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Two disclaimers:1 - Despite my following reasoning, I don’t even believe ‘democracy’ is a fundamental end-all and be-all of what it means to be an optimal social primate. And as an American, I am looking at the word as representing the current Multi-national, neo-liberal, zero-sum trends.2 - Despite having American citizenship, I have lived over half my life in Japan … 36 years and counting, and with a permanent visa, this is probably a terminal relationship.On my answer —Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time — Winston ChurchillQuite a catchy tune … but I have no idea whether democracy is the worst, or better, or just another experiment in how to manage social primates that have bred to populations of herding / swarming size.I just see democracy as one of many tools for sustainability of the species … and if lucky, perhaps even a higher quality of life.But as any other tool, democracy can be used and misused, depending on one’s inclination and perspective. For example, anyone who has been marginalized as a minority will likely be aware of the dangers of tyranny of the majority.I don’t have the time or scope for exploring the implications of John Rawls’ original position on morality here. It leads down one heck of a rabbit hole. But I would like to make a plug for Michael J. Sandel’s definition of ‘corruption’ as — any time ‘lower level’ values displace ‘higher level’ ideals.Certainly this is a provisional social construct. But I think most of us would agree that ‘everyone has their price’ is an easy to understand euphemism for how Michael Sandel is defining corruption.For my short answer … Yes.Just follow the money — https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/27/fake-news-inquiry-data-misuse-deomcracy-at-risk-mps-conclude?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=282232&subid=10308016&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2It is not just democracy that is under threat.Family values and its institutions … adoption, weddings, birthdays, or funerals … are all under threat of being devoured by capitalism. It doesn’t take much triangulating to see the relationship between the misuse of corporate human capital in Japan Inc.’s ‘democracy’ to see the devastating effects on demographics … a falling population, but gutting the countryside for further concentration of power and opportunity in the Tokyo area.In pre-reformation Europe, the Catholic church similarly grew rich and therefore corrupt, partially due to selling special dispensations (those express train prayers to heaven) to the robber barons of that era.But here, in present day Japan, depending on the amount of donation offered to a priest performing burial rituals お布施, the deceased is given a new ‘spiritual’ name (kaimyou - Dharma name) that is ranked and correlated with the amount of money donated.I’d call that culturally sanctioned blackmail, but I guess we Americans do the same with weddings and funerals … the more money one has, the more lavish the ceremony is expected to be. I guess it comes with the package of what it means to be a social primate.But how much is ‘enough’? Where does one draw the line if it comes at the expense of others?This jives well with Sandel’s home run definition of corruption.Capitalism is devouring science.Common sense determines that neither scientific fact nor theory have been subject to the values of democracy, though lord knows it is not through lack of trying.I will leave it to the likes of Neil DeGrasse Tyson to point out the incompatibly of democracy with science in many of his excellent documentaries …or an even more scientifically capable contemporary, Steven Pinker …… but the good professors (institutionally sanctioned) are NOT making similar documentaries about how capitalism is devouring science.‘Publish or Perish’ — is NOT a scientific heuristics.It is an economic model, and an ultimately self-destructive one at that.In fact, they, among others (yeah, you too Michio) are making a tidy little sum riding off those gigs. It’s just too bad that the likes of Karl Popper or Thomas Kuhn are not so photogenic. Karl had much to say about what happens when science becomes subservient to capitalistic agendas in the Nazi form of Nationalism.And I think there is quite a bit much more than being ‘politically correct’ at stake when the whole scientific domain is being questioned as gender influenced … How Masculine and Feminine Traits Influence Science.For some examples of how capitalism is devouring of science, I modestly suggest reading Naomi Klein regarding Project MKUltra. Or Noam Chomsky on the M.I.T. - D.A.R.P.A. connection. Or for that matter Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Agra.As I am making this edit, today’s news alone (Thursday, July 24, 2018 spells it out … Monsanto-on-trial … again.And to bring it closer to home (in Japan) … a copy of July 27-28th news … https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/07/27/national/crime-legal/japanese-prosecutors-raid-jaxa-facilities-connection-second-education-ministry-bribes-case/#.W1xSNygVSHoAnd to make sure the article is not ‘lost’ … another source, JapanToday.Prosecutors raid space agency over bureaucrat's bribery caseJuly 28 — 06:55 am JST TOKYOProsecutors on Friday raided locations linked to the space agency after they arrested a senior education ministry official earlier on a bribery charge in the second graft scandal to hit the ministry in a month.Kazuaki Kawabata, 57-year-old former director general for international affairs at the education ministry, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of receiving bribes in