Data winnowing

Abstract

Massive quantities of digital data are being collected in every aspect of modern life. Examples include Personal photos and videos, biological and medical images and recordings from sensor arrays. To transform these massive data streams into useful information we use a sequence of "winnowing" stages. Each step reduces the size of the data by an order of magnitude; extracting the wheat form the chaff. In this talk I will describe this approach in a variety of contexts, ranging from the analysis of genetic pathways in fruit-fly embryos and C-Elegans worms to counting birds and helping elderly people living alone keep in touch with their family and caregivers.