Art of Inference
An interactive workshop designed to teach the practical skills of inferential scanning, synthesis and reporting.
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| Volume 22 #3 - September 2004 |
| Anomaly - Volume 22 | |
| 01 September 2004 | |
Anomalies Used in the Inference Process
Reports - Volume 31 (2004) #5 Less Favoured Nation
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The U.S. military appropriations bill, signed in October 2002, came to $354.8 billion. For fiscal year 2004, the Department of Defense asked Congress for a 4.2 percent increase. The next largest military spender is Russia, but its military budget is only 14 percent of the U.S. total. (Sorrows of Empire, by Chalmers Johnson) |
Reports - Volume 31 (2004) #7 De-Leverage
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Bankruptcy has become deeply entrenched in American life. In the year 2003, more people filed for bankruptcy than graduated from college. (The Modern-Day Poverty Syndrome, by Marc Faber) |
Reports - Volume 31 (2004) #8 Wireless Sensor Networks
| At a U.S. army base in Missouri, engineers demonstrated a self-aware system that physically rearranges itself in response to changing conditions. A battle tank with a plow attached to its front blazes a trail through a thicket of unarmed mines. After the tank crushes a half-dozen or so of the mines, the remaining mines redistribute themselves to fill the gap behind the tank—hopping through the air with firecracker pops emanating from tiny rocket boosters. (Technology Review, July/August 2003) |
Reports - Volume 31 (2004) #9 A New Class Structure
| Cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race. (The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida) |
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Too many variables In 1979, Richards J. Heuer, Jr., wrote a report for the CIA entitled, Do You Really Need More Information?" This paper was declassified years later. Heuer describes an ,*S experiment run by the CIA with horse race handicappers.The handicappers were given data (sterilized so that horses and actual races could not be identified) for 40 past races and were asked to rank the top five horses in each race in order of expected finish. Each handicapper was given the data in increments of the 5, 10, 20 and 40 variables he had judged to be most useful. Thus, handicapers predicted each race four times—once with each of the four different levels of information. The result: The average accuracy of predictions remained the same regardless of how much information the handicappers had available. All, however, expressed steadily increasing confidence in their judgments as more information was received. This CIA study came to mind during the recent Art of Inference Workshop. Some of our Williams Inference Center files were searched for anomalies. On average, the participants found 10 anomalies per file, whereas WIC had identified two or three. No wonder participants had difficulty with the inference for each file. Too many variables. Jim Williams |
America’s third “natural burial park,” the Ethician Family Cemetery, has opened near Huntsville, Texas. Biodegradable caskets – no steel vaults or embalming fluid allowed – mean you can compost yourself. (Prevention, July 2004)
Carnegie Mellon University has developed the world’s first robot receptionist. With its ability to detect motion, the device senses and greets visitors. (USN&WR, 3/15/04)
China is on course to age faster than any major country in history, as its median age soars from about 32 today to at least 44 in 2040. (NYT, 5/30/04) This summer, Variety plans to launch its first foreign-language edition in China. (Reuters, 5/9/04)
Nearly 1,000 new courses have sprung up across China if the last few years, but most of them are deserted. It is too expensive a sport for all but a few Chinese to pursue. (This Week, 5/28/04)
There are more than 100 companies building cars in China. (USN&WR, 6/21/04)
Because China’s phone companies are building their networks from scratch in many places, the majority of long-distance phone calls in China take place on networks that use voice over Internet protocol, or VOIP, technology. (WSJ, 4/22/04)
As China modernizes, women there are developing the Western phobia about fat. In a recent survey, 70% of Chinese college women said they wanted to lose weight. (Marie Claire, 3/04)
In 2002, for every 100 newborn girls, there were 117 boys born. If this trend continues, China will have up to 40 million more men than women by 2020. (UPI, 3/9/04)
This year on March 27, the first hurricane ever documented in the South Atlantic in any month came ashore in southern Brazil. (NYT, 4/30/04)
