Natural Language Processing

Natural Language Processing

It was not long after someone came up with the idea of ​​a robot that people wanted it to understand human speech and text. It was a dream that could only be found in the pages of science fiction books and short stories, or observed in movies. Known as Natural Language Processing (NLP), the concept of a computer understanding human speech and text is now here.

It is not an easy task to achieve. First, there is the problem of human's speaking in a concise manner so that a machine can understand. Second, the problem of words that sound the same, but have different meanings like weigh and way, weight and wait, etc.

How Natural Language Processing Works

Processing the spoken or written word relies heavily on Big Data, large amounts of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data that can be mined for information. Computers can quickly go through the data, analyze it, and find patterns or trends. Initially, NLP relied on basic rules where machines using algorithms were told what words and phrases to look for in text and then taught specific responses when the sentences appeared. It has evolved into deep learning, a flexible, more instinctive method in which algorithms are used to teach a machine to identify a speaker's intent from a series of examples.

In the evolution of NLP, algorithms have been historically bad at interpreting. However, now with improvements in deep learning and AI, algorithms can now successfully interpret.

If you own an Amazon Echo or a Google Home, then you are interacting with artificial intelligence and NLP. Moreover, it is already being used in all sorts of business applications including manufacturing, business analytics, customer relations, human resources, and healthcare.

NLP, AI, And Businesses

In the coming years, Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence will impact five areas of healthcare.

• Clinical Data and Administrative Assistants
• Data Mining and Extraction
• Market Analysis
• Real-Time Translation Services

In customer service, the use of NLP can help determine customer liabilities for future sales. There will be no need for customer surveys. Instead, mining systems will offer deeper insights about a customer's feelings. Chatbots will allow human customer service personnel to concentrate on other types of calls.

NLP will help human resource departments to recruit job seekers, will make it easier to sort through resumes, attract more specific candidates, and hire more qualified workers. NLP in spam detection will keep unwanted emails out of an executive's inbox. It can also be used to "read" tweets and determine whether they are good or bad for a company so that customer concerns can be addressed.

NLP And Social Good

NLP and AI can help prevent school shootings. For example, Columbia University researchers have processed 2 million tweets posted by 9,000 at-risk youth to determine how language changes as a teen gets closer and closer to committing a violent act.

There are so many uses for NLP now and, no doubt, as the technology expands, more can be achieved.

Effects of Technology on Education

Effects of Technology on Education

Education has changed significantly in the last twenty years. One of the main reasons education has undergone so many changes is because of technological development. In 1990, computers and other forms of technology served a minimal role in the classroom. Today, many if not most college students attend class with a laptop. I am writing about some of the biggest advantages technology cave to education.

Technology has made research much easier. Before online Encyclopedias, Google Scholar, JSTOR, and other online research tools were available, students were forced to spend numerous hours in the library. With the new tools, students can conduct research faster in the comfort of their homes. With Google and other search engines, students can find relevant information faster and more efficiently. Also, there is no more need for intensive memorization as information is more readily available.

New also technology allows for a faster, more efficient, and more interactive classroom experience. With Powerpoint presentations and projectors, there is no need for blackboards and whiteboards. With clickers, students can take quizzes during the classroom.

These developments also help improve improving training services. Online tutoring programs are becoming available. One-on-one in-home tutoring programs are also being aided by these developments. Tutors can bring laptops to sessions allowing them to look up information, and show examples to the student more easily.

Wi-fi technology allows students to study in more comfort and a more ergonomic setting.

New mathematical software such as Maple and Mathematica allows students to make a computer algebra computations more easily. Software like Matlab and Scilab allows students to make numerical computations more easily. There is no more need for a line rule. Advanced Texas Instrument and Casio calculators allow students to solve equations and produce graphs. Online software such as Webassign allows students to submit mathematics assignments online with instant feedback.

The internet allows students to read books and educational supplements at home. There is no need to go to a bookstore or library. Since many of these sources are open source or funded by advertising, students can access these materials for free. Wikipedia, Wikibooks are good examples. Students can learn more without leaving their house.

Image applications and job applications can now be complete online. Students can deliver important paperwork to universities and employers at a much faster rate.

Online education allows more students to get an education. Handicapped students, students that have to travel a lot, and students with jobs can now complete their degrees where they go with a flexible schedule and often at their own pace. Due to its lower costs, online education also benefits lower-income students.

Technological development allowed the creation of new IT jobs and improved economic development in general.

Not all effects of technology on education are positive. Technology also allows students to cheat more easily. However, new technology allows instructors to detect plagiarism. Technological developments can also discourage critical thinking since answers are more readily available. Technology also encourages students to spend their time doing other activities such as playing video games and participating in social networking.

