With IBM buying SPSS I figured it is a good time to talk about what I think is the best statistical software package available: R, which is a proper computer language based on S. It can also use C, C++ and Fortran for more computationally intensive tasks. The free-to-download software package can be used to [...]

Captology is a very interesting research area in human factors and human-computer interaction. The etymology of captology comes from ‘Computers as persuasive technologies’. The goal of captology is to understand how to use existing and emerging technologies to influence a person’s behaviors and beliefs. Check out the Stanford lab to find out more. From their [...]

Augmented cognition makes for some really cutting edge human factors research. Basically, the point of AugCog is to figure out how to use technology to overcome cognitive limitations. So how does it (will it) work? Well, using a very basic example, you first have to figure out some way of measuring a persons neurological and [...]

I love watching the TED videos. It’s basically a collection of talks from the world’s top minds where they share very inspirational and interesting ideas and discoveries.

Apparently people could carry out mental arithmetic problems much better back in 1979. In a recent study, these Standford researchers found people could only correctly answer problems in the easy category, while those in 1979 could perform mental arithmetic in the medium and difficult categories. I think it all went down hill after the calculator [...]