Data Skeptic

Niclas Boehmer, second year PhD student at Berlin Institute of Technology, comes on today to discuss the computational complexity of bribery in elections through the paper “On the Robustness of Winners: Counting Briberies in Elections.” Links Mentioned: https://www.akt.tu-berlin.de/menue/team/boehmer_niclas/ Works Mentioned: “On the Robustness of Winners: Counting Briberies in Elections.” by Niclas Boehmer, Robert Bredereck, Piotr Faliszewski. Rolf Niedermier Thanks to our sponsors: Springboard School of Data: Springboard is a comprehensive end-to-end online data career program. Create a portfolio of projects to spring your career into action. Learn more about how you can be one of twenty $500 scholarship recipients at springboard.com/dataskeptic. This opportunity is exclusive to Data Skeptic listeners. (Enroll with code: DATASK) Nord VPN: Protect your home internet connection with unlimited bandwidth. Data Skeptic Listeners-- take advantage of their Black Friday offer: purchase a 2-year plan, get 4 additional months free. nordvpn.com/dataskeptic (Use coupon code DATASKEPTIC)

Clement Fung, a Societal Computing PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University, discusses his research in security of machine learning systems and a defense against targeted sybil-based poisoning called FoolsGold. Works Mentioned: The Limitations of Federated Learning in Sybil Settings Twitter: @clemfung Website: https://clementfung.github.io/ Thanks to our sponsors: Brilliant - Online learning platform. Check out Geometry Fundamentals! Visit Brilliant.org/dataskeptic for 20% off Brilliant Premium! BetterHelp - Convenient, professional, and affordable online counseling. Take 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/dataskeptic

Simson Garfinkel, Senior Computer Scientist for Confidentiality and Data Access at the US Census Bureau, discusses his work modernizing the Census Bureau disclosure avoidance system from private to public disclosure avoidance techniques using differential privacy. Some of the discussion revolves around the topics in the paper Randomness Concerns When Deploying Differential Privacy.   WORKS MENTIONED: “Calibrating Noise to Sensitivity in Private Data Analysis” by Cynthia Dwork, Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim, Adam Smith "Issues Encountered Deploying Differential Privacy" by Simson L Garfinkel, John M Abowd, and Sarah Powazek "Randomness Concerns When Deploying Differential Privacy" by Simson L. Garfinkel and Philip Leclerc  Check out: https://simson.net/page/Differential_privacy Thank you to our sponsor, BetterHelp. Professional and confidential in-app counseling for everyone. Save 10% on your first month of services with www.betterhelp.com/dataskeptic

Computer Science research fellow of Cambridge University, Heidi Howard discusses Paxos, Raft, and distributed consensus in distributed systems alongside with her work “Paxos vs. Raft: Have we reached consensus on distributed consensus?” She goes into detail about the leaders in Paxos and Raft and how The Raft Consensus Algorithm actually inspired her to pursue her PhD. Paxos vs Raft paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.05074 Leslie Lamport paper “part-time Parliament” https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/lamport-paxos.pdf Leslie Lamport paper "Paxos Made Simple" https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/paxos-simple.pdf Twitter : @heidiann360 Thank you to our sponsor Monday.com! Their apps challenge is still accepting submissions! find more information at monday.com/dataskeptic

The podcast discusses A.C.I.D. Compliance and its importance in database transactions. They illustrate transactional consistency with examples like Google Sheets and bank transactions. The hosts also explore ACID compliance in board games and databases, and discuss durability and scalability in database design. Additionally, they touch on accuracy and precision in data, introduce the Monday Apps Challenge, and delve into the relationship between ACID compliance, consistency, and consensus in databases.

Patrick Rosenstiel joins us to discuss the The National Popular Vote.

Yudi Pawitan joins us to discuss his paper Defending the P-value.

Ivan Oransky joins us to discuss his work documenting the scientific peer-review process at retractionwatch.com.  

Derek Lim joins us to discuss the paper Expertise and Dynamics within Crowdsourced Musical Knowledge Curation: A Case Study of the Genius Platform.  

Neil Johnson joins us to discuss the paper The online competition between pro- and anti-vaccination views.