A quick search on pubmed.gov today reveals that the freely available American database of biomedical literature has just passed the 20 million citations mark*. Should we celebrate or commiserate passing this landmark figure? Is it a triumph or a tragedy that PubMed® is the size it is? (more…)
July 27, 2010
April 17, 2009
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Google
Via the Official Google Research Blog at the University of Google, Alon Halevy, Peter Norvig and Fernando Pereira have published an interesting expert opinion piece in the March/April 2009 edition of IEEE Intelligent Systems: computer.org/intelligent. The paper talks about embracing complexity and making use of the “the unreasonable effectiveness of data” [1] drawing analogies with the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” [2]. There is plenty to agree and disagree with in this provocative article which makes it an entertaining read. So what can we learn from those expert Googlers in the Googleplex? (more…)
O'Really? 