Averaged one-dependence estimators (AODE) is a probabilistic classification learning technique. It was developed to address the attribute-independence problem of the popular naive Bayes classifier. It frequently develops substantially more accurate classifiers than naive Bayes at the cost of a modest increase in the amount of computation. == The AODE classifier == AODE seeks to estimate the probability of each class y given a specified set of features x1, ... xn, P(y | x1, ... xn). To do so it uses the formula P ^ ( y ∣ x 1 , … x n ) = ∑ i : 1 ≤ i ≤ n ∧ F ( x i ) ≥ m P ^ ( y , x i ) ∏ j = 1 n P ^ ( x j ∣ y , x i ) ∑ y ′ ∈ Y ∑ i : 1 ≤ i ≤ n ∧ F ( x i ) ≥ m P ^ ( y ′ , x i ) ∏ j = 1 n P ^ ( x j ∣ y ′ , x i ) {\displaystyle {\hat {P}}(y\mid x_{1},\ldots x_{n})={\frac {\sum _{i:1\leq i\leq n\wedge F(x_{i})\geq m}{\hat {P}}(y,x_{i})\prod _{j=1}^{n}{\hat {P}}(x_{j}\mid y,x_{i})}{\sum _{y^{\prime }\in Y}\sum _{i:1\leq i\leq n\wedge F(x_{i})\geq m}{\hat {P}}(y^{\prime },x_{i})\prod _{j=1}^{n}{\hat {P}}(x_{j}\mid y^{\prime },x_{i})}}} where P ^ ( ⋅ ) {\displaystyle {\hat {P}}(\cdot )} denotes an estimate of P ( ⋅ ) {\displaystyle P(\cdot )} , F ( ⋅ ) {\displaystyle F(\cdot )} is the frequency with which the argument appears in the sample data and m is a user specified minimum frequency with which a term must appear in order to be used in the outer summation. In recent practice m is usually set at 1. == Derivation of the AODE classifier == We seek to estimate P(y | x1, ... xn). By the definition of conditional probability P ( y ∣ x 1 , … x n ) = P ( y , x 1 , … x n ) P ( x 1 , … x n ) . {\displaystyle P(y\mid x_{1},\ldots x_{n})={\frac {P(y,x_{1},\ldots x_{n})}{P(x_{1},\ldots x_{n})}}.} For any 1 ≤ i ≤ n {\displaystyle 1\leq i\leq n} , P ( y , x 1 , … x n ) = P ( y , x i ) P ( x 1 , … x n ∣ y , x i ) . {\displaystyle P(y,x_{1},\ldots x_{n})=P(y,x_{i})P(x_{1},\ldots x_{n}\mid y,x_{i}).} Under an assumption that x1, ... xn are independent given y and xi, it follows that P ( y , x 1 , … x n ) = P ( y , x i ) ∏ j = 1 n P ( x j ∣ y , x i ) . {\displaystyle P(y,x_{1},\ldots x_{n})=P(y,x_{i})\prod _{j=1}^{n}P(x_{j}\mid y,x_{i}).} This formula defines a special form of One Dependence Estimator (ODE), a variant of the naive Bayes classifier that makes the above independence assumption that is weaker (and hence potentially less harmful) than the naive Bayes' independence assumption. In consequence, each ODE should create a less biased estimator than naive Bayes. However, because the base probability estimates are each conditioned by two variables rather than one, they are formed from less data (the training examples that satisfy both variables) and hence are likely to have more variance. AODE reduces this variance by averaging the estimates of all such ODEs. == Features of the AODE classifier == Like naive Bayes, AODE does not perform model selection and does not use tuneable parameters. As a result, it has low variance. It supports incremental learning whereby the classifier can be updated efficiently with information from new examples as they become available. It predicts class probabilities rather than simply predicting a single class, allowing the user to determine the confidence with which each classification can be made. Its probabilistic model can directly handle situations where some data are missing. AODE has computational complexity O ( l n 2 ) {\displaystyle O(ln^{2})} at training time and O ( k n 2 ) {\displaystyle O(kn^{2})} at classification time, where n is the number of features, l is the number of training examples and k is the number of classes. This makes it infeasible for application to high-dimensional data. However, within that limitation, it is linear with respect to the number of training examples and hence can efficiently process large numbers of training examples. == Implementations == The free Weka machine learning suite includes an implementation of AODE.
