Cloud Hosting

What do data from social media tell us about public sentiment in the real world? And how can those data insights drive companies and investors to make better financial decisions?

Sina Shokoohyar, assistant professor of computing and decision sciences at the Stillman School of Business, is an expert at mining publicly available data in his research and in the classroom with his students.

"Data are freely available, and theyre the most important commodity of this century,"he says. Data are the new oil."

Teaching undergraduate and graduate courses at Stillman, Shokoohyar involves his students directly in course projects and research, bringing real-world case studies and practical research questions into the classroom.

"Because of social media, we have easy access to big data online, but we need to think about how we select, clean and use data in research,"he says. "These insights can help us make better business decisions, understand whether fear or greed is influencing the market and accomplish better stock trades."

Students in Shokoohyar's classes are learning how to write code that can scrape tweets from Twitter, analyze them and discover public sentiment about real issues. "One student is working on tweets from Trump to see how they impact the stock market; another student is collecting tweets from Elon Musk to see how they impact Teslas stock price."

Another student, Blessing Zachariah, who is pursuing an MBA with a focus on supply chain management, has helped Shokoohyar author several teaching case studies. In one, published in Sage Business Cases, they explored why auto repossession agencies declined during the pandemic, and how that could lead to an increase in auto loan rates.

Shokoohyar's research has focused heavily in recent years on the sharing economy. "Sharing economy platforms (like Uber, Airbnb, Turo, gig work websites and apps) are growing very fast,"he says. "People who have some extra product or service can share it on a platform to earn money."

Many of his studies have been inspired by personal experiences. "I was in D.C. for a conference and I wanted to Uber to my hotel. I noticed the prices were changing based on the weather,"Shokoohyar says. Another time, in Philadelphia, he noticed surge pricing in an area of the city known for having more crime. "I started thinking about how factors like weather and neighborhood crime rates might affect demand for Uber rides and lead to surge pricing."

Collecting and analyzing more than 1 million data points about Uber usage in Philadelphia, he discovered that areas with more crime do indeed experience higher demand for Uber rides. "People may not feel safe walking around in areas with high crime,"he says. "So demand for Uber goes up and prices increase to attract more drivers. That means areas with higher crime rates have better Uber accessibility; this was a surprising result."

In another study, Shokoohyar sought to understand how COVID-19 affected ridesharing platforms. "We collected data about Uber rides and found that sentiment toward ridesharing was very negative during the pandemic until the vaccines were rolled out. This mirrored Uber stock prices at the same time,"he says. "Data indicate the vaccine has helped people think more positively about ridesharing, but even today people dont feel as good about it as they did before the pandemic. People still have concerns."

He also has taken a close look at accommodation-sharing platforms like Airbnb using machine-learning algorithms to interpret data. "We wanted to understand the factors influencing long-term and short-term rental demand, to figure out how lessors could decide which strategy would maximize their rental income,"he says. We studied several factors including closeness to historic attractions, number of bedrooms, crime rate, accessibility, demographics and nightlife vibe."The study found that homes near many attractions and nightlife options fare better as short-term rentals, while homes in rural locations are more in demand for long-term rentals.

He has published his findings in several peer-reviewed journals, including Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Journal of Cleaner Production, International Journal of Logistics Management, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery and Research in Transportation Economics.

For Shokoohyar, who joined Seton Halls faculty in 2022, doing research and teaching go hand in hand. He says he always knew he wanted to be a professor.

"I was pursuing my Ph.D. at the University of Texas in Dallas, studying operations management, and all my advisors were saying that becoming a professor was a good idea based on my interest and passion. It's a great fit for me I really enjoy teaching, doing research and helping students get involved in research."

View original post here:

Analyzing Social Media for Insights Into Sharing Economy Platforms ... - Seton Hall University

The mining industry is rapidly evolving as mines embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) with increasingly sophisticated equipment and automation. The connected mine has become a reality, driving increased production, improving safety, optimising equipment utilisation and more. However, alongside this technological revolution, we are also seeing both leadership and employee competence struggling to keep up. People, leadership, and human behaviour are not being integrated with 4IR technologies, which can cause numerous challenges. Sociometric sensors with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities can help to address this challenge, disrupt the traditional value chain, and constructively improve culture, behaviour, and leadership within mines.

