Since the famous New Yorker cartoon caption contest first launched as a weekly feature in 2005, cartoon editor Bob Mankoff and his team have personally sifted through more than 2 million entries in search of the funniest quips. more…
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Big Data: Madison visionaries turn tiny pieces of data into big ideas
The University of Wisconsin-Madison computer engineer Robert Nowak and one of his former graduate students, Kevin Jamieson, began pondering that question four years ago as a thought experiment. To figure out the answer, they turned to what they knew best: Digital tools and processes belonging to the realm of data science fashionably referred to as “big data.” More
UW-Madison scientists let crowds tell the New Yorker what’s funny
The adaptive crowdsourcing algorithms the New Yorker is using attempt to quickly weed out the weakest caption so more people will vote on potential winners. More…
How New Yorker cartoons could teach computers to be funny
The weekly magazine, started in 1925, is using crowdsourcing algorithms for the first time to find the funniest cartoon captions. Scientists see big potential in these jokes. More…
The Science of Funny: Active Machine Learning & Cartoons
Each week, the New Yorker takes a cartoon that did not quite make the cut for publication, removes the artist’s original caption, and gives readers a chance to take their best shot at writing the funniest caption to accompany the drawing. And, each week, Mankoff and his staff receive thousands of entries. Sorting through those entries — the good, the bad, and the horrible — is a monumental task. Deciding which are the funniest is more than a one-man job.More…
Wisconsin Beertech: Savvo Adding Features to Beermapper App
Not all cool ideas make good businesses. And sometimes an intriguing technology might have business potential, but the creators aren’t interested in commercializing it. The latter situation is the case with BeerMapper. More…
Celebrate Summer and Raise Your App… Um… Glass!
With the aid of entrepreneur Joe Sheahan ’04, Discovery Fellow Rob Nowak, ’90, MS’91, PhD’95 and Kevin Jamieson, PhD ’15 poured their thought experiment into the iPhone marketplace. More…
Finding Meaning in Big Data
While the application-oriented side of big data is a common theme in the College of Engineering, UW-Madison engineers also want to make transformative contributions to the mathematical and theoretical underpinnings of analyzing massive data sets. More…
Making Pabst Proud: Wisconsin Startups Mix Beer with New Tech
Knowledgeable bartenders have a map of the beer spectrum floating around in their heads. The Beer Mapper app makes that knowledge an interactive, two-dimensional reality on an iPad. More…
Closing the Loop on Big Data… One Beer at a Time
With support from the National Science Foundation and Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Nowak has been exploring an active learning model, in which the machine receives all the data up front. More…