Mathematical Modeling Used To Track and Label

Anti-Globalism writes to tell us that in a new book titled The Numerati, author Stephen Baker introduces us to some of the math wizardry that is used to label or track our movements through purchases, phone calls, internet usage and other habits. "One of the most promising laboratories for the Numerati is the workplace, where every keystroke, click, and e-mail can be studied. In a chapter called "The Worker," Baker travels to IBM, where mathematicians are building predictive models of their own colleagues. An excerpt: 'Samer Takriti, a Syrian-born mathematician. He heads up a team that's piecing together mathematical models of 50,000 of IBM's tech consultants. The idea is to pile up inventories of all of their skills and then to calculate, mathematically, how best to deploy them. I'm here to find out how Takriti and his colleagues go about turning IBM's workers into numbers. If this works, his team plans to apply these models to other companies and to automate much of what we now call management.'"

Comments

pseudo-continuance

[easyTree]

If this works, his team plans to apply these models to other companies and to automate much of what we now call management...

...The management function is reputed to make heavy use of the functions 'rand'.

Re:pseudo-continuance

[William Robinson]

Look at positive side. Finally, I would get manager, who knows 2 plus 2 = 4.

Re:pseudo-continuance

[aadvancedGIR]

When I was a consultant, one of my mangers was more a garbage collector: he tagged me "CORBA expert" and was ready to sell me on that ground after I added a new function (mostly by copy-paste) in an object's IDL.

So scary its..... yawn.

[Eth1csGrad1ent]

Yawn. Take a look at my life if you want, but let me save you the calculations. I had a busy, if somewhat mundane, day at work after which I came home, ate some pizza, caught an episode of Top Gear and Boston Legal, checked in on my facebook account, and - as the missus is away - there is probably some internet porn in my near future. Tomorrow, being a Tuesday, will most likely turn out to be a carbon copy of today, with the following exceptions, Top Gear becomes Criminal Minds followed by NCIS instead of Boston Legal. THE END.

Re:So scary its..... yawn.

[rasputin465]

Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour. I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

Management now?

[houghi]

automate much of what we now call management.

That means I will be managed by a mindless droid. Not much difference from now and most likely even an improvement from the humanoid random generator that takes decisions now.

Re:Management now?

[aadvancedGIR]

The good thing is that if you spend your entire day on economy and stock exchange sites, you might trick the system into promoting you to CEO position, of course, you need avoid /. and revert back to unpatched IE6 too.

OMG - Protect your job ASAP!

[Linker3000]

Quick, start doing something random, but work-related, regularly, at random intervals.

Model that you bastards.

Re:OMG - Protect your job ASAP!

[Linker3000]

Forgot to add: This reminds me of a cartoon I saw perhaps 10-15 years ago; a potential employee is being shown around by a Manager. The caption read something like:

"Of course, we like to treat everyone here as individuals - for example, this is individual #64881"

Re:Tautology?

[pjt33]

If you're not "modelling with maths" then you're modelling with something else (astrology? guesswork? religon?)

Clay?

Re:Not a chance.

[zunicron]

We can get computers to make us feel special, no worries.