From heavy machinery and working at scale, the mining industry has now progressed to continuous and autonomous production, with an increased emphasis on electrification, renewables, and the reduction of emissions. Safety remains a priority, and with 4IR technologies that offer increased automation and autonomy, people can be moved away from the coal face and farther from danger.

However, despite technological advances, mines still rely heavily on the human component. As a result, suboptimal human behaviour and leadership have a significant negative impact on production, equipment utilisation, safety, and the environment. People and leadership are obstacles on the road to leveraging technology and achieving increased production output, enhanced equipment utilisation, and better safety. Mining organisations need to look at human behaviour and leadership solutions that will complement technology, improve people and leadership performance, and improve metrics that matter across the board.

Sociometric sensors measure things such as eye contact, voice pitch, body orientation and proximity to others, all of which can be analysed and used to add value. This is done by collecting data that can be used to support leadership in improving production, equipment utilisation and safety. Through machine learning, this data can be further used to predict what behaviour contributes to specific outcomes.

For example, certain sociometric data could suggest that an accident is imminent. This could function as a prompt to shut down equipment or warn employees. Sociometric data can also be used to objectively assess different leadership and learning styles and measure performance against KPIs, with data as evidence to help drive behaviour change. This information can also be combined with other data from wearables, such as heart rate, breathing rate, pulse oxygen levels, and more, to deliver enhanced value.

A positive impact on human efficiency and leadership can be enormously beneficial, but human behaviour is typically difficult to objectively measure and monitor. Sociometric sensor technology can effectively address this challenge and help mines bridge the gap between machinery advances and human performance, giving mining organisations the ability to measure and monitor metrics around social and emotional intelligence as well as traditional metrics of leadership and engagement.

Sensor output from machines and the environment, together with sociometric sensors, can be integrated to create a complete picture of what is happening at any point in time in a mine, with live feedback and ML to radically transform every element of the connected mine. By mapping leadership and personal interactions against real data, mining organisations will be able to understand what behaviour produces certain results and adjust behaviour and leadership styles in real-time.

By integrating disruptive technologies such as mining automation technology, renewable energy technology, and sociometric sensor technology into mine and process design in an innovative way, it is possible to achieve radical performance improvement breakthroughs.

Read more here:

Sociometric data can disrupt the traditional value chain and revolutionise the mining industry | African - African Mining Market

Image Credits: OurX

Ceci Kurzman has spent much of her career building and investing in brands and serving as one of the few Black female board members for companies, including Lanvin, Revlon and Warner Music+.

While investing on behalf of some clients interested in beauty and personal care, Kurzman saw a gap in what kinds of products were available for multicultural groups and decided to do something about it.

I started looking for sort of a best-in-class, high-performance business that was direct-to-consumer and used all the business model innovations that were table stakes at that point, like e-commerce, personalization, clean, data driven, inclusive and sustainable, and I couldnt find anything even close, Kurzman told TechCrunch. When I couldnt find something to invest in, I went out and put together groups who targeted a demographic that was professional millennial, avid consumers, and we polled 30,000 of them, and we found 60% werent getting what they wanted and still felt stuck.

Out of that research came OurX, the latest company entering the Black hair care industry, currently valued at $2.51 billion. The companys proprietary technology taps into six years of research and data mining to create hair regimens and education for the scalp and tightly textured hair.

The first step is to take the four-step hair assessment that asks about your hairs health, the kind of styling and treatments you do, your daily routine and your lifestyle. At the end, it presents a regimen of products, a hair coach and peer community to best help you utilize the products. It also includes a series of guided at-home video-based tests to provide an even-more accurate read on their hair and scalp attributes. Throughout the entire assessment experience, users receive feedback and educational tips based on the inputs they provide.