Defying expectation and easy explanation, hundreds of instruments around the world recorded a drop in sunshine reaching the surface of Earth, as much as 10% from the late 1950’s to the early 90’s. (NYT, 5/13/04)
A tiny but growing number of consumers are spending as much as $20,000 for hand-made mattresses boasting superior coils and layered with cashmere and Belgian silk. (CSM, 6/30/04)
“There is a new breed of users out there, computer-literate consumers who don’t think twice about altering the look, feel and functionality of a product. Those billions of embedded computers have turned business on its head. The Henry Ford school of “one size fits all” or the Colgate school of 40 choices of toothpaste are now both obsolete. Give us one size that we can alter how we wish.” - Andy Kessler, author of Wall Street Meat. (WSJ, 3/16/04)
Several years ago, Bose began marketing a consumer version of its noise-canceling headphones, first produced for the military. “Its success surprised even us,” said a company spokeswoman. Most people use them on flights, but, increasingly, they are used to block out lawn mowers, the idle chatter of colleagues or commuters, or to sleep and meditate. (NYT, 3/21/04)
Embezzlement at small companies is bad and getting worse. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners in Austin, Tex., says its members estimate that American companies lose 6% of their revenue to fraud. (NYT, 5/6/04)
“What’s really changed with shoplifting is that the professional criminals have discovered it. These guys are pros – they usually work in teams. It’s big-time crime,” said Tom Saquella, president of the Maryland Retailers Assoc. (Capital, 4/4/04)
In 2003, for the first time in 15 years, no one was shot and killed by police in Seattle. In Miami, there were no police shootings, fatal or otherwise, for the first time in 14 years. In Phoenix, police shootings fell to their lowest rate in 14 years. In these cities and others, police are carrying a new weapon, the Taser gun, which stuns suspects with 50,000 volts of electricity. (NYT, 3/7/04)
“The global fall in fertility,” Phillip Longman warns in The Empty Cradle, “is creating a world for which few individuals, and no nations, are prepared. Simply stated, this is because population growth and the human capital it creates are part of the foundation upon which modern economies, as well as modern welfare states, are built.” (WSJ, 4/28/04)
Whether they keep working, quit or go part time, many women are choosing to have three children. From 1995 to 2000, the rate of women giving birth to three or more children rose 7% to 18.4 per 1,000 women. (USA Today, 3/10/04)
Americans today are moving at the lowest rates in more than 50 years. The moving rate has steadily declined since the 1950s. (Wash Times, 3/24/04)
The cultural shift away marriage in the past 50 years throughout the industrialized West has no precedent in history, according to David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project. In the U.S. today, about 42% of all workers are single. (Scripps Howard, 3/12/04)
Of America’s children under the age of 15, 41% are still cared for by stay-at-home-moms. (American Enterprise, 12/03)
A new study shows that most students take about five years to graduate. To be competitive in today’s job market, some students say they need two or three degrees. (Newsweek, 5/31/04)
“Education has failed to adjust to the massive transformation in Western culture since the rise of electronic media. . . . Interest in and patience with long, complex books and poems have alarmingly diminished not only among college students but college faculty in the U.S. . . . Television is reality for them: nothing exists unless it can be filmed or until it is rehashed onscreen by talking heads.” - Camille Paglia. (Arion, Winter 2004)
Duke University is canceling all 8 a.m. classes because students aren’t getting enough sleep. (The Week, 4/30/04)
Globalization has transformed delivery into a complex engineering task. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has expanded its logistics program and started a new master’s degree dedicated to logistics in the school of engineering. (WSJ, 3/1/04)
At Wesleyan University, students no longer have to check “M” or “F” on their health forms. Instead, they are asked to “describe your gender identity history.” (World, 3/27/04)
Scientists at the University of Minnesota have designed a process to extract hydrogen gas from corn-based ethanol using rhodium and ceria, exotic metals needed in the catalytic process. This new technique could produce gas at $1.50 per kilogram. Current methods cost between $3.60 and $7.05 per kilogram. (CSM, 5/19/04)
