The Modern Columbian Exchange: Biovision 2012 Presentation

© 2012 CrossInnovation, LLC 1

The Modern Columbian ExchangeNew Threats Require New Thought and Action

Susan Bennett, B.Sc. Systems Design Engineering, Francois Sauer, M.D., M.B.A., M.S. Systems Analysis, Ronald E. LaPorte, Ph.D., Professor of Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh, Mihwa Cha, M.S. Mathematics

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Agenda

• What is The Modern Columbian Exchange?• Why does it matter?• Why Human Intelligence?

– Our limitations– Our strengths

• What are the Big Data Opportunities?– What does this mean for transforming repositories of information?

• The Time is NOW….

© 2012 CrossInnovation, LLC

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What is the Modern Columbian Exchange?

…It is our current interconnected world.Globalization introduces new challenges in:• Technology• Ways of Thinking• Lifestyles• Animals• Plants• Diseases


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What is The Modern Columbian Exchange?

These challenges, characterized by complexity and Big Data, threaten our physical, mental and social well-being.

BUT!!! This crisis also offers a great opportunity to leverage human intelligence using “Big Data” to better

manage our circumstance

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Why Human Intelligence?

• Experience-dependent Categorization / Functional Fixedness

• Cognitive Bias• Working Memory• Lineal thinking

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BUT “…every move we make that constrains complexity also blocks off opportunity”. (Stafford Beer, 1979)

…because it is our best resource to tame complexity although we have limitations….

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What is Big Data?

• Volume• Variety• Variability• Speed


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Signs and Symptoms – Limitations in:

• The use of all the data, information and knowledge available

• The distribution of the decisions within the organization to benefit from big data

• The speed to which new evidences question the current paradigm

• The capability to embrace and respond JIT to the complexity of our circumstance

• The use of collective wisdom to select actions that are “ecological” in the long term Exploitation of Big Data


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How can we harvest the potential of Big Data?How can human intelligence be effectively leveraged to develop new knowledge within a context of Big Data?

How does this impact the design and pragmatic use of data and information repositories for the development of sciences and our world community?


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Big Data: A Force to Be Harnessed


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Real-time Access to Big Data….

• Empowering the Scientific Community to:– Quickly identify the sources of the

pandemic– Harvest accumulated experience from

previous pandemics• Using Associative Memories to ingest

data from clinics, people, industry sources, Internet, Social Media, etc. and learn about what is connected with what, who is connected whom, where, when, how and how much

• Using Reasoning methodologies (classification, trending, nearest neighbour analysis) to understand patterns, possible causes-and-effects


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Real-time Access to Big Data….

• Empowering the Scientific Community to:– Assess recommended courses of

actions • Using Associative Memories to assess

potential consequences (anticipate)– Monitor the impact of courses of

action (outcomes)• Using Associative Memories to

monitor impacts of courses of action– Learn

• Associating situation-action-outcome and relative effectiveness across various population groups and specifics related to demographic and clinical data


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Transforming Repositories

• Time-sensitive information and knowledge:– Compare/contrast with similar materials that

are more recent

• Discoverability:– Associative Memories for Classification or

Nearest-Neighbor analysis reasoning (what is ‘similar’ or ‘analogous’ to this item?)

– Episodes, trends

• Feedback:– Wiki’s and the discoverability of feedback


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Big Data from Accumulation to Action

• The Scientific Supercourse is a concrete manifestation of the abundance of data, information and knowledge available.

• The challenge is how to harvest its great value moving from a static paradigm of “accumulated information” to a dynamic paradigm of “actionable knowledge for a specific purpose”!

“Science advances by overthrowing an existing paradigm, or at least substantially expanding or modifying it. Thus there is a certain constructive sub versiveness built into the scientific enterprise, as a new generation of scientists makes its own contribution.” - Dr. Ismail Serageldin


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The Time is “Now”

Observe

Orient /Learn

Decide

Act

Human HumanHuman SystemSystem System

InformationSense Making – What Was

Connected with What? What Is?

