'The quantile function is a mathematical function that takes a quantile (a percentage of a distribution ranging from 0 to 1) as an input and returns the value of a variable as an output.' It can answer queries such as, "How much inventory do I need to maintain on hand if I want to guarantee that 95 percent of my customers receive their orders within 24 hours?" As a result, the quantile function is frequently utilized in forecasting questions. However, in practice, there is rarely a neat method for computing the quantile function. That means that if you want to compute it for a different quantile, you'll need to create a new regression model, which nowadays usually entails retraining a neural network.

Each week, it packs recent break-throughs and noteworthy news alongside a short intro by Andrew Ng himself. The best thing about The Batch is that it is quick, self-contained, and always includes some perspective on the news, such as "why it matters." This is the best place to start, as it is not overwhelming, is self-contained, and is not focused on any particular sub-topic. Yeah, this place is incredible. Make sure you check AI and Data Science as topics of interest and start following people and publications that have similar interests as you.

McKinsey Global Institute's latest research on artificial intelligence focuses on how AI will affect business, analyzing 400 use cases -- from airlines avoiding flight cancellations to online retailers recommending items -- across 19 industries. In aggregate, McKinsey projects that AI could eventually drive between $3.5 trillion and $5.8 trillion of annual economic value in those industries -- a wide range, and with no timeline on that forecast. In general, AI -- once it is further integrated into business -- has the potential to drive growth. In 69 percent of the use cases McKinsey studied, "deep neural networks can be used to improve performance beyond that provided by other analytic techniques," according to the report. In the 19 industries McKinsey focused on for the report, it estimated the impact of AI somewhere between 1 percent and 12 percent of annual revenue.

AI research is so hot right now, it's hard for even scientists in the field to keep up. To stay on top of the 300-plus papers submitted per day to Arxiv.org, machine-learning researcher Amine Ben Khalifa naturally turned to ... machine learning. He taught Amazon's AI-powered Alexa bot to find the latest AI research papers for the day, read the titles and give a summary of specific projects, all via voice control. "Alexa changed the way I get my daily flash briefings," Khalifa said. "With the arxivML Alexa skill, I intend to skip paper browsing altogether, and instead get paper briefings while getting ready to go to work."