New research suggests that solar cells made from nanocrystals could convert 60% of sunlight into electricity. The best solar cells today operate at an efficiency of about 32%. (Science News, 4/2/404)
A battery that can be recharged in 30 seconds has been developed by NEC in Japan. NEC says its “organic-radical” batteries will provide the same performance as a conventional cell, providing enough power to operate an MP3 player for 80 hours. (New Scientist, 4/17/04)
A team of engineers at Penn State has created a fuel cell that breaks down organic matter in wastewater and, in the process, generates small amounts of electricity. “It’s a completely new concept for treating wastewater,” said an environmental engineer at Northwestern University. (Science News, 3/13/04)
For much of the 20th century, economists believed that fluctuations in the prices of stocks or other financial instruments followed the “bell curve” of statistics, Over the past few decades, economists have learned otherwise: market fluctuations follow another pattern known as a power law, which indicates that extreme jumps in value are far more common than traditional thinking would predict. Nothing in traditional economic theory can explain these patterns. (New Scientist, 4/10/04)
Last year, for the first time, debit and credit transactions overtook cash and check purchases at stores. Even excluding withdrawals from automated teller machines, debit cards generated more transactions last year than credit cards. (CSM, 4/26/04)
Oregon has become the first state in the nation to provide unemployment benefits on debit cards. (Wash Times, 6/17/04)
The federal welfare rolls have declined over the last three years even as unemployment, poverty and the number of food stamp recipients increased during a weak economy. The number of families on welfare declined to two million, less than half the number receiving federal assistance when welfare reform was enacted. (NYT, 3/22/04)
People whose mothers had the flu during the first three months of pregnancy had seven times the normal incidence of schizophrenia. (New Scientist, 5/15/04)
A bone density study of the remains discovered in the medieval village of Wharram Percy in England found that the rate of bone loss due to osteoporosis was similar to that in modern women. (New Scientist, 5/15/04)
Walnuts are now more than just nuts. They’re heart savers, the first food to be allowed to bear a qualified health claim by the FDA. Walnuts can now bear a label saying that eating 1.5 ounces a day “may reduce heart disease.” (USN&WR, 4/12/04)
Last year, Terry Salo traveled from his home in Canada to Madras, India, for a partial hip replacement. Before airfare and other expenses, he paid $4,500 for the surgery at Apollo Hospitals Enterprises Ltd., a quarter of the cost for similar treatment in Europe and the U.S. (WSJ, 4/20/04)
The prescription drug Ritalin, best known as a treatment for children with ADD, has been co-opted by a new population: healthy people trying to boost their mental performance. In some circles, Ritalin is known as a “cognitive performance enhancer,” or the academic equivalent to doping in sports. (Chicago Tribune, 4/14/04)
“For the first time in memory, children are projected to have a shorter life span than their parents,” says David Katz, M.D., director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale U. Since 1976, the number of children ages 6 to 11 who are overweight has doubled; in kids ages 12 to 17 it’s tripled. Today, nine million children in the U.S. are overweight. (Child, 4/04)
Six months of brisk walking produced significant physical changes in the brains of subjects ages 60 to 79. They had increased connections between neurons in parts of the brain that make a person better able to pay attention. (Chicago Tribune, 3/17/04)
In doctors’ offices across the country, a group of common bacteria called Staphylococous aureus, or staph for short, are becoming resistant to the antibiotics that have been used to treat them for decades. Overuse of antibiotics does not explain the emergence of this new resistant staph. Many people with these infections have never taken antibiotics before. (NYT, 3/2/04)
Later this year, total cellular connections in India are expected to outstrip total fixed-line hookups for the the first time. (WSJ, 3/12/04)
The labor force participation rate of mothers ages 15-44 with infant children slid from a record 59% in 1998 to 55% in 2002, part of the first downward slide since the Census Bureau began tracking the figure in 1976. (USA Today, 5/4/04)
