Jordan Thayer, PhD

AI Practice Lead

Recent Articles

(Machine) Learning By Doing

We’ve discussed several applications of machine learning before. We teach a machine a concept from stored data so that it can: Identify problems with engines from telemetry data Identify digits from handwriting Identify sticky notes on a board Identify the winning team in DotA from team compositions The common thrust is that, using supervised learning, […]
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Record Deduplication

I have a relative that frequently has medical problems. This despite the fact that he’s a healthy young man. His problem is that he has too many names. He’s James-Robert, but depending on whom you ask, you’ll hear him called: Jim Bob Robert James Jim-Bob He has five names at least, and that’s before considering […]
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How Visualizations Lead To Advances in Artificial Intelligence

Heuristic search is a subfield of artificial intelligence.  It is the study of algorithms meant for general problem solving. The problems solved with heuristic search come from a variety of domains, including: Aligning genetic sequences Planning routes between two cities Scheduling elevators in a building Scheduling work orders in a machine shop These varried domains […]
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A Brief Evaluation of Cloud ML Tools

Originally published here. The Goal Someone recently told me in passing that they wished they had a machine learning sandbox. I didn’t know what that was exactly, but I had a few ideas about what it might be. I wrote down some notes about what I thought a machine learning sandbox might do for someone, […]
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Death Stranding: A Playground of Algorithms

Taken by Sergey Galyonkin from Raleigh, USA – E3 2018 Death Stranding was a surreal experience for several reasons. First, the game has a werid story line that’s a little hard to follow at times; exactly what you’d expect from the game’s director Hideo Kojima. Secondly, I’m still not used to seeing recognizable famous people […]
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Using Pipelines to Lower Barriers To Entry in Machine Learning

Many people are keenly interested in machine learning, and with good reason. Machine learning is applicable to a wide variety domains, including engineering, education, healthcare, and government. The broad applicability of machine learning is a double edged sword: Although an ever increasing pool of people want to use machine learning, a decreasing portion of them […]
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Five Things I Learned Working with Software Engineers

Introduction Hi, I’m Jordan Thayer, and I’m a research scientist by training. I got my PhD in 2012 from the University of New Hampshire, where I focused on Artificial Intelligence. My undergraduate degree  was in Computer Science too; I got that from Rose-Hulman back in 2006. I’ve been programming things for about as long as […]
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Accidental AI: 5 Everyday AI Problems

Introduction People often ask questions like “What is AI?”, or “Is AI worth of the hype?”.Both questions are non-trivial to answer, but let’s start with the first one:”What is AI?”. This is a perennial favorite at academic conferences on AI for a few reasons: Every AI researcher has to have an opinion, since it’s their […]
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Planning for Randomizers

Introduction I’m a big fan of videogames. I like small, well defined boxes where I can get better at some task. I like measuring myself against my peers. As such, it’s probably no great surprise that I like speedrunning and randomizers. For the unititiated, speedrunning is trying to beat some game as quickly as possible. […]
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