Systems ScienceTackling Complexity in the 21st Century

Jeffrey P. BighamROC HCI Group

Computer ScienceUniversity of Rochester

DATA!90s and Today

Examples

data.gov

onebusaway.org

512kb of memory1970s

Terabytes of memory2000s

CLOUD OF DATA

Data + Algorithms(machine learning)

NetFlix

Pandora

Facebook

eHarmonyGMail

Yelp

Google

Where is my bus?

NetFlix

NetFlix Prize!

Linking IMDB and NetFlix

Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov “Robust De-anonymization of Large Sparse Datasets.”  2008.

When Good Recommendations Go Bad

USA Today. January 5, 2006

Wall Street Journal. November 26, 2002

“…a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.”

Doug BowmanFormer Google Designerhttp://stopdesign.com

NetFlix Prize Winners

$1 Million to the best team

Teams collaborated, mixed, and joined

Winner used “meta-learning”

Combined multiple virtual “experts”

THE CROWD

Wikipedia

Barnstar

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~crandall/photomap/

The Anatomy of a Social Search Engine

vark.com

Foursquare

“Congratulations! You just became the mayor of your house!”

Please don’t Rob Me?

HUMAN COMPUTATION

Google Image Labeler(ESP Game)

Make Big Money!

Mturk.com

Middle Management

Why wouldn’t a tenured professor want a virtual farm?

400 m

80 m

20 m

… …

Summary

• Data (LOTS OF DATA)

• Algorithms leverage data

• Humans use computers– Can computers use humans?

• Social context and privacy– These change quickly!

ENDJeffrey P. Bigham

jbigham@cs.rochester.edu