Overall, technological development in the 1990s and 2000s appears to be beneficial to education. Currently, technology improvement follows Moore's law which states that computers become twice as efficient approximately every two years. Today, one can purchase a well performing personal computer (without a monitor, software, and other accessories) for as low as $ 123.99. Recently, I have not spent over $ 250 on a desktop computer and it allowed me to do very advanced computations like high-sample Monte Carlo algorithms. If the trend continues, students all over the world will be able to afford desks and laptops contributing to a better global education.

Alternative Investments in Finance

Alternative Investments in Finance

Alternative investment involves investment in assets other than the traditional products of stocks, bonds or cash. These assets include the likes of art, antiques, wine, coins or rare stamps - in other words, rare items. Financial assets like commodities, private equity, hedge funds and financial derivatives are also accommodated in alternative investment. Due to the complexities in their nature and the regulations and the illiquidity involved, AI assets are usually held by institutional investors or accredited individuals.

A thorough investment analysis is required before buying and investing in alternative financial resources. They also involve a high minimum investment and fee structures compared to mutual funds. Traditional investment involves risk. We have seen how in recent times the world of finance was hit as bankruptcy triggered across the globe. But even in troubled waters, you do not need to be bearish if you are the proud owner of a few bottles of Bordeaux or a Penny Black or may be a series of Andy Warhol prints as you are supposedly to get their money back virtually.

Why do people go for alternative financial investment?

A probable reason why people invest in alternative resources is to diversify and reduce the overall investment risk. Portfolio diversification is proposed to potential investors to minimize the risk. And this can be achieved through alternative investment.

Advantages to investing alternatively:

1. Alternative investment involves low correlation with traditional financial investments like stocks and bonds. As a result several large institutional funds like the pension and private endowments have already begon allocating a small proportion, less than 10%, of their capitals to alternative investments like hedge funds.
2. It is comparatively less liquid in nature.

Disadvantages to investing alternatively:

1. Lack of published verifiable performance data and minimum opportunity to advertise to potential investors.
2. Determining the current market value of assets is often difficult.
3. Cost of purchase and sales is relatively high.

The most common types of alternative investment include:

• Hedge funds as alternative financial investments include a wide range of investment assets like stocks and commodities, which principally aim at offsetting the potential losses in the markets.
• Future funds as alternative investments are standardized contracts of sale and purchase of commodity at a predetermined price on a specific date. Futures are used to trade currencies and commodities like petroleum and agricultural products.
• Real estate can also serve as an alternative investment option, which typically involves buying and selling of immovable properties like land and concessions. It yields income income as well as capital appreciation.
• Although not always viewed as such, art is certainly an alternative investment. This investment option gained some new transaction after the 2008 market downturn and recession period.
• Investment in vintage items, such as fine wine, has proved profitable with consistent high-yield returns, even in the months of 2008 credit crunch.
• The precious metal gold is used as a defensive alternative financial investment, which tends to grow in popularity during periods of prolonged economic upheavals.

In this emerging economic economic climate, as investors are striving to locate the best investment niche, these alternative financial investment options are gaining greater and greater appreciation due to their low-risk and high-yield nature.

Family Reunion Planning Step By Step

Family Reunion Planning Step By Step

As a wise proverb says "There is a time for everything under the sun. A time to run, a time to laugh, a time to skip about." With that sentiment there is a time to strengthen the bonds of family union. And what better way to begin then planning for your next family reunion. Family reunion events have evolved into big-time annual family shindigs these days. From gatherings at the ol 'homestead to luxury cruise ship gala events. But when is a good time to start planning for your family reunion? The fact is, anytime is a good time to start planning a meaningful memorable family gathering.

KEEPING TIME ON YOUR SIDE

They key to successfully planning a modest to large family event is giving yourself and the rest of the family plenty of time to put it all together. This will also allow family reunion planners drum up support when and where needed. This calls for good communication and organization on the reunion planners part.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT FAMILY REUNION SOFTWARE

Your best approach to organizing a family reunion event is using what is called a family reunion planner organizer with * attendee registration spreadsheet features. Planner organizers now come in many software formats. A stand-alone program may require the manual input of information such as reunion date, time, number of attendees, guest list contact information and such. It is advantageous to choose reunion planning software platforms that allow users to export and import data into formats most users are familiar with such as MS Word and Excel Spreadsheets.

COMMITTEE MEETING PRESENTATION FEATURES

Users should be able to take advantage of spreadsheet data and presentation features such as bar and pie charts for surveys, dues ledgers and such. Your family reunion planner organizer should allow you to easily enter survey data and tally. For example, the reunion committee narrows down three possible locations for the family reunion event. Perhaps you want to find out how far these locations are from each attendees home address. Features that allow you to enter travel distance to the reunion event location per household and run a comparison report can help you narrow down the most convenient locations.

