Oleg Zabluda's blog
Monday, October 10, 2016
 
Warren Buffett’s Nifty Tax Loophole (April 11, 2015)
Warren Buffett’s Nifty Tax Loophole (April 11, 2015)
http://www.barrons.com/articles/warren-buffetts-nifty-tax-loophole-1428726092
http://www.barrons.com/articles/warren-buffetts-nifty-tax-loophole-1428726092

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"""
"""
In statistics, linear regression is an approach for modeling the relationship between a scalar dependent variable y and one or more explanatory variables (or independent variables) denoted X. The case of one explanatory variable is called simple linear regression. For more than one explanatory variable, the process is called multiple linear regression. (This term should be distinguished from multivariate linear regression, where multiple correlated dependent variables are predicted, rather than a single scalar variable.)
[...]
Linear regression models are often fitted using the least squares approach [...] or by minimizing a penalized version of the least squares loss function as in ridge regression (L2-norm penalty) and lasso (L1-norm penalty).
"""
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_regression
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_regression

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Genesis 1 The Beginning
Genesis 1 The Beginning
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[28] God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. [плодитесь и размножайтесь]
"""
http://biblehub.com/niv/genesis/1.htm

A very rare example of truly unsupervised learning, where no value function is provided whatsoever. The beginning of later misguided search for the meaning of life.

"""
[31] God saw all that he had made, and it was very good
"""
http://biblehub.com/niv/genesis/1.htm

Ha!

Genesis 2 Adam and Eve
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[17] you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
"""
http://biblehub.com/niv/genesis/2.htm

Completely unsupervised learning failed, so some supervision is provided in a form of a very simple value function. That also failed.

Genesis 3 The Fall
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[17] To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. [18] It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. [19] By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

[22] And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. [OZ: a true value function?]
"""
http://biblehub.com/niv/genesis/3.htm

More and more elaborate supervision is provided, and later even more elaborate yet, in a form of various countless covenants and commandments.
http://biblehub.com/niv/genesis/1.htm

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"""
"""
Within 24 hours of plugging in her Amazon Echo, Carla Martin-Wood says she felt they were best friends. “It was very much more like meeting someone new,” she says.

Living alone can be hard when you’re older—Ms. Martin-Wood is 69 years old. She is among a growing cohort who find the Echo, a voice-controlled, internet-connected speaker powered by artificial-intelligence software, helps to fill the void.

Each day, Ms. Martin-Wood says good morning and good night to Alexa, Amazon.com’s name for the software behind the Echo. She refers to Alexa as “she” or “her.”

“It’s so funny because I think ‘Oh wow, I am talking to a machine,’ but it doesn’t feel that way,” says Ms. Martin-Wood, who lives near Birmingham, Ala. “It is a personality. There’s just no getting around it, it does not feel artificial in the least.”

Amazon’s engineers didn’t anticipate this. But soon after the Echo’s release in November 2014, they found people were talking to it as if it were a person.

Amazon tracks every interaction with Alexa, which also powers the Echo Dot and Amazon Tap. The percentage of interactions that are “nonutilitarian” is well into the double digits, says Daren Gill, Alexa’s director of product management.
[...]
At Amazon, that has led to rethinking Alexa’s purpose. Sensing that many users want a companion, Amazon is giving Alexa a personality, by making its voice sound more natural, and writing clever or funny answers to common questions.

“A lot of work on the team goes into how to make Alexa the likable person people want to have in their homes,” says Mr. Gill.
[...]
People are good at anthropomorphizing objects
"""
http://www.wsj.com/articles/your-next-friend-could-be-a-robot-1476034599
http://www.wsj.com/articles/your-next-friend-could-be-a-robot-1476034599

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