Download or read book Love in the Time of Algorithms written by Dan Slater and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If online dating can blunt the emotional pain of separation, if adults can afford to be increasingly demanding about what they want from a relationship, the effect of online dating seems positive. But what if it’s also the case that the prospect of finding an ever more compatible mate with the click of a mouse means a future of relationship instability, a paradox of choice that keeps us chasing the illusive bunny around the dating track?” It’s the mother of all search problems: how to find a spouse, a mate, a date. The escalating marriage age and declining marriage rate mean we’re spending a greater portion of our lives unattached, searching for love well into our thirties and forties. It’s no wonder that a third of America’s 90 million singles are turning to dating Web sites. Once considered the realm of the lonely and desperate, sites like eHarmony, Match, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish have been embraced by pretty much every demographic. Thanks to the increasingly efficient algorithms that power these sites, dating has been transformed from a daunting transaction based on scarcity to one in which the possibilities are almost endless. Now anyone—young, old, straight, gay, and even married—can search for exactly what they want, connect with more people, and get more information about those people than ever before. As journalist Dan Slater shows, online dating is changing society in more profound ways than we imagine. He explores how these new technologies, by altering our perception of what’s possible, are reconditioning our feelings about commitment and challenging the traditional paradigm of adult life. Like the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, the digital revolution is forcing us to ask new questions about what constitutes “normal”: Why should we settle for someone who falls short of our expectations if there are thousands of other options just a click away? Can commitment thrive in a world of unlimited choice? Can chemistry really be quantified by math geeks? As one of Slater’s subjects wonders, “What’s the etiquette here?” Blending history, psychology, and interviews with site creators and users, Slater takes readers behind the scenes of a fascinating business. Dating sites capitalize on our quest for love, but how do their creators’ ideas about profits, morality, and the nature of desire shape the virtual worlds they’ve created for us? Should we trust an industry whose revenue model benefits from our avoiding monogamy? Documenting the untold story of the online-dating industry’s rise from ignominy to ubiquity—beginning with its early days as “computer dating” at Harvard in 1965—Slater offers a lively, entertaining, and thought provoking account of how we have, for better and worse, embraced technology in the most intimate aspect of our lives.
Download or read book Data a Love Story written by Amy Webb and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Amy Webb found her true love after a search that's both charmingly romantic and relentlessly data-driven. Anyone who uses online dating sites must read her funny, fascinating book.”—Gretchen Rubin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project After yet another disastrous date, Amy Webb was preparing to cancel her JDate membership when epiphany struck: her standards weren’t too high, she just wasn’t approaching the process the right way. Using her gift for data strategy, she found which keywords were digital-man magnets, analyzed photos, and then adjusted her (female) profile to make the most of that intel. Then began the deluge—dozens of men who actually met her own stringent requirements wanted to meet her. Among them: her future husband, now the father of her child.
Download or read book Last Girl Ghosted written by Lisa Unger and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A five-alarm fire of a situation…the surprises keep coming." —The New York Times Secrets, obsession and vengeance converge in this riveting thriller about an online dating match turned deadly cat-and-mouse game, from the New York Times bestselling author of Confessions on the 7:45 She met him through a dating app. An intriguing picture on a screen, a date at a downtown bar. What she thought might be just a quick hookup quickly became much more. She fell for him—hard. It happens sometimes, a powerful connection with a perfect stranger takes you by surprise. Could it be love? But then, just as things were getting real, he stood her up. Then he disappeared—profiles deleted, phone disconnected. She was ghosted. Maybe it was her fault. She shared too much, too fast. But isn't that always what women think—that they're the ones to blame? Soon she learns there were others. Girls who thought they were in love. Girls who later went missing. She had been looking for a connection, but now she's looking for answers. Chasing a digital trail into his dark past—and hers—she finds herself on a dangerous hunt. And she's not sure whether she's the predator—or the prey. Don't miss The New Couple in 5B, Lisa Unger's newest psychological thriller about a couple that inherits an apartment with a truly chilling past. Looking for more spine-tingling thrillers? Check out these other titles by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger: Under My Skin The Stranger Inside Confessions on the 7:45 Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six The New Couple in 5B (coming March 2024!)
