Features

SAN FRANCISCO — The race to perfect robot cars continues despite fears kindled by the death of a woman hit by a self-driving Uber vehicle while pushing a bicycle across an Arizona street.

Uber put a temporary halt to its self-driving car programme in the US after the fatal accident this month near Phoenix, where several other companies including Google-owned Waymo are testing such technology.

While the Uber accident may be used to advance arguments of those fearful of driverless cars, it does not change the fact that "transformative technology is coming whether we like it or not", according to Adie Tomer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

"There certainly will be calls to stop all autonomous vehicle testing, not just Uber's programme," Tomer said in a post on the institution's website.

"But, technological progress is hard to stop, and I don't expect it to happen in this case."

Furor caused by the Uber accident could keep some cities or states from allowing testing of autonomous cars, or prompt tighter national rules, but there is too much private investment taking place to stop it, according to Tomer.

Self-driving cars hold the promise of being more attentive and quicker to react than humans at the wheels, and would free people to use travel time more productively or pleasantly.

Waymo accelerates 

The governor of Arizona on Monday put the brakes on Uber's self-driving car programme in that state, citing "disturbing and alarming" dashcam footage from the fatal crash.

San Francisco-based Uber old AFP that it decided not to re-apply for a permit needed to operate autonomous vehicles on California roads.

Arizona and California have been particularly welcoming to self-driving car testing, hoping companies developing autonomous technology in those states will create local jobs and facilities devoted to a promising new industry.

Technology giants, automakers, and vehicle parts companies, sometimes in alliance, are racing toward a future where cars driving themselves whisk people wherever they wish.

The competition is fierce and costly, with billions of dollars being spent on research.

Waymo and Jaguar Land Rover on Tuesday announced they have joined forces to develop a "premium self-driving electric vehicle" based on a new I-PACE model.

Testing of an I-PACE equipped with Waymo self-driving technology will begin later this year, and the goal is to make it part of a Waymo driverless transportation service, according to Jaguar.

"This is just the beginning," the Waymo team said in an online post.

"The ultimate goal: with Waymo as the driver, products tailored for every purpose and every trip."

For example, self-driving vehicles could be designed for various needs such as working while commuting, celebratory nights out, or napping, according to Waymo.

Waymo Chief Executive John Krafcik over the weekend contended that the recent Uber accident would not have occurred with his company's technology.

"At Waymo, we have a lot of confidence that our technology would be able to handle a situation like that," Krafcik told a car dealership conference in Las Vegas.

Krafcik said Waymo's vehicles had clocked more than eight million kilometers on routes frequented by pedestrians since 2009 without being involved in a fatal accident.

Waymo early this year announced it was ordering "thousands" of minivans from Fiat Chrysler to expand its self-driving taxi program, which is launching this year in Phoenix, Arizona.

Caution signs 

The non-profit group Consumer Watchdog has argued that autonomous vehicles are not ready for roads and the public should not be put at risk to test such technology.

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal released a statement maintaining that the Uber accident "makes it clear that autonomous vehicle technology has a long way to go before it is truly safe for the passengers, pedestrians, and drivers".

Self-driving technology in the Uber car included some from California chip maker NVIDIA, which told AFP that it parked its test vehicles pending results of the accident investigation.

"Although we developed our self-driving technology independently, as good engineering practice, we will wait to learn from Uber's incident," an NVIDIA spokesman said.

NVIDIA shares suffered on the news, closing the formal trading day down 7.7 per cent to $225.52 on Tuesday.

Japanese auto giant Toyota also tapped the brakes on its autonomous car testing after the Uber accident, while German titan BMW maintained pace.

US federal authorities on Tuesday opened an investigation into a fatal accident in California involving a Tesla electric car, with one of the goals being to determine whether its autopilot system was engaged at the time.

The US Transportation Department last year closed an investigation into a fatal 2016 crash in Florida of a Tesla on autopilot, finding that no "safety-related defect" had caused that accident.

WASHINGTON, United States — Global consumption of antibiotics has soared since the year 2000, stoking calls for new policies to rein in usage — and fueling fears that the worldwide threat posed by drug-resistant superbugs will spiral out of control, researchers say.

A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) — based on sales data for 76 countries — shows that consumption of antibiotics increased 65 per cent from 2000 to 2015, driven by users in low- and middle-income countries.

The research team headed by scientists from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in the US capital said countries needed to invest in alternative treatments, sanitation and vaccination.

"With antibiotic consumption increasing worldwide, the challenge posed by antibiotic resistance is likely to get worse," said the authors of the study, which was published in Monday's edition of PNAS.

"Antibiotic resistance, driven by antibiotic consumption, is a growing global health threat," it said.

"As with climate change, there may be an unknown tipping point, and this could herald a future without effective antibiotics."

In the 76 countries studied, the number of so-called "defined daily doses" consumed rose from 21.2 billion in 2000 to 34.8 billion in 2015.

Eili Klein, a researcher at the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy and one of the study's authors, said the jump signifies "increased access to needed drugs in countries with lots of disease that can be effectively treated with antibiotics".