OurX has seven products currently, and the average regimen of products offered is between $115 and $130. One-on-one access to hair coaches is available through a subscription.

The product regimen is influenced by a group of experts, including dermatologist Jenna Lester, celebrity hair stylist Johnny Wright and hairstylist Cataanda James.

Along with the launch, OurX announced that it has a new CEO, Meghan Maupin. Maupin, an MIT graduate, previously founded personalized skincare brand, Atolla, which was acquired by Function of Beauty in 2021.

When I dove deeper into haircare, I saw that theres actually a huge need for personalization, for this consumer in particular, Maupin said in an interview. For consumers with textured hair its not one-size-fits-all, but is actually much more complex in terms of whats needed for the day-in and day-out.

Like Kurzman, Maupin went into the beauty industry to change things, noting that she saw a lot of things in beauty that were broken, and with her background in data and technology, knew that she could fix some of those issues.

Meanwhile, OurX also launched with a $2.5 million seed round led by Reign Ventures.

We were very intentional to have a diverse cap table so to be able to pick and design our cap table was really important, Kurzman said. We wanted investors who understood the mission, understood the need and understood the market. Were lucky that weve been able to fund this round primarily with women and women of color, and theres some allies in there, too.

Read more here:

OurX adds tech spin to Black hair care regimen - TechCrunch

~ Trying to stop generative AI is like trying to stop the calculator.

~ Its here, its going to be complex socially, and Im worried about the next election cycle.

~ The deep fake AI videos and audio are the most concerning.

~ These functions will lead to elder abuse in the form of getting scammed by con artists.

Dozens of the accounting professions top thought leaders, influencers and technology pioneers met in Las Vegas ahead of the 2023 AICPA Engage conference to discuss the technologies, trends and other factors that will affect the profession and commerce in the coming years.

Participants of the 2023 Accounting Think Tank were purposed with engaging with their colleagues and openly discuss issues that may have significant benefit, detriment or other effects on professionals. To encourage this dialogue, CPA Practice Advisor agreed to refrain from directly attributing quotes to specific individuals, although a list of attendees at the event was made public.

While the majority agreed that various new AI developments, which have caught public attention in the last year with the introduction of ChatGPT, Dall-E, and other products, may have some fearsome potential for abuse, many professionals in the conversation also noted the great opportunities for continued advances in automation and efficiency. And many noted that forms of AI and machine learning have been with us and used by firms and businesses for more than a decade. These new forms will have much broader reach than those such as analytics and ecommerce applications.

We need to pair this back to everyday work, to practical and specific uses, one said. It may be a hard conversation, but while ChatGPT is in the spotlight, generative AI is in so many things already, and in positive ways.

Some of the ways these professionals are already using this tech includes much more accurate note taking functions, firm knowledge-capturing functions, and improved data mining and planning. But steps must be made to anonymize the information.

Key takeaways from the groups discussion were:

Many also noted that, as accounting technology vendors integrate these forms of AI into their products, professionals will have a new learning curve to get the most of the new tech, while everyone will have to be more diligent in ensuring factual accuracy.

The thought leaders also discussed topic ranging from trends in advisory services, higher education and the 150-hour rule, staffing issues, firm structures, and future knowns and unknowns of the profession.

The leaders also interacted with technology vendors in frank, back-and-forth dialogue about elevating firms into more valuable advisory services, and how advanced firms can help educate others. The goal of enhancing the image of the profession among students, and elevating the appeal of accounting careers, was a notable focus.

The 2023 Accounting Think Tank was the first of what is expected to be an annual event, and included members of CPA Practice Advisors annual Thought Leaders and 40 Under 40 programs, which recognize many professionals who are shaping public practice and policy, as well as the technologies professionals rely on.

The event was hosted by CPA Practice Advisor, and sponsored by Intuit and Wolters Kluwer.

Gallery:

Go here to see the original:

Profession Must Strategize for AI, Other Technology Advances and ... - CPAPracticeAdvisor.com