would have taken months says meinel meanwhile researchers at the university of manchester are working on another big data project a magic carpet that could help senior citizens who live alone the device is installed on the floor like an ordinary carpet with builtin sensors recording the persons steps the data enables a computer to determine whether the person has gotten out of bed for example and can analyze activities to see how they compare with the persons normal movement pattern deviations could indicate a medical emergency and an alarm is triggered the carpet sensors can detect the tiniest of differences in a persons step and thus indicate that something isnt right with the patient before a possible fall scientists are also experimenting with other logical extensions of the concept for instance chips and sensors with these kinds of alarm functions can also be incorporated into artificial hipsthe algorithm builderstefan henss a student had initially hoped to earn a little extra cash by betting on sporting events hoping to outsmart the bookies he wrote a program that was supposed to precisely predict football scores but it didnt work very well henss was 10 when he got his first computer and he started programming at 13 three years ago when he was in his early 20s and studying at the technical university of darmstadt he happened upon kaggle a platform where companies tender data projects the companies are interested in obtaining the most precise predictions possible as well as solving difficult problems for which they are unable to find solutions on their own henss chose a task that had been posted by a car dealership platform which was searching for a way to predict the resale prospects of used cars he built an algorithm in which he inserted a large number of details about the cars into a context that made sense as he describes it the information included data such as original registration dates mileage and annual distance driven he submitted his solution and came in sixth among the 571 teams from around the world competing for the 10000 award the challenge had awakened his ambition competing with others was incredibly motivating i knew that i was onto something says henss who has since become one of the most successful algorithm builders on kaggle nowadays he chooses his challenges more strategically partly based on the amount of the awardcomputer grading the approach led him to his biggest triumph to date the challenge was to write a program that could automatically and reliably evaluate student essays essentially a grading machine using various standard algorithms henss built a program that takes the wealth of language into account determines the number of spelling errors per word and recognizes grammatical errors the program can draw conclusions on the content of essays his algorithm can even detect how levelheaded the writer was or whether emotions were at play he spent a month and a half working exclusively on the program which eventually consisted of