Adaptive control is the control method used by a controller which must adapt to a controlled system with parameters which vary, or are initially uncertain. For example, as an aircraft flies, its mass will slowly decrease as a result of fuel consumption; a control law is needed that adapts itself to such changing conditions.
A/B testing is a way of comparing two versions of the same variable, usually by testing a subject’s response to variable A against variable B and determining which of the two variables is more effective. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/B_testing
Consider this: A company wants to increase the number of users who subscribe to their homepage newsletter. It’s a simple exercise in hypothesis (in this case, speculating) and testing. In this case, the company offers 50% of its users the old subscription page, and they provide the other 50% what they think will attract more subscriptions. They run the test, compare the statistics for the old page to the new page, and make their decisions based on that. A is the old page, and B is the proposed page. It’s that simple.
Pitch: I recently read a report from a data visualisation company on the “Top Ten Big Data Trends for 2017”. This is what they told me “Hadoop is no longer just a batch-processing platform for data-science use cases. It has become a multi-purpose engine for ad hoc analysis. It’s even being used for operational reporting on day-to-day workloads—the kind traditionally handled by data warehouses.” Continue reading →