create a more affordable quantum computer, and thus a "Personal Quantum Computer".
My objective in choosing this project would be to participate in the revolution that such a technology would provide.
Q5) Identify 8+ sources of information about your project topic. Provide the URLs and give 2-3 sentences describing each one.
PMTMS: Permanent Magnet Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
- Description of my 2006 experiment.
I dug up the transcript of a TMS experiment I did 13 years ago. - If was going to design version 2 I would use these magnets.
Rare earth neodymium magnets are now available in high intensity versions. - Shapeways
A 3D printing service that can be used for rapid prototyping of TMS equipment. - Here is an article on dosing.
It is important to consider dosing in any brain stimulating technology,
whether electrical, magnetic or pharmacological. - Here is an article on the circuitry, note the 4.5 kV pulse voltage!
rTMS pulses fed to low resistance coils produce very powerful
magnetic transients. This is important to realize.
To some degree rTMS is a blunt instrument. - Wiki on Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Risks increase at higher frequencies of operation - RTMS Hardware
The machinery for rTMS is available in a variety of models and form factors. - RTMS Overview
Basic description of the medical technology including enumeration of those
who should not have the procedure. - NIH Overview of Brain Stimulation Therapies
This site compares and contrasts various brain stimulation therapies.
CNN: feature extension of the TensorFlow Neural Network Playground
- Neural Network Playground
One of the best technology demonstrators for Convolution Neural Networks - My Basis Function Additions to the Neural Network Playground
Modified Version that recognizes spiral function example faster - Neural Net Playground Source Code (Github)
Source code for the Playground, hosted on Github
An amazing asset, written in Typescript - Tensorflow - An Open Source Machine Learning Framework
Google's ML contribution which is a world leading library for AI - Tensorflow Eager Execution
Tensorflow can execute from a user defined graph
or straight from procedural code. Both had pro's and con's. - Tensorboard
Tensorboard enables visualization of deep neural networks. - Jupyter Notebook Tutorial: Introduction, Setup, and Walkthrough
Jupyter is the premiere prototyping environment for machine learning
in the world. - Python for Data Science and Machine Learning Bootcamp
A fantastic Python immersion course taught by Jose Portillo - Clear Algorithms: Deriving the Gradient Descent Rule
A canonical document and reference for machine learning algorithms.
RNN: predicting signals over time using machine learning
- Jupyter Widgets - the ipywidgets library
Typical Invocation > from ipywidgets import *
Provides interactivity for Python programs running in Jupyter Notebooks - NumPy - scientific computing library for Python
Typical Invocation > import numpy as np
Provides numerical analysis data structures and routines - Pandas - Python Data Analysis Library
Typical Invocation > import pandas as pd
Provides Procedural 'Excel-Like' Data Tables and Operators - SciPy (“Sigh Pie”) - open-source S/W for math, science, and engineering
Typical Invocation > import scipy as sp
Example Invocation > from scipy.integrate import trapz, simps
Numerical integration using trapezoidal and Simpson's rule - Scikit-learn - Machine Learning Library for Python
Example Invocation > from sklearn.metrics import mean_squared_error
Compute the RMS error in a calculuation - Matplotlib Library - Python Rich 2D Plotting Library
Typical Invocation > import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
Special Invocation > %matplotlib inline, enables real-time visualization - Mlab - Python scripting for 3D plotting with mayavi
Typical Invocation > from mayavi import mla
> mlab.init_notebook()
Enables 3D visualization and rendering in the notebook - Math Library - Python Math Library
Typical Invocation > import mathThis library is Python's version of math.h from the C language.
SGL: Soft Gate Logic as a future computing architecture
- Analog Computers
I am interested in these because prior to the digital age,
computing with integrators and differentiators implemented as
operational amplifiers was being developed, but this development
was curtailed with the appearance of digital machinery.
This is a shame because analog computing is real-time computing. - Missile guidance
The V2 rocket was the first rocket to use an analog guidance system,
so it is good to review the history of missile guidance for this technology.
They were also incorporated into bomb sights. - Inertial guidance
Inertial guidance systems were a generalization to other forms of transport. - GPS navigation
GPS navigation is the terminal node of current development for guidance systems
it would be interesting to consider a soft gate version of GPS and its gold code. - Fuzzy Logic
This is an overview of fuzzy logic that define logic on the continuous interval [0,1]
It has been around since the 1920's in one form or another. - Fuzzy Thinking
A book about thinking with Fuzzy Logic, as opposed to just being confused. - Complex Numbers
Complex numbers and analysis can be implemented using two fuzzy bits.
This is the natural gateway to quantum computing.
Everyone should know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide complex numbers. - Wave Functions
Wave functions are an alternate view of reality, contrasting with particles.As such the are fundamentally closer to reality, as well as being less intuitive.
WQC: Warm Quantum Computer
- Gisin's New York Times Article on Entanglement
This exciting 1997 article discusses Nicolas Gisin's experiment of that time.
It was my first exposure to photon entanglement. - Definition of a qubit
This wiki describes qubits and develops the Bloch sphere
model of the qubit and bra-ket notation - The IBM quantum computer you can use
This is a real code-and-go quantum computer
I find QC results and ML results similar in that they fuzzy,
unlike the exact results we are used to in numerical analysis. - Lithium Niobate as a photon splitter (downconversion)
It is this technology that Gisin and others have used to
generate entangled photons. - Three solution photon combiner (upconversion)
This article describes a novel three-dye system for
combining two photons back into one.
This is critical for me, providing an 'inverse-operator'. - Braket notation for quantum mechanics
This video runs over an hour but is worth every second.
The instructor starts with simple matrix notation and
ends up explaining a good deal of quantum mechanics and Dirac notation. - How to add 1 and 1 on a quantum computer
This blog entry I did earlier in preparing for this class
addresses the, "so what's it good for?" question from first principles. - Solving Rubik's cube on a quantum computer
There is a simultaneity and interconnectedness to the faces of a Rubik's cube.
They are, to some degree, entangled with each other and to some degree
independent. I'm interested in programming languages for QC that
would provide for their rapid and intuitive embedding.
Building Your Personal Future
Q6) ("Do"). Based on your work on this topic, identify something that will progress you toward your vision, such as a strategic action that helps address a strategic issue, such as a core strategic issue that is a prerequisite to others. (On your blog, simply note if you succeeded on this question, but don't put the answer there.)I have ruminated on this question. A useful construct was to consider others who have done so as well, adding a people and experience dimension to the activity.
Q7) ("Monitor"). Consider the results of the "Do" step you just completed. How well did it work, or is it working now? If well, then you are on track. If instead any problems of any kind arose, see 3. (On your blog, note if it worked or not, but don't put what it was.)It worked out but I have sustained a minor injury, which may or may not be related, but could be a warning to proceed with care.
Q8) ("Accountability"). Consider the results of the "Monitor" step you just completed. If it worked, reward yourself! If things didn't go as well as hoped for, analyze why and what you could do to circumvent them. Take notes on this for future reference. (On your blog, note the result of this question in general terms, but don't put any details.)It is important to create sandboxes where innovations may be safely tested and evaluated before they are distributed or disclosed.
9) Grad students only. Read 20 pages in the book you have obtained. Explain what you agree with, disagree with, learned from it, and how your views agree with or disagree with the reviewers of the book.
I have moved this answer to my ongoing review of the book, "The Human Race to the Future" a single curated document that is here. In the session for this question I reviewed chapters nine and ten of the book.
