Research Assessment #2

Date: October 13, 2017

Subject: Software Development

MLA or APA Citation: Slavin, Kevin. How algorithms shape our world. TED, July

2011, https://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world#t-

24746.

Analysis:
As an aspiring software developer, efficient algorithms will be crucial in
solving logical problems. I found this TED Talk to be insightful and relevant to my
topic as it emphasizes the influence and prevalence of algorithms in daily life. I was
completely unaware prior to watching this video of the scope of algorithms in daily
life.
I found the metaphor Slavin uses to explain how mathematics alters the
world extremely interesting. He explains that an artist uses the image of mountains
to illustrate data and that the image is similar to what is going on in real life as
landscapes are affected by the same algorithms. I did not understand this at first as it
did not make sense to me that code and mathematical formulas would alter an
ecosystem. However, Slavin provided examples such as that of the bin-packing
algorithm in modern elevators.
The bin-packing algorithm tells visitors to get into a certain elevator if they
are going to a certain floor; thereby getting rid of the button. When I heard of this
new system, I had mixed emotions. I believe this system is more efficient since there
will not be lines crowding outside of elevators and users can get to their floor easily-
without waiting for all the other floors first. However, this system will also take up
more space. Additionally, since there will be more elevators moving, the system will
use more energy. Therefore, it sacrifices key elements in order to avoid crowding.
These were my initial thoughts, so I was surprised to realize the most prominent
concern with this system is that users dislike having to adjust to not pressing a
button. I would feel that the actual effect on users is the opposite as they merely
have to walk into the correct elevator. This is significant as it helped me realize the
importance of making software appeal to the user. Therefore, software has to be
revolutionary in its speed and tasks, but traditional so as to not intimidate users.
Slavin utilizes the term machine dialect. I do not really understand this term. It
seems as though Slavin is describing that the visual appearance is exactly like what
is coded. I also think this may be stating that the world is becoming more machine-
defined.
Similarly, I liked Slavins example of the cleaning robots. Cleanliness is
subjective and what is considered as a specific percent clean is also dependent on
personal opinion. This makes algorithms complicating as various factors have an
effect. From a presentation perspective, this example along with the elevator
example are apt for the lecture as the topics are easy to relate to for people thereby
making the presentation easier to comprehend.
 I found meaning in the war example as well. When Slavin discussed breaking
a problem into miniscule pieces to better solve the problem, it reminded me of agile
development principles. It is fascinating that wartime and stock market strategies
have made their way into business practices. I understand that agile development
means working on small sections of code and releasing them part by part instead of
waiting until a profound change is completed, however, I know that I will have to
deepen my understanding of the principle through further research.
This TED Talk also stresses the importance of ensuring that code works in a
variety of test cases. Slavin uses the examples of algorithms at war that skew the
prices of goods on Amazon and how the market disappeared and no one knew why.
This lesson is important as it is crucial to ensure that code is prepared for
unexpected circumstances and that algorithms do not conflict. This seems like it will
make programming more difficult as it should be nearly prophetic. However, at the
same time, it means that code has to be organized with high cohesion and loose
coupling. I feel that this is also stressed at computer science competitions as students
do not know the values that judges will input to test the program.
Additionally, I did not realize the pertinence of speed in a variety of fields. I
was surprised to learn that a mere millisecond makes a different; therefore, I think it
is important for me to keep efficiency in my mind while coding. I think taking
computer science courses in college will help me understand the speed and how to
calculate the speed of certain algorithms.
As for the presentation, I liked how he used simplistic visual aides to
emphasize and illustrate his explanations. It made absorbing information much
easier. Additionally, I enjoyed that Slavin interjected an ample amount of humor in
between technical examples to keep the lecture interesting.
This TED Talk reinforced the importance of algorithms to solve logical
problems and optimize. I will keep both of these in mind when choosing courses in
college as I realized that algorithms are vital. I always thought only theoretical
computer scientists need to have a solid understanding of different types of
algorithms and speed; however, after watching this Ted Talk, I realized it is
important for everyone. Also, this talk is somewhat inspirational in that it showed
me the power of computer science. Not only does computer science transform
business and homes by making tasks more efficient, it shapes the physical landscape
by telling businesses the best place to be located.
(Transcript of video annotated and attached below)

Transcript of Ted Talk:
00:12
This is a photograph by the artist Michael Najjar, and it's real, in the sense that he
went there to Argentina to take the photo. But it's also a fiction. There's a lot of work
that went into it after that. And what he's done is he's actually reshaped, digitally, all
of the contours of the mountains to follow the vicissitudes of the Dow Jones
index. So what you see, that precipice, that high precipice with the valley, is the 2008
financial crisis. The photo was made when we were deep in the valley over there. I
don't know where we are now. This is the Hang Seng index for Hong Kong. And
similar topography. I wonder why.
00:54
And this is art. This is metaphor. But I think the point is that this is metaphor with
teeth, and it's with those teeth that I want to propose today that we rethink a little
bit about the role of contemporary math -- not just financial math, but math in
general. That its transition from being something that we extract and derive from the
world to something that actually starts to shape it -- the world around us and the Comment [Office1]: Interesting that math shapes the
world inside us. And it's specifically algorithms, which are basically the math that world rather than the world shaping math.

computers use to decide stuff. They acquire the sensibility of truth because they Comment [Office2]: Simplified definition- appeal to large
repeat over and over again, and they ossify and calcify, and they become real. crowd

01:39
And I was thinking about this, of all places, on a transatlantic flight a couple of years
ago, because I happened to be seated next to a Hungarian physicist about my
age and we were talking about what life was like during the Cold War for physicists
in Hungary. And I said, "So what were you doing?"
01:57
And he said, "Well we were mostly breaking stealth."
01:59
And I said, "That's a good job. That's interesting. How does that work?" And to
understand that, you have to understand a little bit about how stealth works. And so
-- this is an over-simplification -- but basically, it's not like you can just pass a radar
signal right through 156 tons of steel in the sky. It's not just going to disappear. But if
you can take this big, massive thing, and you could turn it into a million little things Comment [Office3]: Agile Development
-- something like a flock of birds -- well then the radar that's looking for that has to
be able to see every flock of birds in the sky. And if you're a radar, that's a really bad
job. Comment [Office4]: Humor to lighten technical
02:41 explanation is effective

And he said, "Yeah." He said, "But that's if you're a radar. So we didn't use a
radar; we built a black box that was looking for electrical signals, electronic
communication. And whenever we saw a flock of birds that had electronic
communication, we thought, 'Probably has something to do with the Americans.'"
02:58
And I said, "Yeah. That's good. So you've effectively negated 60 years of aeronautic
research. What's your act two? What do you do when you grow up?" And he
said, "Well, financial services." And I said, "Oh." Because those had been in the news
lately. And I said, "How does that work?" And he said, "Well there's 2,000 physicists
on Wall Street now, and I'm one of them." And I said, "What's the black box for Wall
Street?"
03:28
And he said, "It's funny you ask that, because it's actually called black box
trading. And it's also sometimes called algo trading, algorithmic trading." And
algorithmic trading evolved in part because institutional traders have the same
problems that the United States Air Force had, which is that they're moving these
positions -- whether it's Proctor & Gamble or Accenture, whatever -- they're moving
a million shares of something through the market. And if they do that all at once, it's Comment [Office5]: Algorithm to improve network speed
like playing poker and going all in right away. You just tip your hand. And so they
have to find a way -- and they use algorithms to do this -- to break up that big
thing into a million little transactions. And the magic and the horror of that is that
the same math that you use to break up the big thing into a million little things can
be used to find a million little things and sew them back together and figure out
what's actually happening in the market. Comment [Office6]: Algorithms allow breaking apart the
04:24 data and furthering understanding

So if you need to have some image of what's happening in the stock market right
now, what you can picture is a bunch of algorithms that are basically programmed
to hide, and a bunch of algorithms that are programmed to go find them and
act. And all of that's great, and it's fine. And that's 70 percent of the United States
stock market, 70 percent of the operating system formerly known as your
pension, your mortgage.
04:52
And what could go wrong? What could go wrong is that a year ago, nine percent of
the entire market just disappears in five minutes, and they called it the Flash Crash
of 2:45. All of a sudden, nine percent just goes away, and nobody to this day can
even agree on what happened because nobody ordered it, nobody asked for
it. Nobody had any control over what was actually happening. All they had was just
a monitor in front of them that had the numbers on it and just a red button that said,
"Stop." Comment [Office7]: Programs are not programmed for
05:27 every situation

