The New York Police Department (NYPD) recently unveiled a new digital tool that it says can sift through police reports to help officers spot patterns of crimes potentially committed by the same criminals.
The New York Police Department has touted the successful use of its homegrown crime analysis tool to identify potential criminals, but while the pattern recognition tool highlights the widespread potential for advanced analytics, it also raises questions around AI bias. Patternizr, a set of machine learning models developed in-house at the NYPD, is the first crime analysis tool of its kind to be used in law enforcement. It searches through hundreds of thousands of crimes across all 77 precincts in the department's database to find patterns.
In a new editorial, Sheldon Jacobson, INFORMS member and professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discusses how the sophisticated mathematical modeling that is used to increase the odds of having a perfect – or even good – basketball bracket is the same technique used to solve the most complex challenges in both industry and government.
When a syringe-wielding drill thief tried sticking up a Home Depot near Yankee Stadium, police figured out quickly that the crime seemed familiar, and matched it to an identical crime that occurred miles away in Manhattan. The match, though, wasn’t made by an officer looking through files. It was done using Patternizr, pattern-recognition computer software developed by the New York Police Department that allows crime analysts stationed in each of the department’s 77 precincts to compare robberies, larcenies and thefts to hundreds of thousands of crimes logged in the NYPD’s database, transforming their hunt for crime patterns with the click of a button.
A comprehensive new research study from the INFORMS journal Marketing Science identifies challenges for current measurement practices for online advertising, while calling for better ways to address so-called “unobservable” factors. The key takeaway, according to its authors, is that current “observational” approaches to digital advertising measurement may not be as effective as large-scale randomized control trials.
Ashley Smith
Public Affairs Coordinator
INFORMS
Catonsville, MD
[email protected]
443-757-3578
An audio journey of how data and analytics save lives, save money and solve problems.
Can we really trust AI to make better decisions than humans? A new study says … not always. Researchers have discovered that OpenAI’s ChatGPT, one of the most advanced and popular AI models, makes the same kinds of decision-making mistakes as humans in some situations—showing biases like overconfidence of hot-hand (gambler’s) fallacy—yet acting inhuman in others (e.g., not suffering from base-rate neglect or sunk cost fallacies).
The genetic testing company 23andMe, which holds the genetic data of 15 million people, declared bankruptcy on Sunday night after years of financial struggles. This means that all of the extremely personal user data could be up for sale—and that vast trove of genetic data could draw interest from AI companies looking to train their data sets, experts say.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as the new secretary of Health and Human Services, is the nation’s de facto healthcare czar. He will have influence over numerous highly visible agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, among others. Given that healthcare is something that touches everyone’s life, his footprint of influence will be expansive.
Health insurance has become necessary, with large and unpredictable health care costs always looming before each of us. Unfortunately, the majority of people have experienced problems when using their health insurance to pay for their medical care. Health insurance serves as the buffer between patients and the medical care system, using population pooling to mitigate the risk exposure on any one individual.
From Tesla to SpaceX to xAI, Elon Musk’s sprawling global business empire will be slammed by Trump’s tariffs regime. Here’s how.
A bipartisan push in Congress would return the power to impose tariffs to the legislature.
Billionaire investor Mark Cuban's question to Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, on energy costs took off on social media on Saturday.
Florida lawmakers have banned wind turbines off its shores and near the coast, saying the bill is meant to protect wildlife and prevent noise.