From random security checks at airports to the use of risk assessment in sentencing, actuarial methods are being used more than ever to determine whom law enforcement officials target and punish. And with the exception of racial profiling on our highways and streets, most people favor these methods because they believe they’re a more cost-effective way to fight crime. In Against Prediction, Bernard E. Harcourt challenges this growing reliance on actuarial methods. These prediction tools, he demonstrates, may in fact increase the overall amount of crime in society, depending on the relative responsiveness of the profiled populations to heightened security. They may also aggravate the difficulties that minorities already have obtaining work, education, and a better quality of life—thus perpetuating the pattern of criminal behavior. Ultimately, Harcourt shows how the perceived success of actuarial methods has begun to distort our very conception of just punishment and to obscure alternate visions of social order. In place of the actuarial, he proposes instead a turn to randomization in punishment and policing. The presumption, Harcourt concludes, should be against prediction.

By applying data analytics techniques and machine learning algorithms to predict disease, medical practitioners can more accurately diagnose and treat patients. However, researchers face problems in identifying suitable algorithms for pre-processing, transformations, and the integration of clinical data in a single module, as well as seeking different ways to build and evaluate models. The Handbook of Research on Disease Prediction Through Data Analytics and Machine Learning is a pivotal reference source that explores the application of algorithms to making disease predictions through the identification of symptoms and information retrieval from images such as MRIs, ECGs, EEGs, etc. Highlighting a wide range of topics including clinical decision support systems, biomedical image analysis, and prediction models, this book is ideally designed for clinicians, physicians, programmers, computer engineers, IT specialists, data analysts, hospital administrators, researchers, academicians, and graduate and post-graduate students.

This innovative book brings together two disciplines — science and art — and enables readers to produce their own computer-generated displays. 44 colour plates and 200 black and white pictures showcase the diagrams that can easily be reproduced using the accompanying CD-ROM. It is possible to create diagrams that indicate predictability or unpredictability of physical, chemical, ecological, mathematical or economic systems. Grey levels and colours indicate the stability of a predictable system, or the extent of unpredictability. In addition, diagrams can be drawn purely for their aesthetic value. Directed both at scientists and laymen, technicians and artists, this combination of book and CD-ROM is the first of its kind./aDownload Images as Wallpapers: