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CMN 150V S20 Midterm (1-5) Questions
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1 - 02: What paradigm underlies "computational science"? ✔✔The digital revolution
1 - 02: Which is true about the world's info storage capacity? ✔✔In the late 1980's, < 1% of all technologically stored info was digital, and now > 99% is digital
1-02: If we would take 5ZB of info and store it in books, how far would the pile reach? ✔✔Many times from the Earth to the Sun
1-02: What does it mean that the amount of technologically stored information "doubles" every 2-3 years? ✔✔Each 2-3 years, as much is added to what we have accumulated since the very beginning
1 - 02: What changed in the announcement of the papacy from 2005 to 2013? ✔✔More people document social reality nowadays
1 - 02: The DNA of all human cells stored ____ info than digital technology in 2014. ✔✔less
1 - 02: What do evolutionary theorists say about the "Major Transitions in Evolution?" ✔✔Every time we (life) came up with a new way of processing information, a major transition happened
1-02: From this social evolutionary perspective, the digital and the biological are merged when: ✔✔Society as a whole has become indispensably dependent on digital technology
1 - 02: What's the difference between his two online courses? ✔✔The other one is about how digital tech changes society and this one is about how digital tech changes knowledge production
1 - 04: The first wave of scientific advancements focused on: ✔✔A small number of interrelated variables
1 - 04: The second wave of scientific advancements focused on: ✔✔Averages of many (rather unknown) variables
1-04: Which of the following statements is NOT true? What we here called problems of: ✔✔Complexity is modeled with simple averages of a small number of interacting variables
1-06: What was a main distinction made by both economists like Smith and political scientists like Rousseau? The distinction between: ✔✔The intention of the individual and collective intentions of society
1-06: What did the eminent social scientist Karl Marx mean when he talked about what others called the "basic metaphysical principle of Dialectics"? ✔✔More of something (quantitative difference) can at some point create unexpected emergent phenomena (qualitative changes)
1 - 06: All different kinds of "social science" disciplines are fundamentally interested in: ✔✔How society emerges from individual parts
1 - 07: What was the main approach toward science adopted by Charles Darwin? ✔✔He made empirical observations and from there, developed ideas
1 - 07: What did Albert Einstein do in 1905 and 1915? ✔✔He developed theory, not based on empirical observations, but on ideas and first principles
1-07: How do Einstein and Darwin's methods relate to the "very short history of science" of three consecutive waves that we had reviewed? ✔✔Einstein worked on a problem with few variables (E=mc^2) and Darwin on one with average tendencies of many observations
1-07: What is the so-called "digital footprint" or "digital trace"? ✔✔The digital evidence you leave behind with a digital interaction
1-07: How do you approach science through induction? ✔✔Data => Analysis => Ideas
1-07: Loosely speaking, what term can you use to explain what a hypothesis is? ✔✔A directed bet
1-07: The method that Albert Einstein spearheaded in the work on relativity by going from mathematical theories over hypothesis toward observable phenomena is called: ✔✔Deduction
1-08: The scientific approach going from empirical evidence ("statistics") to theoretical framework ("on digital development") is called: ✔✔Induction
1-08: What were the takeaways from this anecdote (on predicting divorce)? (check all that apply) ✔✔Intuitive ideas, even those in bestselling scientific books, can be wrong if not corroborated with data
1-10: Why did we say that social science is the most complex of all sciences? ✔✔It's on top of a hierarchy of emergence that subsumes other science disciplines
1-10: Formally, the "Entscheidungsproblem" asks if an algorithm exists that can answer if something is universally true or not. What could we also ask it? (check all that apply) ✔✔Is this the best way to produce knowledge?
Is this the best model of something?
Is this mathematical equation correct?
1-10: What did David Hilbert ask? ✔✔Is it possible to automate the decision if something is true or false (Entscheidungsproblem)
1-10: What did Kurt Gödel show? ✔✔It's not possible to find a consistent system with only true statements (Incompleteness Theorem)
1-11: How did Monrovia quickly fill out their population map? ✔✔With mobile phone trace data
1-11: What does "sampling issue" mean? (What could be wrong with drawing conclusions from the okcupid digital footprint data?) ✔✔The group of people here is not necessarily representative of all husband/wives/boy-/girlfriends
1-11: What does the okcupid graph (a man's age vs the age of the women who look best to him) look like for men? ✔✔The numbers will form a vertical line from top to bottom
1-11: What could be wrong with drawing such conclusions from this digital footprint data (regarding men's preference on okcupid)? ✔✔The group of people here is not necessarily representative of all men
1-12: True or false: Your happiness can be influenced by the happiness of a distant friend of a friend ✔✔True
1-12: Eyeballing this group (red pants, education, having a computer): can you see a characteristic that goes together with having a computer (on average)? ✔✔Education
1-12: The main point of this example (red pants, education, having a computer) was: ✔✔Without tracking social networks, we miss an important aspect of how it works
1-14: What do we mean when we say "more is different"? (check all that apply) ✔✔More of the same doesn't always have the same effect
Sometimes with more time patterns suddenly change
Linear extrapolation of some process often does not work
Just like more cooling suddenly converts water into ice, social processes can have unexpected tipping points
1-14: What happens if both of the island of bunnies (each with 2 bunnies, island capacity is 4) on the left-hand side double again? ✔✔We'll have 8 bunnies on the left, but only 4 bunnies on the right
1-14: What have we said about non-linearity? (check all that apply) ✔✔Social processes are often non-linear, which makes it extremely hard to see change coming
