Computing
Most People Fail to Do a Simple Statistical Task When Viewing Online Ratings and Reviews Leading to Purchase Inferior Products
When shopping online, consumers engage in a type of social learning by which they become informed from the decisions of others. For example, you’re probably more likely to purchase a book at the top of the New York Times' best-sellers list or buy an app that’s been downloaded millions of times. But observing other people’s choices is only a part of social learning. The other is noting the resulting outcomes through mechanisms like online star ratings. But how people interpret — or fail to interpret — this data is affecting their decision-making in a negative way. more »
A UC Berkeley PhD Candidate in Computer Science Creates a Step toward Fighting Human Trafficking: Sex Ads are Linked to Bitcoin Data
Websites for online classified ads selling sex are widely used by human traffickers, but law enforcement efforts to trace and disband human trafficking rings are hindered by the pseudonymous nature of adult ads, the tendency of ring leaders to employ multiple phone numbers and email addresses to avoid detection and the difficulty in determining which online ads reflect willing participants in the sex trade and which reflect victims forced into prostitution. The study is a first step toward developing a suite of freely available tools to help police and non-profit institutions overcome these challenges and identify victims of sexual exploitation on websites such as Backpage and Craigslist.
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Hey Siri, An Ancient Algorithm May Help You Grasp Metaphors; Patterns in How English Speakers Have Added Figurative Word Meanings to Their Vocabulary.
"The use of concrete language to talk about abstract ideas may unlock mysteries about how we are able to communicate and conceptualize things we can never see or touch,” said study senior author Mahesh Srinivasan, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley. “Our results may also pave the way for future advances in artificial intelligence." more »
Diversity in Innovation: Documenting a Systematic and Persistent Lack of Female, Hispanic, and African American Labor Market Participation in the Innovation Sector
The representation of women, Hispanics, and African Americans in MBA programs as well as advanced science and engineering degrees has been substantially higher than their representation in the venture capital and entrepreneurial sectors for the past two decades. We contrast this experience with that of Asians over the same time period. Asians started the time period with a much higher representation, compared to their percentage of the labor force, in the venture capital and entrepreneurial sector. more »
