Continuing to Solve Real Problems — With Math

In the last post, we discussed the spiffy model we had created called Humpty, that is, ALM.  What if one day you saw a picture that looked like this:

Wow… that somewhat looks like COVID-19 cases, right?  The same general pattern occurs: it bounces up, levels off (mostly), and then shoots up again.  Except… it’s counting tweets about the Oscars.  Weird, right? You don’t want to associate the two unless it’s an Oscar-winning movie about the pandemic starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the stunning doctor who fights bureaucracy to get the best treatment for the new disease spreading outrageously across the country with his partner, the equally stunning Jennifer Lawrence, who never has a hair out of place.

Oops, a bit of a digression there. Back to the story this blog wants to tell!

ALM can be used to model this curve. We can predict how many tweets will be about the Oscars, but that example does sound like a silly application. But imagine using it for a marketing push on social media. Ad buyers want to know how far their ads are reaching, and you can take the counts and apply the model (and some magic) and give them a projected value for what’s happening next.

What about this picture?

It could be a new pandemic running amok, social media running amok, or something else entirely.

It’s something else entirely. It’s actually from Cybersecurity.

A software vulnerability is the soft underbelly that lets someone poke at it and make it do something the original authors didn’t plan for. Often, these can be made to do terrible things, like steal money or personal information. Bad guys love vulnerabilities. We, on the other hand, do not. If a software development house could predict how many vulnerabilities they’d see in the next quarter, they’d love knowing where they need to focus their work.

Contact inquiries@pi-llc.net if you want to know how we can help you too!