Gary Robinson is an American
software engineer
Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development.
A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...
and
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
[ and inventor notable for his mathematical algorithms to fight ]spam
Spam may refer to:
* Spam (food), a canned pork meat product
* Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages
** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages
** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ( ...
. In addition, he patented a method to use web browser cookies to track consumers across different web sites, allowing marketers to better match advertisements with consumers.[US 5918014 A, Application number US 08/774,180, Publication date Jun 29, 1999, Filing date Dec 26, 1996]
Automated collaborative filtering in world wide web advertising
"... This invention combines techniques for: determining the subject's community, and determining which ads to show ... to determine whether a given individual should be in the subject's community is gleaned from the individual's activities ... Means are provided to track a consumer's activities ... e.g. by means of "cookies"..." The patent was bought by DoubleClick
DoubleClick Inc. was an advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google in March 2008. DoubleClick offered technology products and services that were sold primarily to adv ...
, and then DoubleClick was bought by Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
.[Bill Slawski, Apr 14, 2007, SEO by the Sea]
Doubleclick + Google: Looking at Some of the Doubleclick Patent Filings
Accessed March 12, 2014, "... smart ad box showing on a page that displays different advertisements to users over time, based upon a recommendations system. ..." He is credited as being one of the first to use automated collaborative filtering
Collaborative filtering (CF) is a technique used by recommender systems.Francesco Ricci and Lior Rokach and Bracha ShapiraIntroduction to Recommender Systems Handbook Recommender Systems Handbook, Springer, 2011, pp. 1-35 Collaborative filtering ...
technologies to turn word-of-mouth recommendations into useful data.[Matthew French, May 20, 2002, Boston Business Journal]
Romantic beginnings have worldwide effect
Retrieved August 6, 2016, "... Gary Robinson ... a mathematician by training ... first automated collaborative filtering applications ..."
Algorithms to identify spam
In 2003, Robinson's article in '' Linux Journal'' detailed a new approach to computer programming
Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as ana ...
perhaps best described as a ''general purpose classifier'' which expanded on the usefulness of Bayesian filtering. Robinson's method used math-intensive algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...
s combined with Chi-square statistical testing to enable computers to examine an unknown file and make intelligent guesses about what was in it.[ The technique had wide applicability; for example, Robinson's method enabled computers to examine a file and guess, with much greater accuracy, whether it contained ]pornography
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults, , or whether an incoming email to a corporation was a technical question or a sales-related question.[Ben Kamens, Fog Creek Publishing]
Bayesian Filtering: Beyond Binary Classification
, Retrieved February 7, 2015, "... Of these, Robinson's technique ... borrowed from R.A. Fischer's combination of probabilities into a chi-squared distribution, has been extensively tested and is used by the most successful filters, including SpamBayes. Robinson provides ample theoretical justification for this improvement in practical accuracy over the original filters ..." The method became the basis for anti-spam techniques
Various anti-spam techniques are used to prevent email spam (unsolicited bulk email).
No technique is a complete solution to the spam problem, and each has trade-offs between incorrectly rejecting legitimate email (false positives) as opposed to ...
used by Tim Peters and Rob Hooft of the influential SpamBayes
SpamBayes is a Bayesian spam filter written in Python which uses techniques laid out by Paul Graham in his essay "A Plan for Spam". It has subsequently been improved by Gary Robinson and Tim Peters, among others.
The most notable difference b ...
project. Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited, undesired bulk messages. SpamBayes assigned probability scores to both ''spam'' and ''ham'' (useful emails) to guess intelligently whether an incoming email was spam; the scoring system enabled the program to return a value of ''unsure'' if both the ''spam'' and ''ham'' scores were high. Robinson's method was used in other anti-spam projects such as SpamAssassin
Apache SpamAssassin is a computer program used for e-mail spam filtering. It uses a variety of spam-detection techniques, including DNS and fuzzy checksum techniques, Bayesian filtering, external programs, blacklists and online databases. It i ...
. Robinson commented in '' Linux Journal'' on how fighting spam was a collaborative effort:
In 1996, Robinson patented a method to help marketers focus their online advertisements to consumers. He explained:
Entrepreneurial activity
In 2010, Robinson was the chief technology officer at FlyFi, an online music service owned by Maine
Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north ...
-based Emergent Discovery which uses his anti-spam programming techniques along with collaborative filtering
Collaborative filtering (CF) is a technique used by recommender systems.Francesco Ricci and Lior Rokach and Bracha ShapiraIntroduction to Recommender Systems Handbook Recommender Systems Handbook, Springer, 2011, pp. 1-35 Collaborative filtering ...
technologies to help make music recommendations to web users. His blog ''Gary Robinson's Rants'' has been quoted by others in the computer and online music industries[ and cited by academic papers.] Robinson helped develop recommendation engine technology which applies high-power mathematical techniques using software algorithms to have a computer guess intelligently about what a consumer might like. For example, if a consumer likes music by artists such as the ''Beach Boys'', ''Bob Dylan'' and the ''Talking Heads'', the computer software will match these preferences with a much larger dataset of other consumers who ''also like'' those three artists but which cumulatively has much greater musical knowledge than the single consumer. Accordingly, the computer will find music that the user might like but hasn't been exposed to, and therefore hopefully offer intelligent recommendations, in a process which has come to be called knowledge management
Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making ...
.[ But the mathematics behind such comparisons can become quite complex and involved. Robinson studied ]mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
at Bard College
Bard College is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic District—a National Historic Landmark.
Founded in 1860, ...
and graduated in 1979 and studied further at the Courant Institute
The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU), and is among the most prestigious mathematics schools and mathematical sciences research cente ...
of New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
.[ In the 1980s, Robinson worked on an entrepreneurial start-up dating service called ''212-Romance'' which used similar computer algorithms to match singles romantically.] The New York City-based voice mail dating service created community-based automated recommendations and used collaborative filtering
Collaborative filtering (CF) is a technique used by recommender systems.Francesco Ricci and Lior Rokach and Bracha ShapiraIntroduction to Recommender Systems Handbook Recommender Systems Handbook, Springer, 2011, pp. 1-35 Collaborative filtering ...
technologies which Robinson developed further in other capacities.
References
External links
Gary Robinson's Rants
blog
Automated collaborative filtering
patent
{{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, Gary
Bard College alumni
American software engineers
People from Bronxville, New York
People from Maine
Living people
1956 births
American chief technology officers
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences alumni
Engineers from New York (state)