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Uncommon Ideas for IBM’s Watson

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Like every true geek, I watched the very interesting Watson vs. Past Champions Jeopardy series this past week, and it was very entertaining.

IBM WatsonIf you missed it, there is a good recap here.  Basically, IBM created a distributed system that was designed to learn the intricacies of the human language, and answer trivia style questions based on its massive database.  It was a great show, and I enjoyed seeing the answers that Watson would consider and their probability of being right.  IBM has said that one real world application they are looking into is health care.  While I think this is great and look forward to seeing the changes it brings, I also starting thinking of what other ways Watson could be used.  Some practical, some, not so much:

Spam Filtering

I thought this could be interesting because I’m pretty sure that Watson has a better understanding of the English Language than a lot of

spammers:

Under forecasts of experts "Kaspersky's Laboratory", in 2010 of a spam does not become less
-via spamuseme.blogspot.com

Watson could process an email, and then give it a probability based on whether it was a real person or not.

Answer Site

Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers, Quora, I know, I know, but how cool would it be to have a computer instantly answer trivia for you?  No waiting, no trolls, no idiots who think they know the answer to everything.  Maybe even set it up as a twitter account, to keep it simple.  Admit it, you are already thinking of things to ask it.

Sports Betting

Just to be clear, I’ve don’t bet sports or really know that much about it, so maybe this is way off.  I have to imagine though, if you fed Watson all of the stats from the last 4 years of baseball, his probability algorithms could do some pretty sweet stuff.  Add to that his ability to understand the human language, which means he could process sports writers and analysts, and he would have to be fairly accurate.

Drive-thru Attendant

Okay, admittedly more than a little silly, Watson would make a great drive-thru attendant.  While I don’t eat fast food often, it seems almost inevitable that the order I place, if anything other than a number, is some how changed into something else by the time I get it.

Well, that’s all I have, what about you?

February Challenge: Work out five days a week

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I was having trouble coming up with an idea for this month, but decided I might as well kill two birds with one stone. I am starting training for the Grand Rapids Triathlon this month, so I figured I would make sticking to my training schedule my goal for the month.  If your interested you can see what I’m doing here, the numbers of the length of the workout in minutes. This is roughly based on a 16 week Olympic training program on a site that was recommended by some of the triathlon staff (www.beginnertriathlete.com).  I’m a little nervous about my knees and ankles as this is a lot more running than I have done in quite a few months, but hopefully after the first couple weeks they should be used to it again.

January Update: 14 pounds

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For January, I was trying to lose 15 pounds before the end of the month.  I was close…really close.  In fact, I weighed myself again after my morning swim and I had lost 15.5 lbs, but that’s pretty much cheating since I was just dehydrated.  I ended up losing 14 pounds altogether, which I’m happy with. The first week and a half I was fighting off a cold and that didn’t help matters. If your curious what I was doing, I lost the first few (5-6) just eating normally and working out, and the last two weeks or so I focused on cutting “white” carbs 6 days a week (aka slow carb diet)  The carbs are definitely the key for me, and it was interesting to see just how much of them I eat in a day.

January Challenge: Lose 15 Pounds

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So I’m running a little behind here on the challenges, seeing as it is January 11th and I am just now posting my challenge for January.  This month I went with something relatively straightforward: Lose 15 pounds.

I chose this for a few reasons.  First, I did particularly horrid this holiday season watching what I ate, and have paid the price both in pounds gained and tighter clothes.  Second, if I seriously want to make it through the triathlon, I need to start serious training in February.  I can say from personal experience that even 10 pounds can make a world of difference when working out. Why 15?  I figured that was a relatively reasonable number for a month, and it would put me just below where I was at for most of last year.

Anyways, that’s it, lose 15 pounds in January, look for an update at the end of the month to see if I made it!

My 2011 Resolutions

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Happy New Year!

As I mentioned in my last post, I really like setting resolutions at the beginning of the year.  I’m a pretty goal oriented person, and even if I fail at the original resolution, it usually leads to something that I am glad I did.  This year I am going to try something a little different.  I have a few year long goals, but I am also going to focus on a smaller goal each month, something I couldn’t or wouldn’t want to do for a whole year.  Well, enough talk,, here are my New Year’s resolutions for 2011.

Complete a Triathlon (Olympic Distance)

This should be quite challenging for me, the closest Michigan triathlon is the Grand Rapids triathlon on June 5th, which gives me just under 5 months to train.  I think it’s possible, but will take a lot of work.  An Olympic triathlon is a 1.5K (.93 mi) swim, a 40K (25.1 mi) bike, and a 10K (6.2 mi) run.  The biking won’t be a problem. and the run shouldn’t be too brutal, but the swim will be tough.

No Ice Cream

Last year I didn’t drink pop for the entire year, so I thought this year I would try something similar.  Ice cream is one of the things I am routinely bad about eating, so I thought it would be a good choice.

Develop one new website/web service

Pretty simple, I want to design/develop at least one new web site or service.  Could either be someone else’s, or something of my own.  I’ve got a few ideas, but haven’t decided on one, so if you’ve got something you need some help working on, let me know!

Become Proficient at Shooting a Handgun

Just to be clear, I’m not planning a murderous rampage or anything.  I have enjoyed shooting rifles since I was younger and have always wanted to learn to shoot handguns.  For my birthday I got a free private shooting lesson at a local gun range, and plan on shooting at least once every other week until I’m a relatively decent shot.  I’ll be looking at buying a gun in February, so anybody with suggestions, feel free to let me know!

Blog at least once a week

Pretty basic, last year I started http://teageek.org and will continue posting there, with some changes.

Monthly Challenges

Like I said earlier, instead of just yearly resolutions, I am focusing on something different each month.  It’s pretty simple really, each month I’ll choose one thing to challenge myself, and at the end of the month I will measure how it went. A few ideas I have are not eating out, no television, etc.  Each month I’ll post what I’m up to so you can follow along if you want.

Well that pretty much wraps it up, if you have any good ideas for a monthly challenge be sure to let me know.  Hope everybody has a great year!