Download or read book Algorithms to Live By written by Brian Christian and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Algorithms to Live By' looks at the simple, precise algorithms that computers use to solve the complex 'human' problems that we face, and discovers what they can tell us about the nature and origin of the mind.
Download or read book What Technology Wants written by Kevin Kelly and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Inevitable— a sweeping vision of technology as a living force that can expand our individual potential In this provocative book, one of today's most respected thinkers turns the conversation about technology on its head by viewing technology as a natural system, an extension of biological evolution. By mapping the behavior of life, we paradoxically get a glimpse at where technology is headed-or "what it wants." Kevin Kelly offers a dozen trajectories in the coming decades for this near-living system. And as we align ourselves with technology's agenda, we can capture its colossal potential. This visionary and optimistic book explores how technology gives our lives greater meaning and is a must-read for anyone curious about the future.
Download or read book Automate This written by Christopher Steiner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rousing story of the last gasp of human agency and how today’s best and brightest minds are endeavoring to put an end to it. It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills—and maybe an advanced degree or two. These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These “bots” started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected. In this fascinating, frightening book, Christopher Steiner tells the story of how algorithms took over—and shows why the “bot revolution” is about to spill into every aspect of our lives, often silently, without our knowledge. The May 2010 “Flash Crash” exposed Wall Street’s reliance on trading bots to the tune of a 998-point market drop and $1 trillion in vanished market value. But that was just the beginning. In Automate This, we meet bots that are driving cars, penning haiku, and writing music mistaken for Bach’s. They listen in on our customer service calls and figure out what Iran would do in the event of a nuclear standoff. There are algorithms that can pick out the most cohesive crew of astronauts for a space mission or identify the next Jeremy Lin. Some can even ingest statistics from baseball games and spit out pitch-perfect sports journalism indistinguishable from that produced by humans. The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? What happens to businesses when we automate judgment and eliminate human instinct? And what role will be left for doctors, lawyers, writers, truck drivers, and many others? Who knows—maybe there’s a bot learning to do your job this minute.
Download or read book Modern Romance written by Aziz Ansari and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-06-14 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 New York Times Bestseller “An engaging look at the often head-scratching, frequently infuriating mating behaviors that shape our love lives.” —Refinery 29 A hilarious, thoughtful, and in-depth exploration of the pleasures and perils of modern romance from Aziz Ansari, the star of Master of None and one of this generation’s sharpest comedic voices At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history. With technology, our abilities to connect with and sort through these options are staggering. So why are so many people frustrated? Some of our problems are unique to our time. “Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?” “Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods? Combos?!” “My girlfriend just got a message from some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check just to be sure?” But the transformation of our romantic lives can’t be explained by technology alone. In a short period of time, the whole culture of finding love has changed dramatically. A few decades ago, people would find a decent person who lived in their neighborhood. Their families would meet and, after deciding neither party seemed like a murderer, they would get married and soon have a kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today, people marry later than ever and spend years of their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a soul mate. For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern Romance, the book, he decided he needed to take things to another level. He teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages. They enlisted the world’s leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry Turkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike any social science or humor book we’ve seen before. In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science to give us an unforgettable tour of our new romantic world.