And that's the thing, is that we're writing things, we're writing these things that we
can no longer read. And we've rendered something illegible, and we've lost the
sense of what's actually happening in this world that we've made. And we're
starting to make our way. There's a company in Boston called Nanex, and they use
math and magic and I don't know what, and they reach into all the market data and
they find, actually sometimes, some of these algorithms. And when they find them
they pull them out and they pin them to the wall like butterflies. And they do what
we've always done when confronted with huge amounts of data that we don't
understand -- which is that they give them a name and a story. So this is one that
they found, they called the Knife, the Carnival, the Boston Shuffler, Twilight. Comment [Office8]: Often based off of shape of graphed
06:28 data- visual aide on video

And the gag is that, of course, these aren't just running through the market. You can Comment [Office9]: Vast implications
find these kinds of things wherever you look, once you learn how to look for
them. You can find it here: this book about flies that you may have been looking at
on Amazon. You may have noticed it when its price started at 1.7 million dollars. It's
out of print -- still ... (Laughter) If you had bought it at 1.7, it would have been a
bargain. A few hours later, it had gone up to 23.6 million dollars, plus shipping and
handling. And the question is: Nobody was buying or selling anything; what was
happening? And you see this behavior on Amazon as surely as you see it on Wall
Street. And when you see this kind of behavior, what you see is the evidence of
algorithms in conflict, algorithms locked in loops with each other, without any
human oversight, without any adult supervision to say, "Actually, 1.7 million is
plenty." Comment [Office10]: Uses humorous anecdote to express
07:24 serious predicament and explains cause of the predicament

(Laughter)
07:27
And as with Amazon, so it is with Netflix. And so Netflix has gone through several
different algorithms over the years. They started with Cinematch, and they've tried a
bunch of others --there's Dinosaur Planet; there's Gravity. They're using Pragmatic
Chaos now. Pragmatic Chaos is, like all of Netflix algorithms, trying to do the same
thing. It's trying to get a grasp on you, on the firmware inside the human skull, so
that it can recommend what movie you might want to watch next -- which is a very,
very difficult problem. But the difficulty of the problem and the fact that we don't Comment [Office11]: AI principles would be used, data
really quite have it down, it doesn't take away from the effects Pragmatic Chaos gathered about similar movies watched

has. Pragmatic Chaos, like all Netflix algorithms, determines, in the end, 60
percent of what movies end up being rented. So one piece of code with one idea
about you is responsible for 60 percent of those movies. Comment [Office12]: Stresses implications
08:22
But what if you could rate those movies before they get made? Wouldn't that be
handy? Well, a few data scientists from the U.K. are in Hollywood, and they have
"story algorithms" -- a company called Epagogix. And you can run your script
through there, and they can tell you, quantifiably, that that's a 30 million dollar
movie or a 200 million dollar movie. And the thing is, is that this isn't Google. This
isn't information. These aren't financial stats; this is culture. And what you see Comment [Office13]: Interesting use
here, or what you don't really see normally, is that these are the physics of
culture. And if these algorithms, like the algorithms on Wall Street, just crashed one
day and went awry, how would we know? What would it look like?
09:09
And they're in your house. They're in your house. These are two algorithms Comment [Office14]: Catches people. Makes topic relevant
competing for your living room. These are two different cleaning robots that have
very different ideas about what clean means. And you can see it if you slow it down Comment [Office15]: Need an algorithm to identify clean
and attach lights to them, and they're sort of like secret architects in your
bedroom. And the idea that architecture itself is somehow subject to algorithmic
optimization is not far-fetched. It's super-real and it's happening around you.
09:37
You feel it most when you're in a sealed metal box, a new-style elevator; they're
called destination-control elevators. These are the ones where you have to press
what floor you're going to go to before you get in the elevator. And it uses what's
called a bin-packing algorithm. So none of this mishegas of letting everybody go into
whatever car they want. Everybody who wants to go to the 10th floor goes into car Comment [Office16]: More efficient
two, and everybody who wants to go to the third floor goes into car five. And the
problem with that is that people freak out. People panic. And you see why. You see
why. It's because the elevator is missing some important instrumentation, like the
buttons. (Laughter) Like the things that people use. All it has is just the number that
moves up or down and that red button that says, "Stop." And this is what we're
designing for. We're designing for this machine dialect. And how far can you take Comment [Office17]: People uncomfortable
that? How far can you take it? You can take it really, really far. Comment [Office18]: Questions whether prominence of
10:38 algorithms is good?
So let me take it back to Wall Street. Because the algorithms of Wall Street are
dependent on one quality above all else, which is speed. And they operate on
milliseconds and microseconds. And just to give you a sense of what microseconds
are, it takes you 500,000 microseconds just to click a mouse. But if you're a Wall Comment [Office19]: Extent of efficiency programmers
Street algorithm and you're five microseconds behind, you're a loser. So if you were have to worry about

