Blog: Public Impact Analytics Science (PIAS)

Preparing AI for Sequential Decision-Making — and Why It Matters

June 18, 2026

Blog Series: PUBLIC IMPACT ANALYTICS SCIENCE (PIAS) From a few demonstrations to a near-optimal policy: fine-tuned LLM reasoning across time. Large language models (LLMs) have become remarkably good at learning from examples on the fly. Show a pretrained...

Ambiguity Versus Risk in Sequential Decision-Making: Incomplete Information, Causal Inference, and Reinforcement Learning

February 08, 2021

Blog Series: PUBLIC IMPACT ANALYTICS SCIENCE (PIAS) Sequential decision-making requires one to know, or at least anticipate with confidence, the future consequences of the decisions that will be made today. The vast majority of the analytical tools in...

What AI is Lacking: Insight-Driven Problem Solving

February 17, 2025

Blog Series: PUBLIC IMPACT ANALYTICS SCIENCE (PIAS) Photo Credit: DALL.E 2025 While computers in the age of AI possess the ability to follow data-driven problem solving approaches, they largely lack what is needed to solve complex and lingering societal...

Digital Phenotyping: Analytics Science from the Inception of Computer Networks (Data Pushing) to the Age of Fitbit Data (Data Pulling)

November 30, 2024

Blog Series: PUBLIC IMPACT ANALYTICS SCIENCE (PIAS) Photo Credit: DALL.E 2024 About half a century after Erlang invented the queueing theory, an analytics scientist named Leonard Kleinrock developed a mathematical theory for the efficient routing of data...

The Public Impact of Using Observational Data to Enhance Efficiency and Effectiveness: From COVID-19 Vaccines to Startups to Emergency Rooms

June 06, 2024

Blog Series: PUBLIC IMPACT ANALYTICS SCIENCE (PIAS) Photo Credit: DALL.E 2023 In February of 2021, a significant problem was on top of mind for many officials across the globe: are recently developed COVID-19 vaccines effective enough to end the terrible...

AI, Human Rights, and Public Impact: Promises and Risks

December 21, 2023

Soroush Saghafian Blog Series: PUBLIC IMPACT ANALYTICS SCIENCE (PIAS) Note: This is a short piece I recently wrote as part of a university-wide article that aimed at celebrating the 75 th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To...

The Analytics Science Behind ChatGPT: Human, Algorithm, or a Human-Algorithm Centaur?

January 10, 2023

Blog Series: PUBLIC IMPACT ANALYTICS SCIENCE (PIAS) Note: a more detailed version is here. Figure: Image of Chiron the Centaur in Daniel Le Clerc, Histoire de la médecine … (Amsterdam, 1723), p. 30. Developing analytics science methods that can enable...

The Public Impact of Queueing Theory: From Queen Elizabeth to Internet to Emergency Rooms

October 12, 2022

Blog Series: PUBLIC IMPACT ANALYTICS SCIENCE (PIAS) Figure: A map of the long queue formed for Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022 [Credit: Kim Mogg / NationalWorld] On September 8, 2022 Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II— the longest reigning monarch in...

The Public Impact Analytics Science Behind Mobile Health (mHealth) and Digital Health Interventions

August 27, 2021

Blog Series: PUBLIC IMPACT ANALYTICS SCIENCE (PIAS) “Failure doesn’t exist. It’s only a change of direction.” [Alejandro Jodorowsky] Traditionally, healthcare delivery mechanisms have been limited to both the availability of a provider (e.g., a physician)...

Successful Public Impact Analytics Science in the Era of Information and Algorithmic Transparency Movements

March 16, 2021

Blog Series: PUBLIC IMPACT ANALYTICS SCIENCE (PIAS) In this post, I argue for a new minimum transparency criterion for developing successful analytics science methods and algorithms that are aimed at having a positive public impact: making sure that they...

The Public Impact Analytics Science Blog

January 24, 2021

Blog Series: PUBLIC IMPACT ANALYTICS SCIENCE (PIAS) In my blog posts I discuss how techniques in analytics science can impac the life of many indivuals. Stay tuned.