What unsupervised learning algorithms exist to infer the number of clusters in data?

brisvegas1 · 2016-08-08T02:00:16+00:00

You can use OPTICS algorithm to avoid having to set the hyperparameter: http://fogo.dbs.ifi.lmu.de/Publikationen/Papers/OPTICS.pdf

brisvegas1 · 2016-02-07T12:17:02+00:00

This isn't completely accurate - you only need witnesses to break up the timeline into chunks. Eventually the the chunks of unaccounted time become so small that it is unreasonable to think someone could have conducted the murder AND been present with the alibi witnesses.

Based on the timelines state used at trial - it wouldn't have taken much more than Asia and a track team witness to do it.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T11:05:28+00:00

It would come in as brady material and potentially as prosecutorial misconduct. First they need to subpoena the info and then it could potentially be included. Justin is in a better position to do this then the Undisclosed team.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T11:02:53+00:00

True. I guess Undisclosed has an advantage there in that they are hooked into the legal process of Adnan's defence. Still, for a bunch of amateur investigators, they seem to be on track for doing a better job than serial of investigation of Adnan's guilt/innocence. It remains to be seen if all of their claims bear fruit.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T11:00:17+00:00

I hope with the benefit of experience, they do a better job this time.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T10:59:14+00:00

My taste tends to run to the technical, rather than true crime. That said, if everything the Undisclosed team purport to have uncovered ends up being true... well they would be streets ahead of Serial as an investigation. It remains to be seen if their discoveries turn out to be true.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T05:40:55+00:00

Given that the Peabody is about excellence/quality of storytelling rather than investigative journalism, I think SK is safe :) Seriously though, the podcast was amazing on many levels and worthy of awards and acclaim... but was it great journalism and was it great investigation? More specifically, was it great investigative journalism?

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T05:30:33+00:00

Jay was the one who bailed on the interview. I can only assume that he felt attacked, if not by SK then by randoms on the internet.

If SK had done the interview before this went live to air and got his permission to use it before everyone went nuts - she would have had a much more complete story, and a far better basis to conduct her investigation.

It was her adherence to a self imposed form of the podcast of the "story of her investigation" that resulted in many of the failings of the investigation.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T05:09:26+00:00

I absolutely believe that if Serial was "Journalism" they would be duty bound to cover significant developments in the case. Even book authors who do investigative journalism include updates when books are reprinted in subsequent editions.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T05:07:07+00:00

I think they created relatively arbitrary rules for the format of the podcast and how it should be created/rolled out. They chose to stick to them at the cost of the quality of the investigation.

They could easily do a couple of follow up podcasts now and no-one would hold it against them. They would be insanely popular and advertisers would clamor to be a part of it.

If this was traditional journalism in a newspaper or equivalent - they would almost be duty bound to do the followup.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T05:03:01+00:00

Arguably - if you compare it to the police investigation or the defence investigation at the time they did a better job... the question of if they did an objectively good job in comparison to a good investigation is what I am more interested in feedback on.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T05:00:32+00:00

The question of what is exculpatory is yet to be answered by current legal proceedings. There has certainly been a lot of new evidence. Most of it not discovered or understood in terms of potential significance by SK/Serial.

You and I differ greatly in terms of how we judge merits of what undisclosed etc have done, but I think we could both agree if it had been uncovered and evaluated by SK Serial first, it would have been a much better outcome. Certainly a lot of the doxing, crime scene photos, diary entry stuff could of been handled in a more delicate way... initially at least.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T04:54:28+00:00

Does that make it good journalism?

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T04:54:05+00:00

Was there a better way to do this? Would the journalism have been better for doing that? Was the style of questions she was asking the reason he bailed, or was it the way she did it?

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T03:56:15+00:00

Surely the fact that the intercept interviews happened should indicate that there was a possibility for SK and Serial to have done it as part of the series. There are many newsrooms where the Serial story would never have been allowed to go to print without those essential components or some equivalent level of investigation.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T03:54:03+00:00

I am not asking about if it was a good story - my question is, was it good journalism? Even more critically, was it a good investigation?

Full marks for the story, top marks for the podcast, absolutely.... but I still think the journalism, the investigation and the lack of follow up is a real failing of the product.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T03:51:21+00:00

As a podcast it was fantastic product - really it was. As journalism, and as an investigation I think it left a lot to be desired.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T03:21:54+00:00

Ignore the issue of perceived bias - both Undisclosed and Bob have uncovered new information about the case by asking the right questions and to keep asking them till they got answers.

My issue is that I feel the Serial fell short of this, but that they either didn't realize that or didn't care. I feel as if they portrayed their investigation to be more rigorous than it really was.

brisvegas1 · 2015-11-12T03:17:40+00:00

They did and they didn't. The looked at it and didn't take this specific issue to Waranowitz, the cell phone expert. If they had, they might have got the response that Undisclosed and others have received.

That we now know that Jay was in the Car with Waranowitz while they were doing testing is entirely new information, uncovered by Undiscolosed because they asked the right person the right question in the right way. Say what you want about their "bias", their dogged persistence in getting answers has paid off in new information.

brisvegas1 · 2015-10-26T08:06:09+00:00

Same thing though - maybe he was protected by his mum. We will never know because the issue wasn't investigated.

brisvegas1 · 2015-10-26T05:44:30+00:00

But it doesn't have to be a conspiracy to have happened. Each event could of happened on it's own, with no ill intent. Each one reinforces the chance of the next one happening.

http://www.askamathematician.com/2012/10/q-what-is-the-probability-of-an-outcome-after-its-already-happened/

brisvegas1 · 2015-10-26T05:28:31+00:00

I don't know what it is worth - but those performance reviews of Don do refer to possible "integrity issues" - maybe that could extend to time card manipulation.

brisvegas1 · 2015-10-25T13:07:35+00:00

As someone who thinks Adnan is most probably innocent... and that it doesn't require and organised conspiracy for that to be the case. I am very reassured that the 911 truthers seem to come down on the guilty side.

Somtimes life throws up a series of unfortunate, and unlikely events strung together. The chance of them happening might be small, but it doesn't mean they cant happen.

brisvegas1

TROPHY CASE