Archive for June, 2016

IBM Watson Retrieve and Rank tool

Thursday, June 30th, 2016

A few months ago, I mentioned that I was starting a new project. In this post, I’ll explain what we’ve been working on and what we’re trying to achieve with it.

The project was to build something new: a self-serve web-based tool to enable training the IBM Watson Retrieve and Rank service.

Earlier today, we released a first version of the tool. Now it’s finally out there, I can share what I’ve been working on!


My video walkthrough of the IBM Watson Retrieve and Rank tool

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Watson Rock, Paper, Scissors

Sunday, June 26th, 2016

A simple hands-on activity to let kids train a machine learning classifier to be able to play Rock, Paper, Scissors.

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I’ve written and spoken before that I think we should do more to introduce children to the idea of machine learning. And I’ve tried introducing my two kids to it, such as by making a Code Club-style game with them: we built a system to play Guess Who, that they trained both to understand what you say and to recognise the characteristics of faces from photos.

This weekend, we tried out another idea – Rock, Paper, Scissors from a web app, using the web cam to see your moves, and training a system to recognise your hand signs.

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