the form of being wined and dined by a consulting firm executive in return for providing a favor to his firm.Prosecutors suspect former consulting firm executive Koji Taniguchi, 47, already arrested and indicted for alleged complicity in another bribery scandal involving a different senior education ministry official, provided 1.4 million yen ($12,600) worth of meals and drinks to Kawabata between 2015 and 2017.Kawabata was on loan at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency at the time and was in a position to evaluate the agency's business contracts.Kawabata allegedly helped Taniguchi invite astronaut Satoshi Furukawa to an event at Tokyo Medical University in November 2016 among other favors he offered him, according to sources close to the matter.Furukawa was allegedly asked by the former chairman of the university's board of regents, Masahiko Usui, about whether the astronaut could take part in the event, they said.Taniguchi bribed Kawabata by wining and dining him more than 10 times, the sources said, adding that Kawabata and Taniguchi have denied the allegations.Other sources said the education ministry bureaucrat is also suspected of receiving taxi vouchers from the consulting firm executive.Earlier in the month, another education ministry bureaucrat, Futoshi Sano, 59, and the former official of Tokyo Medical University were indicted for bribery.Sano, former director general of the ministry's science and technology bureau, allegedly helped the university get selected for the ministry's funding program in return for securing the enrollment of his son at the school.Taniguchi is suspected of bringing Sano and Usui together.The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology was preparing to set up a third-party committee to investigate the suspected bribery involving Sano, but the minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi, said the plan will be postponed in the wake of Kawabata's arrest.© KYODONo mistake, ‘greed-is-good’ capitalism is devouring science, not driving it.Education, since the dawn of the industrial revolution, has been in danger of being devoured.For one semester, even while I was an Associate Professor at Jissen Women’s College, I took a leave of absence and attended open-classes as a student at a rival institution, Showa Women’s College. Among the courses I took, one was taught by a professor and employee of the central Ministry of Education (For about 7 years, I also used to be one of 2 or 3 native English speaking informants as textbook proofreaders and cultural advisors for the Ministry 平成17年4月文部科学省教科用図書検定調査審議会専門委員（平成23年3月迄). His course was about the history of Public Education in Japan.The Japanese public education system is based on England’s Victorian era education, which in turn was based on the structure and heuristics of two other institutions at that time … the penal system and the military. A liberal arts education was largely reserved for the elite ruling class.That’s a pretty grim hint as to the traditional ways in which large populations are ‘managed’ through capitalist values.Tied up with education, racial equality is in danger of being devoured … DeVos Doesn’t Believe that Promoting Racial Diversity in Schools Is a Worthwhile Cause.That military thing of ‘corruption’ through replacing one value with a lower value can be found in the outsourcing of the U.S. government’s accountability in warfare. Blackwater Protection was and still is, a convenient excuse for the U.S. government’s plausible deniability. But I guess the ancient Roman army did the same thing with ‘barbarian’ mercenaries long before capitalism was a gleam in Adam Smith’s eye.And as hinted earlier, the penal system — in private, for-profit hands?For the CEOs … the more inmates, the merrier. And throw away the keys. There is no financial incentive for rehabilitation.As for U.S. Public Health policy? Outside of the U.S., the laughing stock of the ‘developed’ world. Inside, a crying shame.That alone is enough to make me question the distinction between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ as an arrogant conceit. A more accurate distinction between countries might better be found along a sliding scale of institutionally sanctioned, legalized corruption.Personal health care costs account for the single greatest cause of family bankruptcy in the U.S. On the the other hand, a cozy little group of insurance company executives and Big-Pharma CEOs can afford another private jet or island retreat.For the personally ambitious, there is big money to be made off of sickness, infirmity, and death.And those ‘closed-door’ international trade talks are closed for good reason.For example, one of the conditions of the TPP was that medical products banned in the U.S. could be used in countries with less economic leverage, and any claims from citizens of those countries regarding health or environmental degradation will not be subject to that country’s laws or judicial system. The multi-national corporation will have the right to regulate, judge, and penalize themselves … as they wish, or not, and citizens of those economically marginalized countries, democratic or not, will have no say in the matter.Even elected politicians are not privy to all of the information in those closed-door trade talks.Anyone here old enough to remember Perestroika or Glasnost?Evidently, ‘what’s good for the goose is good for the gander’ does not apply to Capitalist management.It just goes on and on.One. Horror. Show. After. Another.I would say the loss of ‘democracy’ to the corruption of money should be among the least of our worries.Yanis is brilliant, full stop.Spot-on analysis.And compared to reading Piketty’s massive tome, a lot easier to listen to.Besides, I think his barber is doing a great job.I am just weighing in because of his observations from about 1:10 of the YouTube video above — when he explains how the Chinese economic system may be more humane than the U.S. counterparts. The local governments may allow somewhat more freedom than the national government, and individuals may be arguably just as free to follow, ignore, or game the system as their American counterparts.This is the same in Japan, For now.But as we are seeing in the U.S. now, the authoritarian dynamics could change overnight, and I assume the same could be said for China.Japanese scientists are worried about the same thing — Japanese scientists call for boycott of military research. But that is already old news. Japan is well under way in following the U.S.’s model of tax funded research at M.I.T. being funneled into Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.I think it was only three or four years ago, that Tokyo University was bringing out damage control PR in denying they were involved in military related research. Things have changed in a very short time. … Scientists and defense research | The Japan Times——————————————In any country, the socially progressive left will always be less united than the right. It's like trying to herd cats ... or order a jazz musician to follow a note for note transcription of a military marching band score.IMHO, the above observation points to something fundamentally contradictory about human nature.As a social primate, we do pretty well in small communities with empathy-driven morality. Of course even small groups can be led by bullies, and many a spouse has suffered at the hand of their 'beloved'.But when we become herding primates, probably anything larger than Dunbar’s Number, and guided by a rule-driven morality (or algorithm), it is just a matter of time before we become self-destructive swarming primates ... that 'Tower of Babel' thingy.I guess part of it is because large populations necessarily become hierarchically institutionalized, and therefore dependent on a rule-driven (legal/logical based - not empathy based) morality.But when empathy is no longer the basis for morality, the 'Dark Triad' personality types are most able to take advantage of the inevitable gap between empathy and rules ... the narcissists, machiavellian opportunists, and psychopaths among us.You know … your boss.(kudos to Alan Louis)Altruists become relegated to fools ... Diogenes carrying a lantern in the daylight, looking for an honest man.Diogenes … my hero, the template for ‘pro-social trolling’ … and the capitalist in me is wondering if I can get a copyright on that phrasing ;-)Compared to more egalitarian communities which are small enough for us to acknowledge and recognize each other as unique individuals, large populations and accompanying institutions simply provide too many niche opportunities for those dark-triad types to rise to the top.It might be useful to think of the ratio of dark-triads to altruists in a hierarchy as similar to the increase of surface area to volume of any structure as it increases in size.This surface area to volume ration, as biologists understand, is a salient variable which limits the size of living things.Surface Area to Volume Ratio - OBEN Science 7EAnd to extend the metaphor, as the surface area of hierarchies expand in proportion to the volume of its limited natural resources (can’t outsource costs and losses forever ya know), those dark-triad vampires, also proportionally increase to the point that those behavior traits become the dominant culture of the institution.Hmmm … the capitalist in me wondering if I should coin the above observation in the domain of social sciences as ‘Martin’s Law’. Or in the spirit of open source … ‘more like guidelines’.No matter what 'fool-proof' system is in place, those dark-triad types will suck the human capital dry, siphoning all resources into their own gated communities, until inevitably, 'too big to fail', fails, like a dinosaur collapsing under its own weight.'Housing loan crisis', 'Lehman Shock', the Great Wall Street crash of the ‘20’s ... a stinkweed by any other name would smell as rank. Alas, were it just restricted to smell.2012, what we ‘learned’ — Fukushima reactor meltdown was a man-made disaster, says official report.As a former Comparative Culture teacher, I should say a bit about how Japan Inc. parses ‘human error’ and ‘man-made’ disasters. Imagine a wide range of meanings ranging from an ‘honest mistake’ at one extreme, and getting caught doing what hierarchical social primates are primed to do … ‘gaming the system for personal advantage’ at the other extreme.Those two terms conveniently cover the gamut.Well hey, it’s the Fourth of July, 2018, and following good pedagogic practice, let’s see if, indeed we ‘learned’ anything.Just 3 stories today is enough to say it all …1 — Nuclear watchdog OKs restart of aging Ibaraki nuclear plant hit by tsunamiPhoto: REUTERS file(Read it while it’s ‘hot’ folks, to aid our short collective memories, Japan Today will typically delete the article from its archives in a week or so, so I have it copy-pasted for any future readers interested, assuming there is a future.)Yours truly, as an English teacher at the Tokai Mura nuclear power plant - before.And after?Can’t really say. Like the weather and earthquakes, that will be up to the Watchdog Committee’s official stamp of approval.2 — Japan oks ambitious nuke energy target plutonium reuse plan — Japan on Tuesday approved an energy plan that sets ambitious targets for nuclear energy use and sustains a struggling program for spent-fuel recycling despite setbacks after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.