Bard Mathematics and Computer Science Events

The Internet gives us access to billions of pages of information, along with billions of pictures and hundreds of millions of videos. Of course, a person could never look at all of them, but computers are faster than humans -- what can a computer learn from all this information? In this talk we will see that a computer might not learn in the same way that a person does, but it can use massive amounts of data to perform selected tasks very well. We will see that a computer can correct spelling mistakes, translate from Arabic to English, and recognize celebrity faces about as well as an average human -- and can do it all by learning from examples rather than by relying on programming.

	Practice makes perfect: How billions of examples lead to better models of language, pictures, and other things Peter Norvig Director of Research Google, Inc. Wednesday, January 30, 2008 3:00 p.m. Campus Center Multipurpose Room
The Internet gives us access to billions of pages of information, along with billions of pictures and hundreds of millions of videos. Of course, a person could never look at all of them, but computers are faster than humans -- what can a computer learn from all this information? In this talk we will see that a computer might not learn in the same way that a person does, but it can use massive amounts of data to perform selected tasks very well. We will see that a computer can correct spelling mistakes, translate from Arabic to English, and recognize celebrity faces about as well as an average human -- and can do it all by learning from examples rather than by relying on programming.

Bard College Mathematics and Computer Science Events