Download or read book We Are Data written by John Cheney-Lippold and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What identity means in an algorithmic age: how it works, how our lives are controlled by it, and how we can resist it Algorithms are everywhere, organizing the near limitless data that exists in our world. Derived from our every search, like, click, and purchase, algorithms determine the news we get, the ads we see, the information accessible to us and even who our friends are. These complex configurations not only form knowledge and social relationships in the digital and physical world, but also determine who we are and who we can be, both on and offline. Algorithms create and recreate us, using our data to assign and reassign our gender, race, sexuality, and citizenship status. They can recognize us as celebrities or mark us as terrorists. In this era of ubiquitous surveillance, contemporary data collection entails more than gathering information about us. Entities like Google, Facebook, and the NSA also decide what that information means, constructing our worlds and the identities we inhabit in the process. We have little control over who we algorithmically are. Our identities are made useful not for us—but for someone else. Through a series of entertaining and engaging examples, John Cheney-Lippold draws on the social constructions of identity to advance a new understanding of our algorithmic identities. We Are Data will educate and inspire readers who want to wrest back some freedom in our increasingly surveilled and algorithmically-constructed world.
Download or read book The Mathematics of Love written by Hannah Fry and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uses math as a tool for explaining the complicated patterns of love, tackling such common questions as the chance of finding love that will last, how online dating works, and when to compromise.
Download or read book How to Not Die Alone written by Logan Ury and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “must-read” (The Washington Post) funny and practical guide to help you find, build, and keep the relationship of your dreams. Have you ever looked around and wondered, “Why has everyone found love except me?” You’re not the only one. Great relationships don’t just appear in our lives—they’re the culmination of a series of decisions, including whom to date, how to end it with the wrong person, and when to commit to the right one. But our brains often get in the way. We make poor decisions, which thwart us on our quest to find lasting love. Drawing from years of research, behavioral scientist turned dating coach Logan Ury reveals the hidden forces that cause those mistakes. But awareness on its own doesn’t lead to results. You have to actually change your behavior. Ury shows you how. This “simple-to-use guide” (Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone) focuses on a different decision in each chapter, incorporating insights from behavioral science, original research, and real-life stories. You’ll learn: -What’s holding you back in dating (and how to break the pattern) -What really matters in a long-term partner (and what really doesn’t) -How to overcome the perils of online dating (and make the apps work for you) -How to meet more people in real life (while doing activities you love) -How to make dates fun again (so they stop feeling like job interviews) -Why “the spark” is a myth (but you’ll find love anyway) This “data-driven” (Time), step-by-step guide to relationships, complete with hands-on exercises, is designed to transform your life. How to Not Die Alone will help you find, build, and keep the relationship of your dreams.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Algorithmic Music written by Alex McLean and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-18 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the ongoing development of algorithmic composition programs and communities of practice expanding, algorithmic music faces a turning point. Joining dozens of emerging and established scholars alongside leading practitioners in the field, chapters in this Handbook both describe the state of algorithmic composition and also set the agenda for critical research on and analysis of algorithmic music. Organized into four sections, chapters explore the music's history, utility, community, politics, and potential for mass consumption. Contributors address such issues as the role of algorithms as co-performers, live coding practices, and discussions of the algorithmic culture as it currently exists and what it can potentially contribute society, education, and ecommerce. Chapters engage particularly with post-human perspectives - what new musics are now being found through algorithmic means which humans could not otherwise have made - and, in reciprocation, how algorithmic music is being assimilated back into human culture and what meanings it subsequently takes. Blending technical, artistic, cultural, and scientific viewpoints, this Handbook positions algorithmic music making as an essentially human activity.