(But praise the lord we have government officials and Watchdog Committees!)3 — Senior education ministry official arrested over bribery — Tokyo prosecutors on Wednesday arrested a high-ranking Japan education ministry official on a bribery charge, suspecting he granted a research subsidy to a medical school in exchange for admitting his child as a student.Oops.Might as well add another few for good measure …(edit July 7, point 4, because of the relevance to points 1 and 2)4 — 5.9-magnitude quake felt in Tokyo, no tsunami warning. I felt that one. ALL of Tokyo felt it … and for close to 30 seconds.Mother nature couldn’t give a f.f. for the government’s official approval of where and when the next temblor will be permitted. But money-driven authoritarianism and mother nature have never been on good speaking terms, much less happily wedded.5 — Fukuoka's 'guest teachers' of English outstay their welcome. — After 36 year years of studying and teaching here, I found out the hard way that Japanese work contracts are not worth the paper they are written on. And this is not restricted to lay-teachers … Cautionary tale: Bern on how no protections against harassment in Japan’s universities targets NJ regardless of Japan savviness and skill levelHaving worked in American and Japanese Universities, high schools, and volunteered at kindergartens, I know a little bit about education. Now, having resigned in protest from a tenured Associate Professor position (qualifications here … Steven Martin, I am forced to pick up odd jobs at universities, but not as a professor — though still desperately trying to hang on to my identity as an educator, following its best, subversive to authority, liberal arts tradition. Now working for a subcontractor, likely similar to those mentioned above in the Fukuoka article.I have a contract here before me, that I will not sign. It makes no mention of accountability to the students who educators should be serving.Educational content and pedagogy have been boiled down to little more than economic constraints and opportunities. Just like any other business, everything is based on the bottom-line.Now with falling demographics and numbers of Japanese students to draw on, the overabundance of ‘educational institutes’ are forced to accept anyone who can breathe, and now an increasing number of the young and restless from China and Southeast Asia. This makes for some interesting cross-cultural possibilities.But it is an extra pedagogical burden on those who speak only Japanese and English, and these outsourcing companies are choosing teachers whose main qualification is ‘they look foreign, speak English, and are desperate enough for money to just sign on the dotted line and follow orders’.I try to make do.Here is a sketch done in my English class last week, by a speaker who maybe can say ‘Hello, how are you today?’ — yet she could visualize and understand Plato’s Allegory of the Cave better than most American counterparts. Bright girl.The ‘most recent comment’ under the following YouTube link describes how I got their attention last week, kept it, built on it .., and enjoyed a blast from the past.As bad as my situation is, still can’t pay the rent, it could be worse.6 — Japan’s open to foreign workers. Just don’t call them immigrants … The latest LDP plan is to open the door to 500,000 low-skilled, kkk workers (no not Jeff Sessions and company), the 3k jobs are kienai, kitsui, and kikken (dirty, hard, and dangerous) — jobs that anyone tries to avoid, but dirt-poor immigrants see as opportunity. There are just two teensy-weensy conditions to the special 5 year visas (10 years if language skills are up to snuff).• There is no legal path beyond the expiration date of that visa allowing for immigration or naturalization. When that visa expires, the worker has no choice. They MUST return to their native country.• If the 5 year or 10 year worker has a spouse or kids, even those immediate family members will not be allowed into Japan. All human needs will be taken care of by the Japanese company they work for.‘Special work visas’? I would call that a legal euphemism for ‘human trafficking’.It appears that Japan Inc. is hell bent on using hidden labor to build the infrastructure catering to the wealthy visitors who come to ‘do’ Japan. Not so different from Qatar, the UAE, and other oil rich sultanates.(edit) Today’s morning headline in Japan Today … https://japantoday.com/category/national/japan-firms-used-foreign-trainees-at-fukushima-cleanup-reportsI have saved the above to hard disc because as per policy, that website typically deletes its articles a week or two after posting it. No wonder we fail to learn from history … we are not allowed to even make a collective memory. So for anyone who wants the details of the article above (which are few — even the guilty companies were not named), I have saved the article to hard disc. And again, that title …4 firms made foreign trainees do Fukushima decontamination workYokoso (welcome to) Japan … tourists and ‘trainees’ alike.Japan’s 4th of July headlines is one for the record books … to hell in a hand basket. A big one.