System appreciation
System appreciation is an activity often included in the maintenance phase of software engineering projects. Key deliverables from this phase include documentation that describes what the system does in terms of its functional features, and how it achieves those features in terms of its architecture and design. Software architecture recovery is often the first step within System appreciation.
Radical trust
Radical trust is the confidence that any structured organization, such as a government, library, business, religion, or museum, has in collaboration and empowerment within online communities. Specifically, it pertains to the use of blogs, wiki and online social networking platforms by organizations to cultivate relationships with an online community that then can provide feedback and direction for the organization's interest. The organization 'trusts' and uses that input in its management. One of the first appearances of the notion of radical trust appears in an info graphic outlining the base principles of web 2.0 in Tim O'Reilly's weblog post "What is Web 2.0". Radical Trust is listed as the guiding example of trusting the validity of consumer generated media. This concept is considered to be an underlying assumption of Library 2.0. The adoption of radical trust by a library would require its management let go of some of its control over the library and building an organization without an end result in mind. The direction a library would take would be based on input provided by people through online communities. These changes in the organization may merely be anecdotal in nature, making this method of organization management dramatically distinct from data-based or evidence based management. In marketing, Collin Douma further describes the notion of radical trust as a key mindset required for marketers and advertisers to enter the social media marketing space. Conventional marketing dictates and maintains control of messages to cause the greatest persuasion in consumer decisions, but Douma argued that in the social media space, brands would need to cede that control in order to build brand loyalty.
Content inventory
A content inventory is the process and the result of cataloging the entire contents of a website. An allied practice—a content audit—is the process of evaluating that content. A content inventory and a content audit are closely related concepts, and they are often conducted in tandem. == Description == A content inventory typically includes all information assets on a website, such as web pages (HTML), meta elements (e.g., keywords, description, page title), images, audio and video files, and document files (e.g., .pdf, .doc, .ppt). A content inventory is a quantitative analysis of a website. It simply logs what is on a website. The content inventory will answer the question: “What is there?” and can be the start of a website review. A related (and sometimes confused term) is a content audit, a qualitative analysis of information assets on a website. It is the assessment of that content and its place in relationship to surrounding Web pages and information assets. The content audit will answer the question: “Is it any good?” Over the years, techniques for creating and managing a content inventory have been developed and refined in the field of website content management. A spreadsheet application (e.g., Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc) is the preferred tool for keeping a content inventory; the data can be easily configured and manipulated. Typical categories in a content inventory include the following: Link — The URL for the page Format — For example, .HTML, .pdf, .doc, .ppt Meta page title — Page title as it appears in the meta
Data recovery
In computing, data recovery is a process of retrieving deleted, inaccessible, lost, corrupted, damaged, or overwritten data from secondary storage, removable media or files, when the data stored in them cannot be accessed in a usual way. The data is most often salvaged from storage media such as internal or external hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives, magnetic tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID subsystems, and other electronic devices. Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage devices or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system (OS). Logical failures occur when the hard drive devices are functional but the user or automated-OS cannot retrieve or access data stored on them. Logical failures can occur due to corruption of the engineering chip, lost partitions, firmware failure, or failures during formatting/re-installation. Data recovery can be a very simple or technical challenge. This is why there are specific software companies specialized in this field that help to get back data on your system. == About == The most common data recovery scenarios involve an operating system failure, malfunction of a storage device, logical failure of storage devices, accidental damage or deletion, etc. (typically, on a single-drive, single-partition, single-OS system), in which case the ultimate goal is simply to copy all important files from the damaged media to another new drive. This can be accomplished using a Live CD, or DVD by booting directly from a ROM or a USB drive instead of the corrupted drive in question. Many Live CDs or DVDs provide a means to mount the system drive and backup drives or removable media, and to move the files from the system drive to the backup media with a file manager or optical disc authoring software. Such cases can often be mitigated by