by Angela Guess
Anne VanderMey of Fortune recently interviewed Jennifer Chayes, head of the new Microsoft research lab in Manhattan. Asked about the focus of the lab, Chayes responded, “We’re pretty much centered on Big Data questions — how Big Data can help answer social science questions, how it can help answer economic questions, and what it means for the interaction of the social sciences with technology. If you’re in that field, these are very, very exciting times.”
Asked about specific projects, Chayes stated, “One example is we have researchers in economics and prediction engines looking at the bets people make. Generally speaking, if people place bets on certain things, they are often much more invested in that thing. So, when large numbers of people place bets on who’s going to win, say, a primary election, that’s a very good way of getting data. We have some researchers who have come up with really amazing precisions on who’s going to be winning the primaries based on the bets that people are making. You can also do this with sports events. You can do this with all kinds of events. The future of interactive entertainment will have a prediction engine component to it.”
She went on, “At the lab we also have leaders in machine learning. John Langford is building a machine learning platform that people all over the world are using. It’s called VW, which stands for Vowpal Wabbit. [Editor's note: The name is Elmer Fudd speak for 'Vorpal Rabbit.'] Which gives us an incredibly fast way to analyze huge data sets. And a few of our guys are setting up a large-scale experimental platform, using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to find participants online. In the past, a lot of experiments would use 30 or 40 student volunteers. This is a much larger scale.”