————————————So class, what have we learned since that 2012 official government report?Hmm. Something about a dead parrot?More like a whole menagerie — George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' in a nutshell.Credit: Carl Glover via FlickrJust a guess, but those 'dark triad' types probably make up between 1 and 5 percent of any population.But even among the remaining, more typical, members of ours species, Hannah Arendt .... and then later the behavioral psychologists Solomon Asch (conformity experiment), Stanley Milgram (experiment in obedience), and Philip Zimbardo (the malleability of identity in the Stanford Prison experiment) pointed out how easily even the average Joe Blow's behavior can be manipulated with relatively light touches of authoritarianism.Noam Chomsky in 'Manufacturing Consent', and later later Naomi Klein in 'The Shock Doctrine', shows us some blueprints. Antony Loewenstein is showing how this is playing out down under with Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe.And William Blum shows us some of the gut-ugly details in Killing Hope.A couple of yeas ago, Stephen Hawking wrote an editorial for The Guardian saying This is the most dangerous time for our planet ... implying we will either make it to Mars and exploit its resources, or destroy ourselves in a final malthusian meltdown over the remaining resources on earth.An increasing number of STEM specialists believe we may have already passed a species-ending tipping point.Chomsky, in his 2010 Chapel Hill speech, 'Human intelligence and the environment’ began that speech with a couple of paragraphs referring to the debate between Carl Sagan and Ernst Mayr regarding the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos. Predictably, and sensibly, Sagan argued for the probability, on statistical chance alone.But Mayr gave a surprisingly sensible counter-argument from an evolutionary biologist's point of view. The biological record indicates an average of about 100,000 years for the shelf life of an apex (dominant) species ... and we are at about that point.Mayr said that while there is probably life out there, it is not likely to have a human-like intelligence. He went on to further imply that human intelligence is not the apex of evolution — it is merely one of many tools for the survival of a social primate.But worse, he suspects human intelligence is more likely a fatal mutation. An evolutionary spandrel at best.The more I observe of our swarming, self-destructive nature, the more I tend to agree with Mayr.

Top 10 Machine Learning Algorithms ExamplesMachine learning is a huge, huge market within Artificial Intelligence. It’s so successful and so ever-growing that a recent study actually reported that 25 percent of jobs are going to be replaced with machine learning algorithms within the next 10 years. According to Forbes, popular machine learning algorithms may replace a wealth of jobs in fields like manufacturing, transportation (hello, self-driving cars), architecture and healthcare.Of course, we don’t live in a futuristic world where AIs like C3PO can walk around, be our best friends and perform all the same tasks as a human but with more precision. We still need humans, if only to create artificial intelligence that actually works (unlike Microsoft’s racist chatbot). There are plenty of different types of machine learning algorithms that deeply enhance the world we live in. In fact, you probably use them every day.What Is a Machine Learning Algorithm?Machine Learning algorithms are used in a variety of applications including:Spam filteringImage taggingSelf-driving carsOptical Character RecognitionPredictionsAnomaly detectionAssociation rules and moreWe already know that machine learning is a subfield of Artificial Intelligence. This subfield teaches computers to perform certain tasks from a set of data without being explicitly programmed to do so. This is where the algorithm comes in. Machine learning uses an algorithm to translate sets of data into a certain task or answer. This could be anything from talking to an online chatbot or finding your way in Google Maps.Some machine learning algorithms are more popular than others. The following are the top 10 machine learning algorithms based on popularity and real-world usage.Artificial Neural NetworksArtificial Neural Networks are named so because they’re based on the structure and functions of real biological neural networks. Information flows through the network and in response, the neural network changes based on the input and output. This machine learning algorithm is used in a number of ways:Download Our Project Specification TemplateCharacter recognition (understanding human handwriting and converting it to text)Image compressionStock market predictionLoan applicationsOne of the most common uses for Artificial Neural Networks is speech recognition. If you’ve ever used Siri, you’ve probably used an ANN. These types of machine learning algorithms get better with more information – they’re constantly growing. Let’s be real: speech recognition has grown leaps and bounds in accuracy over the last five years.Naïve Bayes Classifier AlgorithmThe Naïve Bayes Classifier Algorithm is a classification machine learning algorithm that works off of the popular Bayes Theorem of Probability. It’s one of the most popular learning algorithms that groups similarities, and is usually used in the following ways:Disease predictionDocument classificationThe Naïve Bayes Classifier may sound unfamiliar, but you’ve probably encountered it before. The most popular examples are your email spam filter and RSS feeds that filter news into specific categories (Politics, Entertainment, Sports, etc.). This algorithm is particularly useful if you have a moderate or large dataset, if the data has several attributes that can help classify it and if the attributes that describe a certain classification are conditionally independent.Support Vector Machine Learning AlgorithmSupport Vector Machine is one of the many examples of machine learning algorithms catered to classification. This is used for either classification or regression in