disk partitioning and consistently storing valuable data files (or copies of them) on a different partition from the replaceable OS system files. Another scenario involves a drive-level failure, such as a compromised file system or drive partition, or a hard disk drive failure. In any of these cases, the data is not easily read from the media devices. Depending on the situation, solutions involve repairing the logical file system, partition table, or master boot record, or updating the firmware or drive recovery techniques ranging from software-based recovery of corrupted data, to hardware- and software-based recovery of damaged service areas (also known as the hard disk drive's "firmware"), to hardware replacement on a physically damaged drive which allows for the extraction of data to a new drive. If a drive recovery is necessary, the drive itself has typically failed permanently, and the focus is rather on a one-time recovery, salvaging whatever data can be read. In a third scenario, files have been accidentally "deleted" from a storage medium by the users. Typically, the contents of deleted files are not removed immediately from the physical drive; instead, references to them in the directory structure are removed, and thereafter space the deleted data occupy is made available for later data overwriting. In the mind of end users, deleted files cannot be discoverable through a standard file manager, but the deleted data still technically exists on the physical drive. In the meantime, the original file contents remain, often several disconnected fragments, and may be recoverable if not overwritten by other data files. The term "data recovery" is also used in the context of forensic applications or espionage, where data which have been encrypted, hidden, or deleted, rather than damaged, are recovered. Sometimes data present in the computer gets encrypted or hidden due to reasons like virus attacks which can only be recovered by some computer forensic experts. == Physical damage == A wide variety of failures can cause physical damage to storage media, which may result from human errors and natural disasters. CD-ROMs can have their metallic substrate or dye layer scratched off; hard disks can suffer from a multitude of mechanical failures, such as head crashes, PCB failure, and failed motors; tapes can simply break. Physical damage to a hard drive, even in cases where a head crash has occurred, does not necessarily mean permanent data loss. However, in extreme cases, such as prolonged exposure to moisture and corrosion —like the lost Bitcoin hard drive of James Howells, buried in the Newport landfill for over a decade — recovery is usually impossible. In rare cases, forensic techniques such as magnetic force microscopy (MFM) have been explored to detect residual magnetic traces when data holds exceptional value. Other techniques employed by many professional data recovery companies can typically salvage most, if not all, of the data that had been lost when the failure occurred. Of course, there are exceptions to this, such as cases where severe damage to the hard drive platters may have occurred. However, if the hard drive can be repaired and a full image or clone created, then the logical file structure can be rebuilt in most instances. Most physical damage cannot be repaired by end users. For example, opening a hard disk drive in a normal environment can allow airborne dust to settle on the platter and become caught between the platter and the read/write head. During normal operation, read/write heads float 3 to 6 nanometers above the platter surface, and the average dust particles found in a normal environment are typically around 30,000 nanometers in diameter. When these dust particles get caught between the read/write heads and the platter, they can cause new head crashes that further damage the platter and thus compromise the recovery process. Furthermore, end users generally do not have the hardware or technical expertise required to make these repairs. Consequently, data recovery companies are often employed to salvage important data with the more reputable ones using class 100 dust- and static-free cleanrooms. === Recovery techniques === Recovering data from physically damaged hardware can involve multiple techniques. Some damage can be repaired by replacing parts in the hard disk. This alone may make the disk usable, but there may still be logical damage. A specialized disk-imaging procedure is used to recover every readable bit from the surface. Once this image is acquired and saved on a reliable medium, the image can be safely analyzed for logical damage and will possibly allow much of the original file system to be reconstructed. ==== Hardware repair ==== A common misconception is that a damaged printed circuit board (PCB) may be simply replaced during recovery procedures by an identical PCB from a healthy drive. While this may work in rare circumstances on hard disk drives manufactured before 2003, it will not work on newer drives. Electronics boards of modern drives usually contain drive-specific adaptation data (generally a map of bad sectors and tuning parameters) and other information required to properly access data on the drive. Replacement boards often need this information to effectively recover all of the data. The replacement board may need to be reprogrammed. Some manufacturers (Seagate, for example) store this information on a serial EEPROM chip, which can be removed and transferred to the replacement board. Each hard disk drive has what is called a system area or service area; this portion of the drive, which