Adam is famous
Our friend Adam was in this weekend's Guardian Sunday Magazine in an article about the company he works for that predicts which songs are going to be hits.
We had a pretty quiet weekend. Owen had his last soccer game and the soccer party was yesterday at Woodstock's Pizza. One of the player's grandparents had taken some very nice pictures of the kids which they were showing on a TV screen.
I saw Borat on Saturday night with a friend. It was pretty entertaining.
posted by Katherine @ 9:35 AM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
I just realized you guys had this blog. Since what May? Thanks for letting me know. Sheesh. Congrats to Adam who is now even more famous for being featured on the Straight Outta Davis blog.
Hit song science is a very interesting topic, which it is hard to feel anything but ambivalence about. And I don’t mean ambivalence in the way it is often incorrectly used, as another way of saying, “I don’t care,” but rather in the true sense of feeling mentally conflicted due to the presence of two opposing attitudes. On the one hand I am fascinated by the ability of algorithms to accurately predict what people will like, on the other hand I feel like popular music is predictable enough without literally turning it into a scientific endeavor. But then again these algorithms could hardly do a worse job of picking music for us than the coke-snorting morons who have dominated the music industry for the last 30 years. So I’m ambivalent.
Why, that's exactly what Adam said about modeling the outcomes of elections.
Since it's my job to run statistical models, my feeling is that almost anything can be modeled, so I guess I have to disagree with both of you!
I'll go further. As a budget analyst who's had some exposure to economics, I believe that people should be entirely replaced with binary codes.
Actually my boss, Leon Cooper, is a pioneer in the field of neural networks, and found some of the first commercial applications for them detecting credit card fraud. I recognize that almost anything can be modeled, but how I feel about that as a music fan is a different matter. But like I said, it is hard to imagine hit song science making the music industry any worse than it currently is, so I'm not too worried about it. I think in reality this is about finding more effcient ways of doing what the industry already does anyway.
One of the potential uses of this technology that Adam is the most excited about is the ability to deliver better recommendations about music than current systems are able to deliver. I don't think that would be a bad thing at all. Currently places like Amazon or iTunes deliver recommendations based on what other customers who have bought the same music also bought. So if you buy "Hot Rocks," Amazon will deliver the amazing prediction that you might also like "Hot Rocks Vol. II." It is considerably more interesting to know that if you like Norah Jones, you might also like Van Halen.
Anyway, I am a great believer in progress and the ability of science to make our lives better. In fact, I am currently lobbying my elected representives to allow the creation of animal-human hybrids on the basis of the theory that a goat/man hybrid could not possibly be a worse President than the current occupant of the Oval Office.
I am currently lobbying my elected representives to allow the creation of animal-human hybrids on the basis of the theory that a goat/man hybrid could not possibly be a worse President than the current occupant of the Oval Office.
Think of the taxpayer savings on landscaping!
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