instances where the set of data teaches the algorithm about specific classes so it can classify newly added data. SVM is constantly growing and evolving.SVM is commonly used in:Stock Market forecastingRisk assessmentMost commonly, SVM is used to compare the performance of a stock with other stocks in the same sector. This helps companies make decisions about where they want to invest.K-Means Clustering AlgorithmThe K-Means Clustering Algorithm is one of the most popular machine learning examples. It is commonly used in the following applications:Search engines like Yahoo and Bing (to identify relevant results)Data librariesGoogle image searchK-Means Clustering is a simple machine learning algorithm used for clustering, meaning it helps group together similar data sets. This could be anything from images and videos to text documents and web pages. For example, you’re searching Wikipedia for the word Apple. This could bring up results for both Apple, the technology company, and apple, the fruit. K-Means Clustering would group together results about the technology company apart from results about the fruit, so you can get meaningful results on the actual topic you want to read about.K-Nearest Neighbors AlgorithmLike K-Means Clustering, K-Nearest Neighbors is another classification and regression machine learning algorithm. It’s most commonly used in:Pattern recognition (like to predict how cancer may spread)Statistical estimation (like to predict if someone may default on a loan)K-Nearest Neighbors makes predictions by searching through the whole dataset to find the most similar instances (the neighbors) and summarizing the output variable for those instances. Objects are classified by majority votes and assigned the class most common to its neighbors.Decision Tree Machine Learning AlgorithmDecision Trees are graphical representations that show all possible outcomes of a decision based on certain conditions. It’s typically used for two things – to classify or to predict – and remains one of the best machine learning algorithms for classification. It has been used in the following ways:To help banks classify loan applicants and their probability of defaulting paymentsTo help Gerber Products decide whether or not to use PVC in their baby productsIdentify at-risk patients and disease trends with Guardian, a tool developed by Rush University Medical CentreThe decision tree algorithm falls into either Classification Trees or Regression Trees. Classification trees are the default and used to split data into different classes based on the response variable. Regression Trees are used when the target variable is continuous or numerical. This is typically used in a predictive nature. Because of the nature of the algorithm, if your data has errors, so will your decision tree. It’s best suited towards extensive, meticulously correct data.Apriori Machine Learning AlgorithmApriori algorithm is a data-mining machine learning algorithm that generates association rules for a given set of data. It has been used in everything from a college elective system that helps students choose classes to a database that discovers the social status of diabetic people. Its most popular applications include:Google auto-completeAmazon shopping recommendationsDetecting adverse drug reactionsApriori works by using association rules from a given data set. These rules imply that if A occurs, B also occurs. For example, Wal-Mart actually used the Apriori algorithm to increase sales of beer. Wal-Mart studied their data to find that American males who bought diapers on Friday afternoons also frequently bought beer. They moved the beer next to the diapers, and sales increased.Apriori is beneficial in more than a couple ways. It also happens to be one of the easiest machine learning algorithms to implement.Linear Regression Machine Learning AlgorithmLinear Regression is one of the most interpretable machine learning algorithms. It’s easy to explain to others and requires minimal tuning. This is perhaps why it’s one of the most popular algorithms. It can be used to:Estimate SalesAssess RiskLinear regression works by showing a relationship between two variables and how the change of one variable affects the other. This is why it’s so great in risk assessment and business. For example, health insurance brokers often use this algorithm to analyze the number of claims per customer against their age. If insurance companies find that older customers tended to make more claims, they increase rates for older customers. If they found that older customers didn’t have more accidents, they could lower the rates.Random Forest Machine Learning AlgorithmRandom Forests or Random Decision Forests are a machine learning method of classification and regression. You’ve probably seen them used in the following ways:To help banks predict high-risk loan applicantsTo predict failure or breakdown of a mechanical partTo predict if a patient is likely to develop a chronic diseaseTo predict the average number of social media shares on a postIts versatility is what gives this algorithm its popularity. Instead of using a single decision tree, Random Forest uses a multitude of decision trees to come up with a solid classification or prediction. This ensures more accurate classification because each decision tree is given slightly different data. These variables are very effective because they help preserve accuracy when data is missing. It’s also fairly resistant to outliers (majority always rules) and easily implemented in a couple lines of code.Logistic RegressionNo, Logistic Regression isn’t for regression problems. It’s actually for classification tasks. The algorithm applies a logistic function to a combination of features which predicts the outcome of a dependent variable. Of course, it wouldn’t be true to the name if the variable wasn’t based on already predicted variables. It’s split up into three categories:Binary Logistic RegressionMulti-nominal Logistic RegressionOrdinal Logistic RegressionBinary Logistic Regression is most commonly used when there are two possible outcomes (yes or no; pass or fail). This can help in ways such as predicting if a student is likely to pass or fail a course or predicting if a tumor is cancerous or not. Multi-nominal Logistic Regression has three or more outcomes with no order, and Ordinal Logistic Regression has three or more outcomes with a natural ordering.Source: Top 10 Machine Learning Algorithms Examples - DevTeam.SpaceSupervised Learning: Classification

There are a great many barriers to universal and effective adoption of electronic medical records.Perhaps foremost, is that doctors are individuals. Few of us document the same way. Trying to find one standardized system that pleases everyone is nearly impossible. The phrase “herding cats” comes to mind.Medicine is incredibly complex. It’s hard to pigeonhole a typical encounter into one standardized format. Some docs work with preprinted forms and check boxes, but then I see records with notes scribbled in the margins because there was an uncommon finding that didn’t fit into one of the preprinted spaces.More than once, I’ve started a patient interview thinking that I had a pretty good guess as to what the diagnosis was going to be, only to find out that the actual problem was something entirely different. One commercial system that I worked with had no mechanism to transfer data entered in one form into a different encounter form when the direction of the exam changed. I ditched that system in a hurry.I once wasted a year with a system that promoted “thinking backwards”. Their theory was that we “already knew” what the patient had, so we just had to pick a prefilled exam from a list and that was it. Quick and really easy. Sorry guys, I prefer to build my exam up from a clean slate. Much less likely to go off into the weeds that way. That was an expensive mistake for me.We docs have 30 - 40 year working lives. Perhaps the newest graduates who started using an EMR at their training institution will be comfortable with using it for the rest of their career. What about the 55+ year old doctor who grew up without a computer, the internet, or smartphone? Getting them to adopt and conform the latest tech is not going to be easy. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why fewer than 50% of all practicing docs say that they would go into medicine if they had it all to do over again.Also, if you are trained on EMR Brand “A” at you med school, and move across town to a hospital where they use EMR Brand “B”, you are going to have a long, unproductive, and unhappy learning curve, because no two EMR systems are the same.There have to be a thousand different competing EMR companies out there, every single one of which is absolutely certain that THEIR software is the only perfect way to build an EMR. They have little or no incentive to make their EMRs interoperable with any other. It can take many thousands of dollars and months of programming efforts just to make two different systems talk with each other, and as soon as one company comes out with their new Version 2.0, then all that interface programming goes out the window.Not that some haven’t tried — there is a government standardized data formatting system called HL-7, which was supposed to provide a way for different systems to communicate with each other. However, it is Byzantine, to say the least, and I know of no EMR systems that actually use it.Regrettably, few EMRs are written by physicians, and fewer still take into account what would make a doc’s life easier. Most of the systems I’ve worked on are like typing with mittens on. Yes, you can use them, but the EMR rarely seems to think the same way the doctor does.Some systems make it way too easy to create a record. I’ve seen some that advertise making a complete encounter note with “one click of a mouse!” Wonderful! A note like that might fool a lawyer or insurance company auditor, but does the information in it really pertain accurately to the patient in question? I’ve had lots of EMR records come in where a female patient is repeatedly referred to as a “He” in the entire note, and vice versa. I wonder how much other information is similarly invalid.Some docs try computer voice transcription, but then obviously don’t read the resulting notes. There are lots of whopper transcription errors, and it’s altogether too easy to miss a critical “no” that could hang you if a malpractice case ever comes to trial.EMRs make it altogether way too easy to stuff an encounter note with irrelevant data. I often receive 6 page encounter notes from what was supposedly a “brief” office visit. Finding the two or three lines of relevant information in that pile of informational “noise” is a huge time wasting process. Regrettably, it makes it way to easy do “document” stuff you didn’t really do or ask, and upcode your encounter from a “Brief” to a “Complex”.Who is going to pay for the EMR software, computers, upgrades, and maintenance? Docs don’t get paid extra for using an EMR, though the government is gradually imposing ever higher penalties for NOT using an EMR.Good EMR software isn’t free, and the “free” EMR packages come with strings — they feed you with ads, or hold your data hostage. More than a few “Free” EMR providers have gone bankrupt, after discovering that their business models weren’t