A Cornell Information Science PhD Student’s musings about the Internet, economics, machine learning, natural language processing, and human-computer interaction. And the food that powers me to think and keeps me sane in graduate school. The information published on this blog is the sole opinion of Stephen Purpura and not his employer. It is designed to be consumed as political commentary or notes that allow for self reflection. Follow me on TwitterTumblr (3.0; @spurpura)http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/Google's 2004 Investor Letter Describing the Objectivity of Search: Posting for easy access during a...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/16870616605http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/16870616605Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:55:43 -0500It’s a tricky business to work with applications that pass around Unicode strings as ASCII...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/16834198574http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/16834198574Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:19:00 -0500Readers of my Facebook page may remember that I’ve been writing about model updating high...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/16589793892http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/16589793892Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:38:15 -0500Bakshy (Facebook’s Data Team) studied who influences whom on Facebook. One of the findings is...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/16062317396http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/16062317396Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:54:00 -0500Hybrid Operating Systems: It is entertaining how Google has copied Microsoft’s...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/15770290915http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/15770290915Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:44:07 -0500Michigan's Big Data Success: The health care savings and increased tax compliance are only two of...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/15770095815http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/15770095815Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:30:15 -0500<img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxkivj9HAz1qbgrcmo1_r1_500.png"/><br/><br/><div> <p>This is a graph of the frequency of Tweets by character length (1 to 140 characters) from the 500 million Tweet sample used by <span><a href="http://twitter.com/redlog" target="_blank">Scott Golder</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/vlad43210" target="_blank">Vladimir Barash</a> (sample extracted from Twitter in late 2009) in their academic papers. View this graph in comparison to </span><a href="http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/01/07/interesting-fact-most-tweets-posted-are-approximately-30-characters-long/?awesm=tnw.to_1CaFC&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus&utm_source=Twitter&utm_content=Interesting%20fact:%20most%20tweets%20posted%20are%20approximately%2030%20characters%20long" target="_blank">a Twitter employee’s set of graphs that describe the typical length of a Tweet</a><span>. </span><span>Current Tweets have a number of changes (different text processing in the twitter-text API, wrapping of URLs, different application distributions, etc.) Note that the early peak seen in the current Twitter graphs is much less pronounced. Another note is that this graph shifts a little depending on how the Tweets are processed. More on that some other time.<br/><br/>Thanks to </span><a href="http://twitter.com/redlog" target="_blank">Scott Golder</a><span> </span><span>and</span><span> </span><a href="http://twitter.com/vlad43210" target="_blank">Vladimir Barash</a><span> for letting me use this data. </span></p> </div>http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/15608870150http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/15608870150Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:50:00 -0500Business Intelligence (BI) professionals are beginning to connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/15301828189http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/15301828189Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:50:00 -0500Mobile Healthcare Systems Are Only As Good As the Guidance: Mobile health care technology that fat...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/15284907063http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/15284907063Wed, 04 Jan 2012 01:27:00 -0500It’s worth bookmarking this article on current research results in weight loss for future...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/15015890380http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/15015890380Fri, 30 Dec 2011 01:57:10 -0500A recent post by mathbabe about the desirable traits of data scientists has met with a lot of...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/14875121554http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/14875121554Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:57:40 -0500The University of Washington is making a big push for additional funding to support UW Computer...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/14522636736http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/14522636736Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:22:12 -0500Update: Several industry professionals have suggested that aspects of this note are incorrect....http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/13052575854http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/13052575854Sun, 20 Nov 2011 02:38:00 -0500If you own a Samsung 4G/LTE MiFi, you may, like me, be fed up with resetting the device because your...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/12955846827http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/12955846827Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:05:46 -0500<img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_luj0bw88rz1qbgrcmo1_500.jpg"/><br/> <br/><img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_luj0bw88rz1qbgrcmo2_500.jpg"/><br/> <br/><p>My idea for butter poached meat using a Sous Vide Supreme was refined by the chefs at French Laundry when Patti and I ate dinner there last week. After some testing time, I can give you the method:</p> <ol><li>Preheat the Sous Vide Supreme to a temperature between 120 and 140 degrees F, depending on the meat that you’re cooking (rabbit, pork, beef, etc.).</li> <li>Make a <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beurre_mont%C3%A9" target="_blank">Beurre monté</a></em> on the stove. To cook one chop, we’re using 1 lb of butter.</li> <li>Once the Beurre monté is emulsified and at least the temperature of the SVS water, place it in a microwave-safe cooking vessel with a water tight lid, such as BPA free tupperware-like container or a Pyrex container.</li> <li>Add the meat to the container. Make certain that the liquid adequately covers the meat, even at a slight angle. Add other seasonings or herbs. Shut the lid.</li> <li>Place the container in the SVS water and submerge it as much as possible. If desired, place a brick over it to hold it under the water.</li> <li>Cook the meat as you normally would in the SVS. The butter will remain at the temperature of the water.</li> </ol><p>Note: I take no responsibility for your outcomes with this recipe.</p>http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/12669589190http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/12669589190Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:31:08 -0500This is the first draft of text that I need to write for both a technical (academic PhD) audience...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/12371754609http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/12371754609Sat, 05 Nov 2011 11:35:52 -0400If you’re sitting in a house in Ithaca, NY with no furniture or cooking supplies and...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/11708808334http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/11708808334Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:41:50 -0400CMU Study Shows Nothing, Press Comments on It: This article caught my eye because it talked about...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/11534339336http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/11534339336Sun, 16 Oct 2011 14:47:38 -0400One of the questions that smart people ask me when they learn that I won a 2008 Forbes investing...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/11489219862http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/11489219862Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:30:00 -0400I Like Wrightsock: I’ve been wearing Wrightsock Double Layer Coolmesh socks for at least 10...http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/11291348173http://blog.stephenpurpura.com/post/11291348173Mon, 10 Oct 2011 18:54:35 -0400