ReasoningEntity Analytics +

Anticipating

Speed =Lower Cost

Level of IntegrationPassiveActive

Cooperative

Criteria & StandardsDecide

MeasureMonitorControl


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The Time is “Now” (cont’d)

• Associating data and information in real-time• Providing pattern recognition across

structured and unstructured data• Supporting human learning• Finding relevant small data in Big Data• Scaling in a way that facilitates the

connections across massive networks.


….making humans more human, enabling decision makers to use the good of The Modern Columbian Exchange to manage its complexities.

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THANK YOU!


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APPENDIX SLIDES



Hard problems solved by Saffron

• Unification of diverse data– Symbol vectors stored with matrices, beyond graphs

• Unification of semantics and statistics– Statistical metrics as well as semantic sets

• Automatic, incremental, nonlinear learning– No parameters, no batch-fitting, no knowledge engineering

• Exploitation of nonlinear and nonfunctional patterns– No abstracting reductionism to rules or functional models

• Finding the relevant small data in Big Data– Real-time nearest-neighbor reasoning, when the central limit fails

• Scalability to massive network of networks– Localities, partitions, and compressions: Smaller is also faster

© 2012 Saffron Technology, Inc. All rights reserved.


Memory Physics: Small and Local is Fast

• Compared to a database, a memory-base responds to queries faster and faster as data grows larger*.– *As the number of observations

exceeds the number of attributes, which is a common property of real world observations.

• Therefore, evolution selected for brains to be memory-bases, not databases.

Compared to Tables and Graphs• Pre-joined No Table Joins• Pre-counted No Table Scans• Pre-ordered No Sort Joins• Colocal No Pointer Chasing

Some “Proofs in the Pudding”• 10B associative triples in Global 100 operations using 48 cores on 2 servers• Near-linear scalability of ingestion (0.87 slope) tested from 1 to 100 cores• Distributed cluster installation and management tested to 64 server nodes• Semantic expansion of 2X at recent customer, world-record 20 bytes/triple


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What’s the Solution?

• Real-time decision support: Pre-joined, pre-scanned, real-time decision support for complex, high dimensional vector problems: Sense Making > Reasoning > Prediction

• Democratized: business analysts don’t require consistent IT intervention for statistical models

• Learning: transactional updates and predictive models, human in the loop: Situation > Action > Outcome

© 2012 CrossInnovation, LLC and Saffron Technology, Inc. All rights reserved.


Expansive Application Value of Memory Reasoning

Connections – knowing who / what is related to whom / what, and returns entity ranking based on connectivity frequencies and context

Network – seeing how entities in a list (a set) are connected; returns connectivity or bipartite graph of given entity set

Analogies – knowing who / what is similar to whom / what, and returns nearest neighbor based on information of features & relationships

Classifications – Making experience-based, adaptive decisions; returns class rank based on nearest neighbor or hetero-associative match

Trends – Associations that have the most change of timeframe; returns connections based on a temporal change metric

Episodes – Historical attribute patterns and timeframes; recalls co-associated entities with repeating timeframes



Use Cases: National Security

Database 2

Database 1

Agency 2

Agency 1

Who is similar to whom?Alias Detection in Foreign Intel“Super human” 93% accuracy

Who is related to whom?Associative Targeting for SF/SOF500,000X faster to read everything

What have we done before?Experience-based ISR Tasking

Knowledge over change of taskers



Use Cases: Logistics / Supply Chain

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Have We Seen This Before? Where, When, Who, Why? How did it turn out?

What/Who/Where Are Parts Like Me? Where else do we use this Part or a Similar Part?

How Does this Affect Us?Real time Associative analysis of Incoming Information – web, email, documents, etc.Global Risk/Threat Classification

Where Else Might This Happen?What other vehicles look like this problem?


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What is The Modern Columbian Exchange?

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. WHO

…the development and sharing of Sciences becomes critical for the prevention, surveillance, and containment of the negative consequences of these outcomes – which threaten health, freedom, stability and prosperity. This new situational awareness creates significant considerations and investments for governments and commercial enterprises.