The total labor force will rise by 12% between now and 2012, but those age 55 and over will increase by almost 50%. By 2012, aging Baby Boomers will increase their share of the labor force from 14.3% to 19.1%. (Wash Times, 3/1/04)
“It is remarkable. A 100-year-old trend towards earlier retirement is over,” says Joseph Quinn, a Boston College economist. “Older workers will work for less,” says Neil Lebovits, president of Ajilon Professional Staffing. “Two years ago, generation X-ers were insisting on the world, and a lot of companies gave it to them. Now they are being replaced by older workers. . . .” USN&WR, 3/8/04)
The latest U.S. government data suggest that foreigners outsource far more office work to the U.S. than American companies send abroad. Measuring imports against exports, the U.S. posted a $53.64 billion surplus last year in trade in private services with the rest of the world. (WSJ, 3/15/04)
Employers say that one third of all new hires last year came through the Internet. (USN&WR, 3/8/04)
“We thought the market here would be good. We didn’t know it would be this good,” said Ira T. Distenfield, the chairman of We the People Forms and Service Centers USA, a chain of self-help legal centers, about how quickly their business has grown in New York. He plans to open 45 offices in New York. (NYT, 2/15/04)
In Vienna, money has been transferred between banks using quantum cryptography for the first time. This new technology promises to make exchanging information 100 per cent secure. (New Scientist, 5/1/04)
Three U.S. cities now offer broadband service delivered over power lines - Allentown, Pa., Cincinnati and Manassas, Va. “The greatest advantage is that we only need to have an outlet to use it,” said Sean Porter, a Manassas architect. The city charges $26.95 a month, less than comparable DSL or cable service. (Wash Times, 4/5/04)
Dartmouth College is phasing out its standard telephones in favor of Internet-based telephones. (CHE, 6/18/04)
A Kansas women is making a fortune on the Internet selling tumbleweeds to city folk looking to add an Old West touch to parties, TV shows, and other events. “At first I felt guilty selling tumbleweeds,” said Linda Katz. “But then I got these wonderful letters about how happy and nostalgic the tumbleweeds made people feel.” (The Week, 6/11/04)
More than 8.7 million people underwent cosmetic surgery in 2003, up 33% from the year before. (USN&WR, 5/31/04)
A growing number of men in their prime working years are pursuing what might be called the Kramer lifestyle, after the “Seinfeld” character: neither working or attending school. In 1967, 2.2% of noninstitutionalized men age 25 to 54 spent the entire year without working for pay or attending school. That figure climbed to 8% in 2002. (NYT, 4/29/04)
A 1999 survey showed that 11% of the public thought it was OK to cheat on taxes. It is now up to 17%. (USA Today, 4/8/04)
Alan Dershowitz: “The other day, I experienced violent anti-Semitism for the first time in my adult life. It took place in front of Faneuil Hall, the birthplace of American independence and liberty. I was receiving a justice award from the Jewish Council on Public Affairs. . . When I left, I was accosted by a group of screaming, angry young men and women carrying virulently anti-Israel signs. . . “ (Israel Insider, 3/5/04)
Pearson PLC is making 300 of its most popular U.S. college textbooks available in a Web-based format for half the price of the print versions. (WSJ, 4/23/04)
The kitchen is no longer the key selling point of a house, according to Kentucky realtor David Nelson. “A yard is a big negative now. I think you’re going to see subdivision lots getting smaller and smaller,” he said. People want maintenance-free homes and want “to get out, travel, be with the kids.” (Paducah Sun, 3/21/04)
Ownership among people in their early 20s has jumped nearly 20% during the past two years, as 343,000 people younger than age 25 purchased homes in 2003. (Palm Beach Post, 2/4/04)
The number of federally insured reverse mortgages taken out by older homeowners in recent months rose by 76% from a year ago. (Wash Post, 3/14/04)
“Today, fully 3 million church attendees go to a megachurch vs. 897,000 only 10 years ago,” says church consultant Bill Easum. “The landscape of the Christian church is changing faster than at any point in American history.” (Wash Post, 5/15/04)
In a survey of religious activity, the Barna Research Group found the steepest increase in prayer activity among those who identified themselves as atheists or agnostics, where it doubled to 20% in the last five years. (Insight Magazine, 3/16/04)
