How to Lie with Bar Graphs: A Tool for Agents of Misinformation and Fake News

Tags

agents of misinformation, fake news, paid polls, politicians, propaganda, seos

In the article, The Use and Abuse of Logarithmic Axes, Harvey J. Motulsky explained how bar graphs can be used for propaganda and misleading others. The article is at

https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.graphpad.com/faq/1910/file/1487logaxes.pdf

He shows the following graph and explains, and quote

Since zero can’t be shown on a log axis, the choice of a starting place is arbitrary. Accordingly, the relative height of two bars is not directly related to their relative values. The graphs below show the same data as the graph above, but with three different choices for where the axis begins. This arbitrary choice influences the relative height of the two bars, amplified in the graph on the left and minimized in the graph on the right.

If the goal is to create propaganda, a bar graph using a logarithmic axis is a great tool, as it lets you either exaggerate differences between groups or minimize them. All you have to do is carefully choose the range of your axis. Don’t create bar graphs using a logarithmic axis if your goal is to honestly show the data.

So now you know. Never trust anyone that uses such tricks (politicians, pollsters, marketers, sales department staff, seos, and the likes). This one is also a great tool for fake news masters.

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A Unicode Mnemonic for Vowels with Diacritics

Tags

Mnemonic, Unicode, Unicode Mnemonic, Vowels with Diacritics

A mnemonic for easily recalling the unicode entities of vowels with grave accents, acute accents, and circumflexes is available at

http://www.minerazzi.com/tutorials/unicode-mnemonic.pdf

We developed the mnemonic after some work on mining the unicode system. It might come handy for those that need to encode said vowels without looking at reference books, tables,… It is also a great example for those teaching mnemonics.

For those interested, we have a tool for exploring unicode entities at

http://www.minerazzi.com/tools/unicoder/unicoder.php

A Brief History of Search Results Ranking, by Stephen Robertson

Tags

information retrieval, PageRank, Ranking Results, search engines, search results, SEO Myths

Back in Feb 5 2019, Prof. Stephen Robertson published “A Brief History of Search Results Ranking” (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8634887). I finally got a complimentary copy from Robertson via ResearchGate. This is a historical article all IR researchers and search engine marketers (SEOs/SEMs) may want to read. It is part of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=85).

His take on PageRank? He writes: “As a secondary aim, I hope to debunk the myth of PageRank, which remains in widespread currency.”

In the paper, Robertson sets the record straight regarding the myth of Google’s PageRank. He wrote:

“So how important was PageRank in the Google ranker? It was one of a large number of features, and contributed something to the overall effectiveness of the ranker. But in my view, it was much less important than doing all the other things well. And in particular, the advantage claimed for PageRank (that it quantifies the authority of a page as viewed by other web page authors) can already be obtained from matching the query against anchor text. Anchor text is a little less subtle than PageRank as a quantitative measure, but on the other hand it is query specific, which PageRank is not. This fact has been recognised in the information retrieval
research community, supported by some evaluation work by Hawking and colleagues, for example — work which was published nine years before McCormick’s book.

Matching anchor text well is vital for a good web search engine; using PageRank is useful, but nothing more.”

Dataset for Sequential Sentence Classification

Tags

Annotation, Classification, information retrieval, ir, Power Transformations

A research group at CSIE department of National Taiwan University (NTU), supervised by Prof. Shou-De Lin, is currently working on releasing a new dataset for sequential sentence classification and type classification for paper abstracts on arXiv.

 

This annotation and classification project is available at https://mslab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~labeler/abstract.php

 

Annotations are made by article authors and upon being invited/contacted by the research group. I’m happy to see they included in the dataset my “Local Term Weights Models from Power Transformations | Development of BM25IR” paper (https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1608/1608.01573.pdf).

PHP Implementation of Text Mining in Digital Libraries using OKAPI BM25 Model

Tags

Apache, BM25, BM25 Tutorial, BM25F, BM25F Tutorial, minerazzi, open source, PHP

Here is a nice article from International Journal of Computer Applications Technology and Research, https://ijcat.com/archieve/volume7/issue10/ijcatr07101003.pdf, on text mining digital libraries with OKAPI BM25. The authors successfully used a PHP implementation (XAMPP bundle).

Happy to see in reference 22 of the article that they cited one of my tutorials, on the BM25F implementation. This one is available at http://www.minerazzi.com/tutorials/bm25f-model-tutorial.pdf (and through researchgate.net).

The authors generously included some PHP snippets so it should be easy for those that can code to follow up.

 

LANL Miner

Tags

LANL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, miner, minerazzi

 

LANL Miner (http://www.minerazzi.com/lanl). Our newest miner/engine.

Public resources, news, research, people, and more from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Use its news channel to access feeds relevant to Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Recrawl search results and build your own curated collection of resources.

Want to know about the Manhattan Project? How about research from outerspace?

Some goldmine resources found with the LANL Miner:

Los Alamos Research Online (beta)
https://research-online.lanl.gov/oppie/service

Cambridge Structural Database
https://www.lanl.gov/library/find/articles/csd.php

LANL-PRIMO
http://lanl-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=LANL

Multiple databases
https://www.lanl.gov/library/find/articles/

And a lot more…

Sarcomas Miner

Tags

Cancer, Cancer Research, minerazzi, open source, Sarcoma Cancer, Sarcomas, Sarcomas Miner

Sarcomas Miner. http://minerazzi.com/sarcomas/

Find the following resources relevant to sarcoma: Types, diagnosis, classification, epidemiology, awareness, and more. Raise awareness by doing research on these types of cancers.

Use its news channel to find in one place latest news and research articles.

Recrawl search results and build your own curated collection of resources.

W3C Miner

Tags

Curated Collections, miner, minerazzi, W3C, W3C Miner

W3C Miner. http://minerazzi.com/w3c/

W3C public resources, news, standards, work groups, and more.

Use its news channel to easily access from a single place several rss news feeds relevant to World Wide Web Consortium.

Recrawl search results and build your own curated collection of resources.

ORNL Miner

Tags

Cutting-Edge Research, National Laboratories, ORNL, Technology Inventions

ORNL Miner is now available at

http://www.minerazzi.com/ornl

Find ORNL public resources, news, research, people, and more. Access cutting-edge research and technology inventions.

Use its news channel to easily access from a single place several rss news feeds relevant to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 

Recrawl search results and build your own curated collection of resources.

Carcinomas Miner

Tags

breast cancer, Cancer, Cancer Research, carcinomas, skin cancer

Carcinomas Miner | Find resources relevant to the types of cancers known as carcinomas (http://www.minerazzi.com/carcinomas/).

Recrawl search results and build your own curated collection of resources. Use this miner to extract valuable front/back end data from relevant sites.

You may also use its rss news channels (http://www.minerazzi.com/carcinomas/spp.php) to find news from around the Web relevant to these and other types of cancers.