is not directly accessible to the end user, usually contains drive's firmware and adaptive data that helps the drive operate within normal parameters. One function of the system area is to log defective sectors within the drive; essentially telling the drive where it can and cannot write data. The sector lists are also stored on various chips attached to the PCB, and they are unique to each hard disk drive. If the data on the PCB do not match what is stored on the platter, then the drive will not calibrate properly. In most cases the drive heads will click because they are unable to find the data matching what is stored on the PCB. == Logical damage == The term "logical damage" refers to situations in which the error is not a problem in the hardware and requires software-level solutions. === Corrupt partitions and file systems, media errors === In some cases, data on a hard disk drive can be unreadable due to damage to the partition table or file system, or to (intermittent) media errors. In the majority of these cases, at least a portion of the original data can be recovered by repairing the damaged partition table or file system using specialized data recovery software such as TestDisk; software like ddrescue can image media despite intermittent errors, and image raw data when there is partition table or file system damage. This type of data recovery can be performed by people without expertise in drive hardware as it requires no special physica
Hallucination (artificial intelligence)
In the field of artificial intelligence (AI), a hallucination or artificial hallucination (also called bullshitting, confabulation, or delusion) is a response generated by AI that contains false or misleading information presented as fact. This term draws a loose analogy with human psychology, where a hallucination typically involves false percepts. For example, a chatbot powered by large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT, may embed plausible-sounding random falsehoods within its generated content. Detecting and mitigating errors and hallucinations pose significant challenges for practical deployment and reliability of LLMs in high-stakes scenarios, such as chip design, supply chain logistics, and medical diagnostics. Some software engineers and statisticians have criticized the specific term "AI hallucination" for unreasonably anthropomorphizing computers. Symbolic artificial intelligence models generally do not produce hallucinations, unlike large language models. == Term == === Origin === Since the 1980s, the term "hallucination" has been used in computer vision with a positive connotation to describe the process of adding detail to an image. For example, the task of generating high-resolution face images from low-resolution inputs is called face hallucination. The first documented use of the term "hallucination" in this sense is in the PhD thesis of Eric Mjolsness in 1986. A notable work is the face hallucination algorithm by Simon Baker and Takeo Kanade published in 1999. In the 2000s, hallucinations were described in statistical machine translation as a failure mode. Since the 2010s, the term has undergone a semantic shift to signify the generation of factually incorrect or misleading outputs by AI systems in tasks like machine translation and object detection. In 2015, hallucinations were identified in visual semantic role labeling tasks by Saurabh Gupta and Jitendra Malik. In 2015, computer scientist Andrej Karpathy used the term "hallucinated" in a blog post to describe his recurrent neural network (RNN) language model generating an incorrect citation link. In 2017, Google researchers used the term to describe the responses generated by neural machine translation (NMT) models when they are not related to the source text, and in 2018, the term was used in computer vision to describe instances where non-existent objects are erroneously detected because of adversarial attacks. In July 2021, Meta warned during its release of BlenderBot 2 that the system is prone to "hallucinations", which Meta defined as "confident statements that are not true". Following OpenAI's ChatGPT release in beta version in November 2022, some users complained that such chatbots often seem to pointlessly embed plausible-sounding random falsehoods within their generated content. Many news outlets, including The New York Times, started to use the term "hallucinations" to describe these models' frequently incorrect or inconsistent responses. In 2023, the Cambridge dictionary updated its definition of hallucination to include this new sense specific to the field of AI. Some researchers have highlighted a lack of consistency in how the term is used, but also identified several alternative terms in the literature, such as confabulations, fabrications, and factual errors. === Definitions and alternatives === Uses, definitions and characterizations of the term "hallucination" in the context of LLMs include: "a tendency to invent facts in moments of uncertainty" (OpenAI, May 2023) "a model's logical mistakes" (OpenAI, May 2023) "fabricating information entirely, but behaving as if spouting facts" (CNBC, May 2023) "making up information" (The Verge, February 2023) "probability distributions" (in scientific contexts) Journalist Benj Edwards, in Ars Technica, writes that the term "hallucination" is controversial, but that some form of metaphor remains necessary; Edwards suggests "confabulation" as an analogy for processes that involve "creative gap-filling". In July 2024, a White House report on fostering public trust in AI research mentioned hallucinations