Stop & Shop Supermarket’s Shopping Buddy lets customers scan and bag their groceries as they walk the aisles. All a shopper does at the checkout counter is pay and go. At four Piggly Wiggley stores in South Carolina, shoppers can pay for their groceries by placing their finger on a scanner at checkout. (WSJ, 3/30/04)
Google’s policy of reserving one day a week to do your own thing is “hugely attractive to potential employees,” says Ed Lazowska, professor and former chairman of computer science at the University of Washington. Google has about as many Ph.D.’s from his university as Microsoft, but Microsoft is almost 30 times larger. (NYT, 6/6/04)
Finland’ 25,000 publicly funded researchers can now publish their work in open-access journals without having to pay a fee, thanks to a deal struck between publisher BioMed Central and the National Electronic Library of Finland. Many publicly funded institutions in other countries have similar deals, but Finland is the first country to sign up all its researchers. (New Scientist, 5/15/04)
Many people regard mathematics as the crown jewel of the sciences. Yet math has historically lacked one of the defining trappings of science: lab equipment. Now, computers are starting to give mathematicians the lab instrument that they have been missing. Sophisticated software is enabling researchers to travel further and deeper into the mathematical universe. (Science News, 4/24/04)
A study in mice appears to overturn the long-held assumption that female mammals are born with all the eggs they’ll ever have. Researchers have found evidence that the ovaries of even mature rodents retain a populations of cells that can spawn new eggs. (Science News, 3/13/04)
Reuters quoted a Spanish official as saying after the Madrid train bombings: “The hardest thing [for the rescue workers] was hearing mobile phones ringing in the pockets of the bodies. They couldn’t get that out of their heads.” (NYT, 3/14/04)
The U.S. suffered its first-ever trade deficit in advanced technology products in 2002. The deficit grew significantly in 2003 and is growing this year. The 2004 deficit is forecast to be $35 billion. (Wash Times, 6/17/04)
Last year, for the first time in history, the U.S. spent more on goods and services from poorer countries than from rich ones – more toys, stereos, and cars from places like China, Brazil, and South Africa than from Germany or Japan. (CSM, 6/18/04)
“Today, it is possible to manufacture products almost anywhere because technology is not limited by soil or climate like agriculture; transportation costs have dropped, capital is fluid and there are smart, skilled people everywhere. . . . [M]ultiple nations can have a comparative advantage in the same field.” – William R. Hawkins of the U.S. Business and Industry Council. (Wash Times, 3/9/04)
“People are selling their homes in suburbia to move to a much denser, livelier environment where they can see opera, symphony, plays, and theater in their own backyard,” says a spokesman for the San Diego Chamber of Commerce. In San Diego, a 15-block area has had thousands of residential units – mostly high-end – snapped up. In the Golden Hills neighborhood, residents report a tripling of real-estate values. (CSM, 2/26/04)
“When the Saudi people finally rise up in revolt . . . it’ll be about mobile phones. . . . Arabs in general, and Saudis in particular, live for their mobile phones, in a way that other parts of the world would not understand. . . . When the day dawns that all phones are camera phones, and the Muttawa try to confiscate them, that’ll be the day that the revolution starts.” – Alhamedi of “The Religious Policeman,” one of the first blogs out of Saudi Arabia. (World, 5/1/04) At a special, wireless digital showing at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, each guest was given a wireless Sony notebook computer with headphones. The guests watched the world premiere screening of November, a high-definition feature film. “[This technology] will be like having a Blockbuster video store in your laptop,” said Tim Sweeney, technical marketing director for Intel. (Globe and Mail, 4/4/04)
A new service from the EarthCam online-camera network allows people to broadcast live video for others to view on Web-based cell phones. (Wash Post 4/4/04)
Two professors in entertainment technology at Carnegie Mellon routinely poll their students on their experience with media, and typically cannot find a single movie that all 50 students in a course have seen. However, they typically find at least one video game that every student has played. (CHE, 3/19/04)
Associated Anomalies
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Anomaly
Inference Update
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Anomalies
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