Data Skeptic

Samuel Mehr joins us this week to share his perspective on why people are musical, where music comes from, and why it works the way it does. We discuss a number of empirical studies related to music a...

12 Feb 201642min

This episode reviews the concept of k-d trees: an efficient data structure for holding multidimensional objects. Kyle gives Linhda a dictionary and asks her to look up words as a way of introducing th...

5 Feb 201614min

Algorithms are pervasive in our society and make thousands of automated decisions on our behalf every day. The possibility of digital discrimination is a very real threat, and it is very plausible for...

29 Jan 201642min

Today's episode begins by asking how many left handed employees we should expect to be at a company before anyone should claim left handedness discrimination. If not lefties, let's consider eye color,...

22 Jan 201614min

A recent paper in the journal of Judgment and Decision Making titled On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit explores empirical questions around a reader's ability to detect stateme...

15 Jan 201637min

Today's mini episode discusses the widely known optimization algorithm gradient descent in the context of hiking in a foggy hillside.

8 Jan 201614min

This episode is a discussion of data visualization and a proposed New Year's resolution for Data Skeptic listeners. Let's kill the word cloud.

1 Jan 201615min

Today's episode is a reading of Isaac Asimov's The Machine that Won the War. I can't think of a story that's more appropriate for Data Skeptic.

25 Dec 201514min