Data Mining Helps Uncover Fraud in Disaster Relief
Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 | , | No Comments
This recent article about the GAO’s investigation into fraudulent use of government assistance following Hurricane’s Katrina and Rita illustrates why it is becoming increasingly important to develop data analysis techniques that are proactive in real-time instead of reactive in the wrong time. What could have been done differently in this situation to help the government avoid paying out on bogus claims? While certainly there is a balance to be maintained between the need to distribute aid quickly and the need to have thorough checks into a person’s identity, surely there must be a better way to manage the situation than what was done by the government after these two disasters occurred.
A government watchdog relied on data mining to uncover an estimated $1 billion of improper or fraudulent payments for assistance in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year.
The Government Accountability Office reported its findings on the fraud to the House Homeland Security Investigations Subcommittee on Wednesday. GAO found that the lack of “upfront controls” and inadequate data checks at the Federal Emergency Management Agency led to the improper disbursement of anywhere from $600 million to $1.4 billion to alleged hurricane victims who registered for federal assistance.
In one case, an individual using 13 different Social Security numbers, one of which belonged to the person, received 26 payments totaling $139,000. By searching public records, GAO found that of the 13 addresses that person claimed as damaged property, eight were bogus addresses or were publicly owned.
Matching information from FEMA registrations to a database of federal and state prison inmates, furthermore, GAO found more than 1,000 registrants used names and Social Security numbers belonging to prisoners who were not displaced by the storms. In one case, a Louisiana inmate received more than $20,000 for registering a post-office box as damaged property.
Government Increasingly Turns to Data Mining
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 | | No Comments
An interesting article in the Washington Post today.
Industry executives, analysts and watchdog groups say the federal government has significantly increased what it spends to buy personal data from the private sector, along with the software to make sense of it, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They expect the sums to keep rising far into the future.
The hope is that the technology can help to discern and thwart threats just as businesses have used it for years to predict consumer behavior on buying cosmetics or repaying mortgages, for example.
Companies keep an increasing amount of data about everyone — tracking their buying, travel, bank transactions and bill-paying habits. Data mining uses mathematical formulas to look for patterns in those behaviors. The results could enable the grocery store to send out targeted coupons, or, in theory, help the government decide how likely it may be that someone is linked to terrorist groups.
NSA Looking at Social-Networking Spaces
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 | , | No Comments
Another interesting article coming off the UPI wire regarding the NSA going after MySpace and Facebook type sites in order to discover new patterns of behavior that may point to illicit activities when combined with other data sources.
This information, if collected and filtered correctly, can be combined with other harvested data to reveal information as to banking, retail and property records and eventually help fill in the picture of a potential terror suspect’s activities. Such an aid may prove extremely helpful to the intelligence community in its hunt for both terror suspects and criminals.
Are they barking up the wrong tree here? Or is it simply a matter of having access to as many data sources as possible, leaving options open for different analytical paths to follow?
Suffering From Presentation Fatigue?
Wednesday, June 21st, 2006 | | No Comments
Business Objects has released the results of survey that suggests that most business executives suffer from presentation fatigue, a direct result of the vast amounts of time they spend preparing for and giving presentations each month.
Most business executives suffer from “presentation fatigue,” a direct result of the vast amounts of time they spend preparing for and giving presentations each month, according to a survey from Business Objects. The survey indicated that while executives have improved access to data, they need solutions that can help them quickly and easily present that information in a visually appealing format.
A recent online poll of 382 executives found that over half of the respondents give one or more presentations per month. Of those respondents, 36 percent found presenting data to the board or senior management “tedious,” with a further 24 percent stating they “dread it each time it comes around.”
The poll results reveal that preparing for presentations is time-consuming and stressful for most executives. Survey participants admitted (45 percent) that it often takes them one or more hours to convert data in Excel spreadsheets into a format for a meeting or presentation. An additional 34 percent of the executives surveyed have pulled an all-nighter to prepare for a big presentation.
As more and more is demanded of executives at board meetings, customer events, and financial reviews, they need to find ways to make the data presentation process simpler and more compelling.
“As we all know, presentations can either lull an audience to sleep, or they can energize them to act,” said Donald MacCormick, vice president of product marketing for Business Objects.
Information Theory Used to Understand Whale Song
Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 | | No Comments
A good article was recently published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America that describes using Information Theory to understand the signals that whales use to communicate with each other.
The computer analysis and the human observers all found that whale songs are not only hierarchical, they convey around one bit of information per second. By comparison, humans generate 10 bits of information, or variance, for every word that is spoken.
This application is an intriguing mix of biology with mathematics sure to be used in more applications as scientists seek to better understand the complex patterns that shape the world around us.
Sparklines: Merging Visual Data with Text
Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 | | No Comments
Take a look at this recent blog post that mentions Edward Tufte’s Sparkline concept and links to a couple of other sites that have information about effectively deploying them.
Information Visualization Toolkit
Thursday, May 4th, 2006 | | No Comments
If you are a developer looking for a better visualization toolkit, check out the newly released beta called Prefuse. Dubbed as “a Java-based toolkit for building interactive information visualization applications”. This is a BSD-licensed toolkit so it won’t break the bank for you to try it.
More insight into this particular development package can be found on Matt Stephens Blog
Storytelling Style for PowerPoint
Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 | | No Comments
From the LA Times about Cliff Atkinson, who runs a one-man, Los Angeles-based company called Sociable Media. His site and his work are worth checking out. While the business world might in fact be better off if PowerPoint was eliminated completely from desktops, that seems unlikely to happen.
A better approach is to learn the tools necessary to effectively communicate with this software, not forgetting that the presentation slideshow is meant to enhance your presentation not be your presentation. So why not use some of the same techniques that Hollywood has employed for years in producing movies, namely the 3-act storytelling structure? Something to consider the next time you are preparing yet another rambling list of bullet points and hoping that your audience will stay awake. Get them engaged by using a well thought out flow.
Beating Traffic
Monday, April 24th, 2006 | | No Comments
From Brandon Hansen’s blog about how he analyzed personal commute times in order to best maximize his time on the road.
The idea being to minimize time in the car without changing too much his standard work schedule. It is clear that Brandon put a substantial amount of effort into this analysis, and his results are presented in a straightforward manner. What I also found to be interesting, was the U.S. Census report about commute times, and the other interesting reference materials Brandon had uncovered during his initial data gathering process.
An Engaging Presentation Style
Friday, April 14th, 2006 | | No Comments
How do you give a 15-minute presentation on a technical subject, and keep the audience engaged and interested? I came across this presentation by Dick Hardt, the CEO of “Sxip, a software security company headquartered in Vancouver. Sxip stands for “Simple, eXtensible Identity Protocol”, and is pronounced “Skip” in case you were wondering.
What is really interesting to see is that Dick uses hundreds of slides in a 15 minute presentation, leaving each slide on the screen for no more than a couple of seconds. The slides don’t contain flashy diagrams or reams of 10pt bulleted lists; rather, with a refined simplicity, only contain a few words or a simple picture. Investigating further, I learned that this presentation style originated first with Stanford law professor, Lawrence Lessig, and is known fondly as the “Lessig Method”.
While this unique approach may not be appropriate for all situations, it certainly gives us a sense of how PowerPoint can be used to effectively complement a talk, rather than replacing the talk with words that are read off the screen.
Why not give it a try, even if just for a part of your presentation next time? See if you can grab the audience the way Dick was able to!