Download or read book You Look Like a Thing and I Love You written by Janelle Shane and published by Voracious. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As heard on NPR's "Science Friday," discover the book recommended by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Daniel Pink, and Adam Grant: an "accessible, informative, and hilarious" introduction to the weird and wonderful world of artificial intelligence (Ryan North). "You look like a thing and I love you" is one of the best pickup lines ever . . . according to an artificial intelligence trained by scientist Janelle Shane, creator of the popular blog AI Weirdness. She creates silly AIs that learn how to name paint colors, create the best recipes, and even flirt (badly) with humans—all to understand the technology that governs so much of our daily lives. We rely on AI every day for recommendations, for translations, and to put cat ears on our selfie videos. We also trust AI with matters of life and death, on the road and in our hospitals. But how smart is AI really... and how does it solve problems, understand humans, and even drive self-driving cars? Shane delivers the answers to every AI question you've ever asked, and some you definitely haven't. Like, how can a computer design the perfect sandwich? What does robot-generated Harry Potter fan-fiction look like? And is the world's best Halloween costume really "Vampire Hog Bride"? In this smart, often hilarious introduction to the most interesting science of our time, Shane shows how these programs learn, fail, and adapt—and how they reflect the best and worst of humanity. You Look Like a Thing and I Love You is the perfect book for anyone curious about what the robots in our lives are thinking. "I can't think of a better way to learn about artificial intelligence, and I've never had so much fun along the way." —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals
Download or read book Introduction to Algorithms third edition written by Thomas H. Cormen and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-07-31 with total page 1313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The latest edition of the essential text and professional reference, with substantial new material on such topics as vEB trees, multithreaded algorithms, dynamic programming, and edge-based flow. Some books on algorithms are rigorous but incomplete; others cover masses of material but lack rigor. Introduction to Algorithms uniquely combines rigor and comprehensiveness. The book covers a broad range of algorithms in depth, yet makes their design and analysis accessible to all levels of readers. Each chapter is relatively self-contained and can be used as a unit of study. The algorithms are described in English and in a pseudocode designed to be readable by anyone who has done a little programming. The explanations have been kept elementary without sacrificing depth of coverage or mathematical rigor. The first edition became a widely used text in universities worldwide as well as the standard reference for professionals. The second edition featured new chapters on the role of algorithms, probabilistic analysis and randomized algorithms, and linear programming. The third edition has been revised and updated throughout. It includes two completely new chapters, on van Emde Boas trees and multithreaded algorithms, substantial additions to the chapter on recurrence (now called “Divide-and-Conquer”), and an appendix on matrices. It features improved treatment of dynamic programming and greedy algorithms and a new notion of edge-based flow in the material on flow networks. Many exercises and problems have been added for this edition. The international paperback edition is no longer available; the hardcover is available worldwide.
Download or read book The Code for Love and Heartbreak written by Jillian Cantor and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this contemporary romcom retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma by USA TODAY bestselling author Jillian Cantor, there’s nothing more complex—or unpredictable—than love. When math genius Emma and her coding club co-president, George, are tasked with brainstorming a new project, The Code for Love is born. George disapproves of Emma’s idea of creating a matchmaking app, accusing her of meddling in people’s lives. But all the happy new couples at school are proof that the app works. At least at first. Emma’s code is flawless. So why is it that perfectly matched couples start breaking up, the wrong people keep falling for each other, and Emma’s own feelings defy any algorithm?
Download or read book Once Upon an Algorithm written by Martin Erwig and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This easy-to-follow introduction to computer science reveals how familiar stories like Hansel and Gretel, Sherlock Holmes, and Harry Potter illustrate the concepts and everyday relevance of computing. Picture a computer scientist, staring at a screen and clicking away frantically on a keyboard, hacking into a system, or perhaps developing an app. Now delete that picture. In Once Upon an Algorithm, Martin Erwig explains computation as something that takes place beyond electronic computers, and computer science as the study of systematic problem solving. Erwig points out that many daily activities involve problem solving. Getting up in the morning, for example: You get up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast. This simple daily routine solves a recurring problem through a series of well-defined steps. In computer science, such a routine is called an algorithm. Erwig illustrates a series of concepts in computing with examples from daily life and familiar stories. Hansel and Gretel, for example, execute an algorithm to get home from the forest. The movie Groundhog Day illustrates the problem of unsolvability; Sherlock Holmes manipulates data structures when solving a crime; the magic in Harry Potter’s world is understood through types and abstraction; and Indiana Jones demonstrates the complexity of searching. Along the way, Erwig also discusses representations and different ways to organize data; “intractable” problems; language, syntax, and ambiguity; control structures, loops, and the halting problem; different forms of recursion; and rules for finding errors in algorithms. This engaging book explains computation accessibly and shows its relevance to daily life. Something to think about next time we execute the algorithm of getting up in the morning.