viable. Then the docs have to figure out some way to download years of records and port them into a different system on short notice. That sort of crash programming exercise can cost thousands of dollars.Electronic medical records are altogether way too easy to steal. I’ve read that a valid credit card number is worth $5.00 on the black market, but a valid medical demographic sheet is worth $50 to the scammers who want to generate reams of fake medical claims and use the very personal information contained therein for identity theft. If someone wants to steal my medical records, they had better bring a semi-trailer with 12 strong guys, and be prepared to do one whole lot of keyboarding.EMRs are susceptible to physical theft. I suppose I should fill the unused USB ports on my office computers with epoxy to keep from creep from sticking a virus laden memory stick into a computer when I’m not in the room. The security experts say that I’m supposed to build a concrete walled air conditioned closet in the basement with a heavy steel door so that some thief can’t come in and walk out with my server that contains all the records. Sure —- I just love Ramen noodles.EMRs are subject to extortion. I know of several practices and hospitals within an hour’s drive that have paid big piles of bitcoins when their systems were hit with ransomeware. Only about have got an unlock code that actually worked.EMR systems are generally soft but hightly lucrative targets. I cringe when I see my personal doc pecking on his wireless laptop, knowing that I or anyone else could be in the parking lot with a laptop running the free utility “AirSnort”, which is supposed to break any WiFi security protocol in 5 minutes or less.Security is a hopeless task. If the IRS, Yahoo, Quora, Marriot, Equifax, The US Office of Personnel Management, the US Army, the NSA, and just recently FEMA to name but a few, all organizations with IT teams numbering in the hundreds, cannot prevent massive data breaches, then how in the good green world is Doc Jones in Littletown, South Dakota, supposed to protect his EMR against the script kiddies and state actors from anywhere in the world who are banging on the electronic “front door” 24/7/365?The 18 biggest data breaches of the 21st centuryThe government is penalizing me because I don’t have my patient records exposed to the Internet on a “Patient Portal”. Yet, just recently, they penalized one doctor $6 million, not because of a data breach, but because he didn’t have a written plan to protect his EMR system against breaches. I looked at one template for an EMR threat protection plan, and it had more than 450 paragraphs, and you were supposed to provide written documentation on how you were addressing every one of the bullet points. It would take a month to complete that template, and you have to update it every year. How can a small doc be expected to afford an expense like that?I have tried to write an EMR for my own use on three different computer platforms since 1971, and never got anywhere near to something useful. To meet government security standards, there must be all sorts of audit controls to prevent surreptitious tampering and falsification of records, and getting you EMR system certified can cost many thousands of dollars.My feeling is that no EMR will be truly “successful” until the government imposes one single EMR system on all the docs and hospitals in the country and collects all the data into one massive unified and centralized repository. The government already records everything we do on the Internet, so I guess that for the next generation, it will not be a big deal to give it access to all of your most personal information.As it is now, in NY state, ALL prescriptions must be submitted electronically, and perhaps not surprisingly, there is only one electronic clearing house in the ENTIRE country that is licensed to process electronic prescriptions. I cannot help but wonder who has the “back door” to all those data records, or who pays for access to those data sets.I wonder who else is watching. My hospital is “upgrading” all of the computers from Windows 7 to Windows 10, because Windows 7 goes off official support in January 2020, and thus will no longer be HIPAA compliant.When I logged into the hospital system a few weeks ago, I was presented with a splash screen sponsored by Microsoft saying “Hi, David, your computer would run faster if it had a solid state hard drive”, and then Microsoft proceeded to put up several pages of pop-up advertisements from Best Buy and Newegg Computers offering deals on solid state drives. I had to “X” out of the advertisement pages to reach the hospital EMR system. Good thing I wasn’t in a big hurry.When I finished my note and wanted to print a copy of my notes to take back to the office, I got more ads from Staples and Office Max offering “Great prices on printer cartridges”. If Microsoft knows my name, and the hardware configuration of this secure computer that I am supposedly running this highly sensitive medical data on, then I can’t help but wonder that other information they are telemetering off the medical record pages. I’m gonna move to Linux when Win 7 support runs out. I hope that will be a bit more secure, but it will be a steep learning curve for me.Fortunately, for me, retirement comes closer every day, and all of this will no longer be a concern for me, but I don’t envy the next generation of doctors, However, since Watson and its ilk will soon take over for flesh and blood doctors, it won’t really matter. I think the final scene of Steven Spielberg’s movie “AI” accurately portrayed what most of medicine will look like in the not-too-distant future.