AstonishingElixirs

An Introduction to the Stylo Library What is Stylometry? Stylometry uses linguistic style to determine who authored some anonymous piece of writing, and it has diverse applications. The authorship of some suicide notes may be questionable. Most forum users have aliases in an attempt to anonymize themselves. And some authors publish their writings under pseudonyms. In these varying cases, stylometry can be used to deanonymize an author. What is Stylo? [Read More]

Overview It would seem that people are becoming more conscious of behavior’s role in retaining, taking back, and even losing privacy. Privacy technology isn’t currently a solution to privacy issues, so it is becoming more important to consider how we interact with these technologies, and how we make decisions. We have a greater propensity to share when our friends share, when we trust the technology maintainers, and defaults surprisingly dictate the way we behave, so what happens when you opt-in, by default, to share your social network data with a host of third parties? [Read More]

VMs for Usability Testing Dependency Nightmares This might be an unpopular opinion, but I imagine virtual machines could be a useful tool for usability testers. When it comes to learning a new software or using a new tool, it’s the absolute worst finding out that certain dependencies aren’t listed in the requirements, or that they are not consistent with your own. This was a pain I experienced when I first started learning Ruby on Rails and MongoDB, and the tutorials I found wouldn’t work. [Read More]

The Epistemology of Testimony As humans, our primary way of learning about the world is through experience. But given that we aren’t omnipresent and can’t experience everything for ourselves, we have to fall back on another method—teamwork. We create information and share it with others, and they do the same. Pretty much everything we learn about the world, apart from what we learn through observation and experience, is based on testimony, or what we hear and read. [Read More]

Path-Distance Analysis //This is a fictitious scenario// Let’s suppose we’re a team of highly skilled NGA agents. We just received a briefing about some suspicious activity between two rival factions. These factions are typically hostile towards each other, but a trusted informant has brought forward some intel suggesting the two factions have been cooperating. Our team must assist in verifying these claims. Wielding the all-powerful eye in the sky — or, an array of US Government satellites — we will first identify which outposts are linked to each faction, and we will then infer the inter- and intra-faction transportation networks. [Read More]

A Statistical Analysis of Sentiments Every four years, the United States goes through the process of electing (or re-electing) its president. Politics becomes a popular topic of conversation, and inadvertently, a popular emotional outlet. Our digital landscape has — mostly textually, but sometimes by video or podcast — granted the ability for people to express their thoughts and feelings on political ideas and events, en masse. Suffice to say, an examination of people’s language in these expressions can yield many useful insights into human (or American) character and the influence of rhetoric on political philosophy and national pride. [Read More]

Monica, The Personal Relationship Manager For those new to Monica, it’s a website that allows you to manage your personal relationships. You create contacts and provide information to make sure your encounters are meaningful and frequent (if that’s something you care about). You can add information about the contact’s significant other, their kids, where they might work, gifts, debts, social media accounts, birthdays, reminders, and even diets. In our busy minds, it can be hard to keep track of so many relevant details, and being human, we sometimes fall short of having great personal interactions with others. [Read More]

My Introduction to GIS with Python Python is a powerful tool in the GIS world, so I wanted to get a little bit of practice with it. I have had a lot of fun working with the Global Terrorism Database so I figured I would go from its CSV format to one that is better-supported by GIS — the shapefile. The dataset contains information related to terrorist attacks, including attack locations. [Read More]

This post is intended to be informative, and not so much reproducible. Viewshed Analysis A viewshed is an area that is visible from an observer at a given location. The problem of visibility lends itself to many domains: a guard on a prison tower must see the entire prison yard to ensure everyone’s safety a scout must maximize visibility of a battlefield for intelligence gathering autonomous vehicles must have 360-degree visibility cell-towers must provide maximum coverage In this post, we will pay mind to the ancient world, where according to Christopherson and Guertin*, “fortified sites were often located in order to visually control their territory, sacred sites might be located to provide views of other sacred sites, and the settlement patterns of hinterland sites might be located to facilitate, or to impede, visual communication. [Read More]

A Working Example of a Conceptual Model An Object/Action Analysis Conceptual models are all about representation. And the way something is represented is important, both when understanding something, and when creating something. When attempting to understand a thing, we try to make sure our conceptual models aren’t faulty, so we practice logic and critical thinking. Else, biases or fallacious thoughts may steer us in a wrong direction while we experience a discussion with somebody, and miscommunications may happen, and/or the discussion is derailed. [Read More]