only in the context of reducing them. Notably, when acknowledging David Baker's Nobel Prize-winning work with AI-generated proteins, the Nobel committee avoided the term entirely, instead referring to "imaginative protein creation". Hicks, Humphries, and Slater, in their article in Ethics and Information Technology, argue that the output of LLMs is "bullshit" under Harry Frankfurt's definition of the term, and that the models are "in an important way indifferent to the truth of their outputs", with true statements only accidentally true, and false ones accidentally false. Some researchers also use the derogatory term "botshit", often referring to uncritical use of AI. === Criticism === In the scientific community, some researchers avoid the term "hallucination", seeing it as potentially misleading. It has been criticized by Usama Fayyad, executive director of the Institute for Experimental Artificial Intelligence at Northeastern University, on the grounds that it misleadingly personifies large language models and is vague. Mary Shaw said, "The current fashion for calling generative AI's errors 'hallucinations' is appalling. It anthropomorphizes the software, and it spins actual errors as somehow being idiosyncratic quirks of the system even when they're objectively incorrect." In Salon, statistician Gary Smith argues that LLMs "do not understand what words mean" and consequently that the term "hallucination" unreasonably anthropomorphizes the machine. Murray Shanahan argues that anthropomorphic framing of LLM capabilities, including terms like "hallucination", encourages users and researchers to attribute cognitive processes to systems that operate through statistical pattern completion, and advocates for more careful linguistic practices when discussing LLM behavior. Kristina Šekrst argues that applying psychological vocabulary to LLM outputs obscures the difference between the appearance of mental properties and their genuine presence. Förster & Skop assert that tech companies use the hallucination metaphor to anthropomorphize models and deflect responsibility for non-factual outputs. Some see the AI outputs not as illusory but as prospective—that is, having some chance of being true, similar to early-stage scientific conjectures. The term has also been criticized for its association with psychedelic drug experiences. == In natural language generation == In natural language generation, there are several reasons why natural language models hallucinate: === Hallucination from data === Hallucinations can stem from incomplete, inaccurate or unrepresentative data sets. === Modeling-related causes === The pre-training of generative pretrained transformers (GPT) involves predicting the next word. It incentivizes GPT models to "give a guess" about what the next word is, even when they lack information. Some researchers take an anthropomorphic perspective and posit that hallucinations arise from a tension between novelty and usefulness. For instance, Amabile and Pratt define human creativity as the production of novel and useful ideas. By extension, a focus on novelty in machine creativity can lead to the production of original but inaccurate responses—that is, falsehoods—whereas a focus on usefulness may result in memorized content lacking originality. By 2022, newspapers such as The New York Times expressed concern that, as the adoption of bots based on large language models continued to grow, unwarranted user confidence in bot output could lead to problems. === Interpretability research === In 2025, interpretability research by Anthropic on the LLM Claude identified internal circuits that cause it to decline to answer questions unless it knows the answer. By default, the circuit is active and the LLM doesn't answer. When the LLM has sufficient information, these circuits are inhibited and the LLM answers the question. Hallucinations were found to occur when this inhibition happens incorrectly, such as when Claude recognizes a name but lacks sufficient information about that person, causing it to generate plausible but untrue responses. === Examples === On 15 November 2022, researchers from Meta AI published Galactica, designed to "store, combine and reason about scientific knowledge". Content generated by Galactica came with the warning: "Outputs may be unreliable! Language Models are prone to hallucinate text." In one case, when asked to draft a paper on creating avatars, Galactica cited a fictitious paper from a real author who works in the relevant area. Meta withdrew Galactica on 17 November due to offensiveness and inaccuracy. OpenAI's ChatGPT, released in beta version to the public on November 30, 2022, was based on the foundation model GPT-3.5 (a revision of GPT-3). Professor Ethan Mollick of Wharton called it an "omniscient, eager-to-please intern who sometimes lies to you". Data scientist Teresa Kuba
Social trading