The challenge of non-linear tendencies will not be quickly solved
Almost all patterns are non-linear patterns
Often, linear extrapolation of data doesn't capture social dynamics
1-15: What is one of the reasons why all scientific models must be wrong? ✔✔Models are a simplification of a reality that is way too complex to capture fully
1-15: What was the "solid edifice" that "broke down"? ✔✔The self-interest of private business is best prepared to protect the common good (basically Adam Smith)
1-15: What was the ideology of the world's most powerful manager of money world wide for the 20 years between 1987 and 2006? ✔✔Free markets are the best way to organize economies and regulation does not work
1-15: What is the main takeaway from the Alan Greenspan example? ✔✔Social science models shape our thinking and can lead to bad outcomes, even with the best intentions
Blumenstock 1: The population in countries with low human development grows at about 2.5% per year. If you start with a population of 100 people in such country, how much has your
When calls were made (peak hours are more expensive)
Where calls were roughly made
The duration of the calls (costs depend on call duration)
Blumenstock 2: The idea of Prof. Blumenstock that the ratio of outgoing and incoming calls tells us something about the wealth of the users, is called: ✔✔Hypothesis
Blumenstock 3: OK, so again, how does Prof. Blumenstock use machine learning (ML) here (Rwanda study)? The ML algorithm is trained to predict: ✔✔The level of wealth (obtained by a survey) on basis of phone log data (digital trace data)
Blumenstock 3: As we just heard, one key difference between "traditional programming" and "machine learning" (ML) is the following: (click all the apply) ✔✔Traditionally, the computer is fed with data+program
In ML, the computer is fed with data+output
In ML, the computer produces a program/model
Blumenstock 3: The feature of phone log data that is most predictive of wealth in Rwanda is: ✔✔A really weird entropy of something that not even Prof. Blumenstock understands (weighted avg of all first-degree neighbor's "Day of week entropy" of outgoing SMS volume
Blumenstock 3: Wait! What did Prof. Blumenstock do with the Nigeria Poverty Map? ✔✔He had learned the relationship between phone logs and wealth for a small group of 856 users, and then applied this relationship to predict the level of wealth for 1.5 million Rwandans, based on their phone logs
Blumenstock 4: Prof. Blumenstock argues that digital trace data, like phone logs: (check all that apply) ✔✔Are much cheaper and quicker than traditional data collection methods, but less reliable
Can be used complementary, in between traditional data collection methods
Blumenstock 4: What are some of the benefits of working with digital footprint data? (check all that apply) ✔✔It is more detailed and therefore allows for better targeting
2-02: Here we list several characteristics of "big data". Which one is NOT part of our characterization? ✔✔It is better data than traditional data
2-02: What was done in this case study in Colombia? ✔✔Weather and agricultural data were analyzed to estimate the impact of climate change on food production
2-02: What was the result of putting this readily available data to work (Colombian agriculture)? ✔✔Farmers were able to triple their economic effectiveness
2-02: Which one is NOT part of our characterization of big data? ✔✔Data is so big that we aim for identifying a representative sample of it
2-03: What might be a problem when using "Good morning" greetings on Twitter as an estimation when people get up? (check all that apply) ✔✔Some people might post sooner after getting up than others
Very early risers might not post at all: they are too stressed
Late risers might not post at all: they are late already
Mainly young people do such a thing: most grandparents won't post "good morning" on Twitter
2-03: How do you think Google obtains this digital footprint? (Google Location History) ✔✔Location service on phone enabled
2-03: What is "metadata"? ✔✔Data that describes data
2-04: Several facts make this (Obama 2012 campaign) an example of "data fusion". What are they? ✔✔None of the rows and columns in the original databases had all cells filled completely (i.e. no variable was complete by itself)
Different sources were used to complement each other
Traditional data (like voter registration) was mixed with digital footprint data
2-04: What are so-called "echo chambers"? ✔✔Metaphorical description of a situation in which existing opinions are reinforced by communication
Shelton AI1: True or False: The idea that a machine could be intelligent was first introduced in the 1970, when the first digital computer were introduced. ✔✔False
Shelton AI1: What is the Turing test? ✔✔A test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human
Shelton AI1: What is the so-called AI winter? ✔✔A period of reduced funding and interest in artificial intelligence research in the 1970's, because exaggerated expectations were not fulfilled quickly enough
Shelton AI1: What was the important new ingredient that allowed AI to start its ultimate victory run across the global economy and society? ✔✔Availability of data
Shelton AI2: What statements are true regarding AI? (check all that apply) ✔✔AI is difficult to define
AI is a complex and broad challenge that has led to many more concrete sub-fields, several of them no longer considered to be part of AI
Shelton AI2: True or false: One common "working definition" of AI is to consider AI challenges as those that can be done by humans, but not yet by machines. ✔✔True
Shelton AI2: True or false: Artificial intelligence is a futuristic concept, not yet commercially available, but with much concrete future potential. ✔✔False
Shelton AI3: What does it mean when an AI researcher says this task or game "is solved"? ✔✔We can always get an optimal result (e.g. never lose a game)
Shelton AI4: Which conditions apply to this setup (goat, wolf, cabbage)? (check all that apply) ✔✔You have to be in the boat in order to cross the river
You can take only one of the 3 passengers at a time
If you leave the goat and the cabbage, the goat will eat the cabbage: you don't want that
If you leave the wolf and the goat, the wolf will eat the goat: you don't want that
