Here are a few of the stories that I’ve been reading into this week:

* We Now Have Algorithms to Predict Police Misconduct

A little controversial for a Friday, but still an interesting thought nonetheless. Several police departments run lighter versions of this algorithm analyzing police performance in order to catch any potential patterns that could lead to incident. Newer versions are being developed that not only consider behavior performance, but also individual personality stressors that may be triggered by certain scenarios.

* 21 Scary Things Big Data Knows About You

Some of these are a little outdated (e.g. how parents figured out their teenager was pregnant due to what she was buying at Target, and Target subsequently started mailing her coupons for diapers, formula, etc.), but it’s a good, quick read and definitely food for thought.

I found the most disturbing one to be about credit card companies watching your spending habits and it negatively impacting your credit score.  Hey,  I may spend a lot on pizza in a normal month, but it gets paid. I think I should get bonus points on my credit score due to the practicality of time saved from cooking.

* An Introduction to Text Analytics Using Sherlock Holmes

This article is from the Dato blog, so it’s pushing their product, but I thought it was a great read on how NLP (Natural Language Processing) works.