CHECKLISTS ACCOUNTS AND BALANCES

Your software should include features the allow you to add up T-shirt orders and payment balances. Keep track of desired reunion activities and menu surveys. Keep track of delegated assignments. Make sure your planner also comes with a family reunion planning primer. It should contain an edit pre-written timeline planner with built in checklist. Reunion supplies and materials lists are extremely helpful. Many reunion planners come with a host of templates such as flyers, labels, nametags, official reunion correspondence stationary, welcome letter template to name a few.

HELPFUL SEARCH ENGINE FEATURES

Now major search engines offer features that allow users to share standard data in MS Word and Excel spreadsheet format with other online users making the reunion communication process a whole lot easier for all involved.

REUNION PLANNING STEP BY STEP

Step 1. Your first task is to gather information from family members regarding the kind of family reunion event that would like to have. To do this you should first remark announcing that plans are underway for the next family reunion and the need to consider ideas and select committe member volunteers.

Step 2. Compile a list of family members and their addresses and send out your announcements as a flyer or in newsletter format. Your announcement should include a brief survey asking for their opinions and suggestions for food, entertainment, theme, events and location. Those who respond quickly and provide practical input should be asked to form the reunion committee.

Step 3. Establish an initial committee meeting time and place where most can attend.

Step 4. Form your initial committee members including the chairperson and treasurer.

Step 5. Using your "Committees List" pause selecting other subcommittees heads. Your committees lists includes the following duties:

Food committee

Welcome / Greeting Committee

Finance Committee

Communications Committee

Setup and Cleanup Committee

Fundraising Committee

Family History Committee

Photography Committee

News and Media Committee

Supplies Department

Health and Safety Committee

Security Department

Genealogy Research and Presentation Committee

Step 6. Now review your consideration elements and consider potential reunion site locations visited ", reunion themes, proposed date, initial cost estimates for budget. Remember to use the survey you sent out with your initial mailing. more elements for consideration.

Step 7. As you discuss consideration elements record final decisions as to who will do what. Delegate committee heads and volunteers accordingly. Make sure delegations are in harmony with your committee heads department. Avoid overlapping assignments.

Step 8. Now get into the details of planning the event. Using a "Possible Locations and Activities" list compare completed surveys to the possible location and activities list. Draw a line through locations not recommended and narrow down the desired location to about three or four choices. Now take a vote. Follow the same pattern for activities.

Step 9. After deciding on location and activities you now have a better idea of ​​event needs in the form of materials and services.

Step 10. Using a "Needs List" as a starter, beginning listing all needs for your event with the help and feedback of department heads.

Step 11. Create a ballpark "Expense List" to get an idea of ​​the amount of funds required for the event and activities and add this to your Reunion Planner Budget list and Calculation Tool.

Step 12. Using your surveys complete a "Reunion Lunch Program Agenda" if your reunion event will be held in the after noon. Otherwise create a "Reunion Dinner Program Agenda".

Following these basic steps when choosing your family reunion software and organizing your reunion event will get you off on to a good start.

* A Family Reunion planning "Attendee Registration Worksheet" is a spreadsheet that allows the user to record information in the form of a dues ledger, tally reunion surveys, create a guest list roster. "Enter T-shirt orders and keep track of special needs .

How To Make Music - An Easy Way To Learn

How To Make Music - An Easy Way To Learn

Learning to play instruments can be a lifelong study. Many people will never learn simply because they do not have the patience or the natural talent to do so. The ability to play an instrument should not deter you from making music though. Many great musicians are mediocre at playing an instrument. In our technological age the game has changed. With computers and software making music has never been more accessible. All that is really required is a desire to learn and a basic feeling for music.

The easiest way to learn how to make music is with music software. There are quite literal thousands of software packages on the market and all of them do something different. There are specific types of software that I want to focus on and look at in terms of learning how to make music.

Lets first look at some of the fundamentals of music and making a song. All songs have melody and rhythm which can be a tough thing when composing on any instrument. With music maker software it becomes so much easier. The software itself is designed to help you to easily put beats together. Many of them come with vast libraries of beats and you can mix and match them, change the tempo and even add effects to each. Even if you just use these beats, anyone can put together a catchy song with a good melody and rhythm.

Another great feature of music maker software is the fact that most packages has "artificial" digitized instruments that allows you to "play" any instrument without playing it. Some of the more advanced packages will allow you to automatically overlay certain instruments over an existing beat and you can quickly build up a very full sound that not only sounds professional but its perfectly in beat and in tune.

By learning to compose music with software you can not only build a great foundation for understanding rhythm and melody but you also learn the basics of producing music. Its also a great way to help any aspiring singer and songwriter to write music and create songs without a full band or an expensive production studio.

Important Upgrade for Every Computer and Backup Planning

Important Upgrade for Every Computer and Backup Planning

One important upgrade every computer owner should perform is to have surge protection. Sure protection protects your desktop or laptop from a power surge that can happen during a storm.

A surge protector is a piece of hardware that your computer is plugged into. The protector then plugs into the wall. Thus, it is an intermediate between your computer and the power outlet. The surge protector prevails dangerous levels of power from reaching your computer and causing overload problems.

Here's the scenario:

You're using your computer during an electrical storm. Lightning strikes and sends a high amount of power to your computer.

With a surge protector, the surge protector notices the power is too high and prevails the high power from reaching your computer.

Without a surge protector, the high voltage travels right to your machine, and you're left to pray that it does not overload your computer and cost you to have repairs performed.

A surge protector can also prevent spikes that occur because the power go out and then come back on at a higher level.

Thus, surge protectors are reliably cheap and are the standard in computer protection. A wise investment to be sure.

The second topic for this article is data backup planning.

Data backup planning is not only important to large corporations, but to the personal computer owner as well. We'll be focusing on the personal computer owner here.

Many people do not think about backing up their data. They should though. Recently someone came to me and asked me if I could recover data from their storage drive. It was their only copy. Unfortunately, I had to refer them to another service provider - someone who would have to perform some low level data recovery (expensive). This would not have had to happen if the person had kept a second copy of their data. There are a number of ways for people to back up their data.

One way is to buy some writable CDs or DVDs and burn data to them - of course you'll need hardware that can write to CDs and / or DVDs. These would probably be a good option for people with not too much data they want backed up. These are also nice because you can store them in a different location from the original data and then the computer should be destroyed in some cataclysmic event, you still have a good copy.

Another option is to purchase an external hard drive. These usually require a USB hookup. They are a nice option and are generally much larger in size than a CD / DVD. They are also easily transportable and lightweight. Furthermore, you can read, write, and rewrite (write over) data - something Most CDs / DVDs do not do. So, they can be a money saver and space saver when compared to CDs / DVDs.

Another option still is to purchase an internal hard drive. This will stay within your computer. It provides read / write / rewrite and generally large (and inexpensive) storage capacity. These tend to be less expensive than a similar external and faster. However, they are less mobile than the two previous options. Still, you've got to know a bit more about hardware in order to find out which drive to purchase and install, making the other two options more user friendly.

I think all options have their strong points, it boils down to what you require or desire. Bottom line, it's a good idea to have some backup strategy, because you never know how valuable your data is until it's gone.

Client Appreciation for Financial Advisors

Client Appreciation for Financial Advisors

A quick Google search on "client appreciation for financial advisors" unearths a lot about client awareness events, (which are very common in the industry), and not much more. Are advisors hoping their clients bring friends with them to the event so the planner can get an introduction for potential new business? Such events are perfectly fine and good, but they are not really the best way to show your thanks or differentiate yourself.

Sure, some financial planners may host events that are real blowouts, the kind of "you have GOT to be there" parties that people talk about for months. But most do not come close to that.

Like gift cards, these appreciation dinners have three main drawbacks. One, they're not personal. It's a party for a bunch of people, not in honor of them personally. Two, they require your clients to make an effort. And a majority of your clients are not excited about making any efforts outside of their normal routine. Three, if everyone's doing them, how then are you so special?

That's why if you really want to let your clients know you value them, you send them something that requires no effort on their part - a genuine token of thanks that can be enjoyed right away, without sharing, in the privacy of their own home. In case you have not noticed, especially in America, people like instant gratification.

A survey done earlier this year of registered investment consultants found that most saw an increase in assets under management, coming from both new and existing clients. So you've got lots of new people with whatever it would behoove you to strengthen bonds. Additionally, the study revealed almost 25% of advisors expected to increase spending in client appreciation activities. If you're going to increase spending, do not you want to make sure you're doing it effectively?

Here are 3 better ways for financial advisors to reach out to their clients:

1. Handwritten notes - even if your assistant wrists them. Send a card to say thanks at a random time, other than a birthday.

2. Gourmet food - people love treats, so send something they'd not likely find or buy for themselves and let them indulge courtesy of you. Food is a very social and nurturing thing; it says, "I care," which is why it's received particularly well.

3. Books - do you have a favorite recommendation? Sharing something you enjoy allows your clients to feel a closer relationship and who knows, maybe you'll introduce them to a new genre or author that they would have never otherwise discovered.

There's no doubt that building tighter relationships with your clients is essential to the success of your business. Just make sure the money you spend actually accomplishes what you intend.