Recently, I have been working on the Neural Networks for Machine Learning course offered by Coursera and taught by Geoffrey Hinton. Overall, it is a nice course and provides an introduction to some of the modern topics in deep learning. However, there are instances where the student has to do lots of extra work in order to understand the topics covered in full detail. One of the assignments in the course is to study the Neural Probabilistic Language Model (The related article can be downloaded from here). An example dataset, as well as a code written in Octave (equivalently Matlab) are provided for the assignment.

LONDON & PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amaury Sport Organisation (A.S.O.), organisers of the Tour de France, and Dimension Data, the Official Technology Partner of the Tour de France, today announced the introduction of machine learning technologies at this year's Tour de France to give cycling fans across the globe an unprecedented experience of this year's event. The race begins in Düsseldorf on Saturday and finishes at the Champs-Élysées in Paris on 23 July. This year, Dimension Data's data analytics platform, which was developed in partnership with A.S.O., incorporates machine learning and complex algorithms that combine live and historical race data to provide even deeper levels of insight as the race unfolds. Fans will also benefit from rider profiles to understand more about environments and circumstances in which riders perform best. As part of a new pilot this year, A.S.O. and Dimension Data are exploring the role of predictive analytics technologies to assess the likelihood of various race scenarios, such as whether the peloton will catch the breakaway riders at certain stages of the race.

The Order of Canada marks its 50th anniversary this year with 99 new appointments on its Canada Day honours list, including renowned figures from the fields of law, government, entertainment and sport, as well as Canadians whose contributions are less widely known. The list includes soccer star Christine Sinclair, television host Alex Trebek, actor Catherine O'Hara and Globe and Mail editorial cartoonist Brian Gable. Three people were named to the highest rank, Companion of the Order of Canada: former Supreme Court Justice Marshall Rothstein, National Arts Centre president Peter Herrndorf and The Prince of Wales. Nineeteen people were named Officers of the Order of Canada, including former spymaster Richard Fadden, hockey player Mark Messier and actor Michael Myers. There were 77 people named as members of the Order, including opera singer Tracy Dahl, historian Bill Waiser, public health nurse Cathy Crowe and Indigenous leader Terrance Paul.

The financial industry has been all over artificial intelligence (AI) supporting front-end trading processes, leaving much of the rest of the business in the last century. That won't be true for much longer if Bikram Singh, founder and CEO of EZOPS, has his way. I caught up with Singh during the recent kick-off of the SAP Next-Gen Innovation Community for Financial Services at the SAP Leonardo Center in New York City. "A lot of functions in the middle and back office typically have been neglected in the AI revolution, and we see a tremendous opportunity here to radically transform the landscape," said Singh. "We are specializing in applying AI and machine learning to address use cases in the back office, including data reconciliation."

I try to experiment with a lot of different technologies. I've found that having experience with a diverse set of concepts, languages, libraries, tools etc. leads to more robust thinking when trying to solve a problem. If you don't know that something exists then you can't use it when it would be helpful to do so! There are lots of ways to gain these experiences. One can find great content online for almost any topic imaginable.

Facebook is due to start hiding posts from people who spam users' news feed with clickbait, sensationalised and misinformative articles. In a statement, the social media giant said it was making the update "to reduce low quality links" in users' news feed. Facebook said it carried out research which showed that a small group of users were "routinely sharing vast amounts of public posts per day", which was effectively spamming people's feeds. The study showed that the same people, who were sharing vast amounts of public posts, were also sharing low quality content. As a result of the research, Facebook said it would "deprioritise" posts being shared from those accounts.

Nissan has been teasing its next-generation Leaf EV for long, but the company finally revealed the car's release date on Twitter Friday. The company also appealed to lawmakers to support self-driving technology in a press release published Thursday. "While we aren't there yet, the accelerated pace at which automakers and tech companies are introducing vehicle prototypes and automated drive features has left some stakeholders behind. On the other hand there's concern," the company said. The tweet includes a picture of the Nissan logo, with what looks like the car's grille.

Have online match sites and dating apps left you perpetually unlucky in love? There may be a scientific explanation. New research from the University of Kansas has found that it's hard to gauge if you find someone attractive from a photograph alone. Instead, you must actually meet them in person, as personality plays a very important role in our overall physical attraction to someone. For this reason, the team proposes that online dating and dating apps such as Tinder are not very effective in providing real matches, as they are based solely on a person's photographs.

Google once had a reputation for bankrolling moonshots. It spent billions creating a self-driving car, started Google Fiber to bring ultra-high-speed internet to the masses, and acquired the Darpa-backed robotics company Boston Dynamics. But since restructuring itself as a holding company called Alphabet in 2015 and moving many of its bigger ideas outside the core Google business structure, Mountain View's ambitions have become a little more sober and its investment strategy more restrained. As Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat put it during an earnings call last year: "We continue to rationalize our portfolio of products to ensure we efficiently and effectively focus our resources behind our biggest bets across Alphabet." In practical terms, that's meant scaling back Google Fiber and selling off some of its wilder projects, and it's also opened the door for another company–the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank–to take the lead on some of today's most audacious bets in global tech.

Created by a team of Stanford psychologists and AI experts, Woebot uses brief daily chat conversations, mood tracking, curated videos, and word games to help people manage mental health. Scientists who recently looked at text-chat as a supplement to videoconferencing therapy sessions observed that the texting option actually reduced interpersonal anxiety, allowing patients to more fully disclose and discuss issues shrouded in shame, guilt, and embarrassment. Yesterday, Darcy and a team of co-authors at Stanford published a peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Mental Health that randomized 70 college students and asked them to engage with Woebot or a self-help e-book for two weeks. But using those results to claim it can significantly reduce depression may expose Woebot to legal liabilities that bots in supporting roles have managed to avoid.