an algorithm, you'd look for an architect like the one that I met in Frankfurt who was
hollowing out a skyscraper -- throwing out all the furniture, all the infrastructure for
human use, and just running steel on the floors to get ready for the stacks of servers
to go in -- all so an algorithm could get close to the Internet. Comment [Office20]: Makes more sense with visual aide in
11:25 video, but finally gets to explaining physical structure

And you think of the Internet as this kind of distributed system. And of course, it is,
but it's distributed from places. In New York, this is where it's distributed from: the
Carrier Hotel located on Hudson Street. And this is really where the wires come
right up into the city. And the reality is that the further away you are from
that, you're a few microseconds behind every time. These guys down on Wall
Street, Marco Polo and Cherokee Nation, they're eight microseconds behind all these
guys going into the empty buildings being hollowed out up around the Carrier Comment [Office21]: Users need utmost speed so
Hotel. And that's going to keep happening. We're going to keep hollowing them corporations locate themselves strategically

out, because you, inch for inch and pound for pound and dollar for dollar, none of
you could squeeze revenue out of that space like the Boston Shuffler could.
12:17
But if you zoom out, if you zoom out, you would see an 825-mile trench between
New York City and Chicago that's been built over the last few years by a company
called Spread Networks. This is a fiber optic cable that was laid between those two
cities to just be able to traffic one signal 37 times faster than you can click a mouse -
- just for these algorithms, just for the Carnival and the Knife. And when you think
about this, that we're running through the United States with dynamite and rock
saws so that an algorithm can close the deal three microseconds faster, all for a
communications framework that no human will ever know, that's a kind of manifest
destiny; and we'll always look for a new frontier. Comment [Office22]: Questions need for speed. Efficiency
13:12 over nature

Unfortunately, we have our work cut out for us. This is just theoretical. This is some
mathematicians at MIT. And the truth is I don't really understand a lot of what
they're talking about. It involves light cones and quantum entanglement, and I don't
really understand any of that. But I can read this map, and what this map says is
that, if you're trying to make money on the markets where the red dots are, that's
where people are, where the cities are, you're going to have to put the servers where
the blue dots are to do that most effectively. And the thing that you might have
noticed about those blue dots is that a lot of them are in the middle of the ocean. So
that's what we'll do: we'll build bubbles or something, or platforms. We'll actually
part the water to pull money out of the air, because it's a bright future if you're an
algorithm. Comment [Office23]: Criticizes that everything is so
14:01 algorithm driven and says that algorithms do not take in
many parameters
(Laughter)
14:03
And it's not the money that's so interesting actually. It's what the money
motivates, that we're actually terraforming the Earth itself with this kind of
algorithmic efficiency. And in that light, you go back and you look at Michael
Najjar's photographs, and you realize that they're not metaphor, they're
prophecy. They're prophecy for the kind of seismic, terrestrial effects of the math Comment [Office24]: Ties back into beginning
that we're making. And the landscape was always made by this sort of weird,
uneasy collaboration between nature and man. But now there's this third co-
evolutionary force: algorithms -- the Boston Shuffler, the Carnival. And we will have
to understand those as nature, and in a way, they are.
14:51
Thank you.
14:53
(Applause)