Adam's Blogroll: click through to the author's blog
For The New Yorker, Angie Wang draws parallels between toddler learning behavior and training large language models, but more importantly, where they diverge.
They are the least useful, the least creative, and the least likely to pass a bar exam. They fall far below the median human standard
that machines are meant to achieve.They are so much less than a machine, and yet it’s clear to any of us that they’re so much more than a machine.
Tags: AI, children, illustration, New Yorker
Posted by in AI, children, illustration, Infographics, New Yorker
The New York Times mapped birth rates, which are down almost everywhere, especially among women in their 20s:
The result has been the slowest growth of the American population since the 1930s, and a profound change in American motherhood. Women under 30 have become much less likely to have children. Since 2007, the birthrate for women in their 20s has fallen by 28 percent, and the biggest recent declines have been among unmarried women. The only age groups in which birthrates rose over that period were women in their 30s and 40s — but even those began to decline over the past three years.
Tags: birth rate, children, motherhood, New York Times
Posted by in birth rate, children, maps, motherhood, New York Times
It’s difficult to emphasize how much life changes when a child comes into the picture. Caitlin Hudon made a chart to show how her daily schedule shifted dramatically.
For a while, it seems like all of your free time is gone for good, but ever so slowly, you get a little bit of it back as they grow more independent.
Tags: Caitlin Hudon, children, parenthood, time use
Posted by in Caitlin Hudon, children, parenthood, Self-surveillance, time use
By way of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, ProPublica and The Boston Globe requested records from each state. They compiled the many documents into a single dataset:
In each record, CAPTA requires states to list the age and gender of the child, and information about a household’s prior contact with welfare services. The information is supposed to help government agencies prevent child abuse, neglect and death, but reporting across states is so inconsistent that comparisons and trends are impossible to identify. ProPublica is releasing the data we’ve collected as a minimum count of child fatality records in the United States. Researchers and journalists can download the full records with summaries at the ProPublica Data Store.
Unfortunately, not all state agencies are compliant, but it’s a start.
Also, Jessica Huseman of ProPublica discussed some of the emotional challenges of working with such sensitive data.
Tags: Boston Globe, children, deaths, ProPublica
Posted by in Boston Globe, children, Data Sources, deaths, ProPublica
Opportunity Atlas, a collaboration between Opportunity Insights and the Census Bureau, is the product of ongoing research on the demographics of people, based on the neighborhood they grew up in.
The Opportunity Atlas provides data on children’s outcomes in adulthood for every Census tract in the United States through an interactive map providing detailed research on the roots of these outcomes, such as poverty and incarceration rate, back to the neighborhoods in which children grew up. This tool will enable policy makers, practitioners, and the public the unprecedented ability to look within their city to understand better where opportunity exists and how each neighborhood shapes a child’s future economic and educational success.
The map application was developed by Darkhorse Analytics. Zoom in to an area of interest, subset on demographics such as income level, race, and gender, and see how the people who grew up in those areas fared later in life. You can also download the tract-level data to look for yourself.
Tags: census, children, demographics, opportunity
Posted by in census, children, demographics, maps, opportunity