Download or read book Algorithms and Data Structures for Massive Datasets written by Dzejla Medjedovic and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Massive modern datasets make traditional data structures and algorithms grind to a halt. This fun and practical guide introduces cutting-edge techniques that can reliably handle even the largest distributed datasets. In Algorithms and Data Structures for Massive Datasets you will learn: Probabilistic sketching data structures for practical problems Choosing the right database engine for your application Evaluating and designing efficient on-disk data structures and algorithms Understanding the algorithmic trade-offs involved in massive-scale systems Deriving basic statistics from streaming data Correctly sampling streaming data Computing percentiles with limited space resources Algorithms and Data Structures for Massive Datasets reveals a toolbox of new methods that are perfect for handling modern big data applications. You’ll explore the novel data structures and algorithms that underpin Google, Facebook, and other enterprise applications that work with truly massive amounts of data. These effective techniques can be applied to any discipline, from finance to text analysis. Graphics, illustrations, and hands-on industry examples make complex ideas practical to implement in your projects—and there’s no mathematical proofs to puzzle over. Work through this one-of-a-kind guide, and you’ll find the sweet spot of saving space without sacrificing your data’s accuracy. About the technology Standard algorithms and data structures may become slow—or fail altogether—when applied to large distributed datasets. Choosing algorithms designed for big data saves time, increases accuracy, and reduces processing cost. This unique book distills cutting-edge research papers into practical techniques for sketching, streaming, and organizing massive datasets on-disk and in the cloud. About the book Algorithms and Data Structures for Massive Datasets introduces processing and analytics techniques for large distributed data. Packed with industry stories and entertaining illustrations, this friendly guide makes even complex concepts easy to understand. You’ll explore real-world examples as you learn to map powerful algorithms like Bloom filters, Count-min sketch, HyperLogLog, and LSM-trees to your own use cases. What's inside Probabilistic sketching data structures Choosing the right database engine Designing efficient on-disk data structures and algorithms Algorithmic tradeoffs in massive-scale systems Computing percentiles with limited space resources About the reader Examples in Python, R, and pseudocode. About the author Dzejla Medjedovic earned her PhD in the Applied Algorithms Lab at Stony Brook University, New York. Emin Tahirovic earned his PhD in biostatistics from University of Pennsylvania. Illustrator Ines Dedovic earned her PhD at the Institute for Imaging and Computer Vision at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Table of Contents 1 Introduction PART 1 HASH-BASED SKETCHES 2 Review of hash tables and modern hashing 3 Approximate membership: Bloom and quotient filters 4 Frequency estimation and count-min sketch 5 Cardinality estimation and HyperLogLog PART 2 REAL-TIME ANALYTICS 6 Streaming data: Bringing everything together 7 Sampling from data streams 8 Approximate quantiles on data streams PART 3 DATA STRUCTURES FOR DATABASES AND EXTERNAL MEMORY ALGORITHMS 9 Introducing the external memory model 10 Data structures for databases: B-trees, Bε-trees, and LSM-trees 11 External memory sorting
Download or read book A Million First Dates written by Dan Slater and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ** Previously published in hardcover as Love in the Time of Algorithms ** Once considered the realm of the lonely and desperate, sites like eHarmony, Match, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish have been embraced by pretty much every demographic. Dating has been transformed from a daunting transaction based on scarcity to one in which the possibilities are almost endless. Now anyone can search for exactly what they want, connect with more people, and get more information about those people than ever before. As journalist Dan Slater shows, online dating is changing society in more profound ways than we imagine. He explores how these new technologies, by altering our perception of what’s possible, are reconditioning our feelings about commitment and challenging the traditional paradigm of adult life. Slater takes readers behind the scenes of a fascinating business. Dating sites capitalize on our quest for love, but how do their creators’ ideas about pro ts, morality, and the nature of desire shape the virtual worlds they’ve created for us?