Social trading is a form of investing that allows investors to observe the trading behavior of their peers and expert traders. The primary objective is to follow their investment strategies using copy trading or mirror trading. Social trading requires little or no knowledge about financial markets. == History == One of the first social trading platforms was Collective2] which began offering a social trading functionality to retail traders as early as 2003 (preceding ZuluTrade by four years). In 2010, social trading started to achieve a greater degree of mainstream appeal with eToro, followed by Wikifolio in 2012. Europe-based NAGA, listed on Frankfurt Stock Exchange since 2017, claims more than EUR 27 billion was traded on its platform in the second half of 2019. Some of the other contemporary social trading platforms and tech providers are Trading Motion, Brokeree Solutions, iSystems, and FX Junction, among others. === Research === MIT Computer Scientist and researcher Yaniv Altshuler described social trading networks as complex adaptive systems, and in his 2014 research on eToro's OpenBook, wrote that "Having the inherent ability to share ideas and information between each others, OpenBook's users are given a new source of information they can use in order to enhance their trading performance. As the users are not playing against each other but rather – against the market, this situation becomes a non zero-sum game, hence incentivizing the users to share as much information as possible." His paper concludes that "social trading provides much better opportunities for profiting compared with individual trading," but that users make "excellent but sometimes not optimal decisions in selecting experts when they can see others' choices." A 2015 World Economic Forum report described social trading networks as disruptors, which "have emerged to provide low-cost, sophisticated alternatives to traditional wealth managers. These solutions cater to a broader customer base and empower customers to have more control of their wealth management," and "pose a tangible threat to the traditional practices of the wealth management industry". Economist Nouriel Roubini's thinktank predicted in 2016 that "newer forms of investment, such as socially responsible investments and social trading will bring some of the largest industry growth in the coming years." A 2017 St. John's University study found that 'leader' traders, or those with followers, are more susceptible to the disposition effect than investors that are not being followed by any other traders, with the authors suggesting the observation may be explained by "leaders feeling responsible towards their followers and an urge to not let them down, by fear of losing followers when admitting a bad investment decision and signaling confidence in their initial investment choice, or by an attempt of newly appointed leaders to manage their self-image." Social trading may potentially also change how much risk investors take. A recent experimental study argues that merely providing information on the success of others may lead to a significant increase in risk taking. This increase in risk taking may even be larger when subjects are provided with the option to directly copy others. == Characteristics == Social trading is an alternative way of analyzing financial data by looking at what other traders are doing and comparing and copying their techniques and strategies. Prior to the advent of social trading, investors and traders were relying on fundamental or technical analysis to form their investment decisions. Using social trading investors and traders could integrate into their investment decision-process social indicators from trading data-feeds of other traders. Social trading platforms or networks can be considered a subcategory of social networking services. Social trading allows traders to trade online with the help of others and some have claimed shortens the learning curve from novice to experienced trader. Traders can interact with others, watch others take trades, then duplicate their trades and learn what prompted the top performer to take a trade in the first place. By copying trades, traders can learn which strategies work and which do not work. Social trading is used to do speculation; in the moral context speculative practices are considered negatively and to be avoided by each individual. who conversely should maintain a long-term horizon avoiding any types of short term speculation. Social Media has permeated the trading world such that two main types of trading has evolved: Traditional Trades Single (or non-social) trade: Trader A places a normal trade by himself or herself; This can by manual or automated Social Trading There are two main types of social trading: Copy trade: Trader A places exactly the same trade as trader B's one single trade; (iii) Mirror trade: Trader A automatically executes trader B's every single trade, i.e., trader A follows exactly trader B's trading activities. Other variations offered on some platforms allow users to copy another trader's portfolio (copy portfolio), and follow a trader's dividends (copy dividends), where whenever a followed trader withdraws money from his or her account, a proportional amount of money will be withdrawn from the balance of their follower, in real time. === Key features === Information flow: Unencumbered access to information is important in financial markets and that makes the free exchange of information of interest to small scale as well as individual investors. Cooperative trading: Social trading offers traders the opportunity to work together in trading teams which can trade the markets collaboratively, whether by pooling funds, dividing research or through sharing information. Monetization: As with social networks in the broader sense, monetization strategies are not always clear. As with social networks in general, it is possible, however, that the long-term worth of such websites may come from the variety and depth of data about their users which their active communities are likely to generate. Transparency: Social trading platforms reveal traders' performance stats, open and past positions, and market sentiment, giving members complete information to assess the credibility of the contributors they follow on the platform.