But, Klein warned: "As more and more countries gain access to these drugs, these rates will only increase and that will drive resistance rates higher."

One group of experts formed in the United Kingdom in 2014 estimates that in 2016, there were at least 700,000 deaths related to drug-resistant infections.

Stop overuse 

Over the 16-year period studied, the increase in antibiotics consumption was marginal in the three countries with the highest usage — the United States, France and Italy.

But it was a different story elsewhere: in Asia, consumption of antibiotics more than doubled in India, skyrocketed 79 per cent in China and rose 65 per cent in Pakistan.

The three countries are the biggest users of antibiotics among the countries deemed low and middle-income for the purposes of the study.

They are also countries that suffer in some areas from poor sanitation, irregular access to vaccines and a lack of cleaning drinking water — all conditions that allow infectious diseases and drug-resistant infections to spread.

"Radical rethinking of policies to reduce consumption is necessary, including major investments in improved hygiene, sanitation, vaccination, and access to diagnostic tools both to prevent unnecessary antibiotic use and to decrease the burden of infectious disease," the study says.

For Klein, eliminating overuse of antibiotics should be "a first step and a priority for every country", especially given the alarming projection that by 2030, consumption may have increased by another 200 per cent.

"Estimates are that 30 per cent of use in high income countries is inappropriate," Klein told AFP.

Girls who spend the most time on social media at age ten may be unhappier in their early teens than peers who use social media less during the ‘tween years, a UK study suggests.

Researchers looked at social media use and scores on tests of happiness and other aspects of well-being among boys and girls at age ten and each year until age 15. Overall, well-being decreased with age for boys and girls, but more so for girls. And high social media use early on predicted sharper increases in unhappiness for girls later.

For boys, social media use at ten had no association with well-being in the mid-teens, which suggests that other factors are more important influences on well-being changes in boys, the authors note in BMC Public Health.

“Our findings suggest that young girls, those aged ten, who are more interactive with social media have lower levels of well-being by age 15 than their peers who interact with social media less at age ten. We did not find any similar patterns for boys, suggesting that any changes in their well-being may not be due to social media,” said lead author Cara Booker, a researcher at the University of Essex.

Booker’s research group had done a previous study of social media use and wellbeing in adolescents, but wanted to explore how it changes over time, she said in an email. They had also noticed gender differences and wanted to look more closely at them, she added.

The study team analyzed data on nearly ten,000 teens from a large national survey of UK households conducted annually from 2009 to 2015. The researchers focused on how much time young participants spent “chatting” on social media on a typical school day.

The survey also contained questions about “strengths and difficulties” that assessed emotional and behavioural problems, and researchers generated a happiness score based on responses to other questions about school, family and home life.

The researchers found that adolescent girls used social media more than boys, though social media interaction increased with age for both boys and girls.

At age 13, about a half of girls were interacting on social media for more than one hour a day, compared to just one-third of boys.

By age 15, girls continued to use social media more than boys, with about 60 per cent of girls and just under half of the boys interacting on social media for one or more hours per day.

Social and emotional difficulties declined with age for boys, but rose for girls.

It is possible that girls are more sensitive than boys to social comparisons and interactions that impact self-esteem, the authors write. Or that the sedentary time spent on social media impacts health and happiness in other ways.

“Many hours of daily use may not be ideal,” Booker said.

The study cannot prove whether or how social media interactions affect young people’s well-being. The authors note that compared to girls, boys may spend more time gaming than “chatting” online, yet gaming has become increasingly social so it’s possible that it also has an effect that they did not examine in this study.

Yemen in Crisis: Autocracy, Neo-Liberalism and the Disintegration of a State
Helen Lackner
London: Saqi Books, 2017
Pp. 330

The title of this book might seem to indicate that it covers only the current situation, but it is much more. In explaining today’s crisis, Helen Lackner has written what amounts to a post-colonial history of Yemen. A social anthropologist, researcher at SOAS and leading authority on Yemen, Lackner’s involvement with the country is not solely academic. For fifteen years, she lived in different parts of Yemen, working on rural development projects. This might explain her admiration for Yemen’s natural beauty, as well as her committed, pro-people approach to its multifaceted crisis and how it could be solved once the war ends. For each of the socioeconomic facts and figures cited, she gives concrete examples of exactly what they mean for people’s lives. 

Tracing Yemen’s downward spiral from the 2011 popular uprising to the failed democratic transition and finally civil war and humanitarian disaster, Lackner is stringently objective and does not take sides among the competing, local, political and military forces and their shifting alliances. Instead, she adamantly sides with the Yemeni people: “None of the players involved demonstrated the slightest concern for the welfare of the 27 million Yemenis, most of whom suffered worsening conditions on a daily basis.” (p. 53) 

Her critique extends far beyond the Yemeni elite and political/military factions to encompass the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and international powers. “Throughout, the US administration has shown that support for the Saudi regime and arms sales, which spell cash for their companies, took priority over human rights and human life in Yemen.” (p. 88) The other US priority in Yemen is counter terrorism (drone warfare), whereas “for most Yemenis, jihadism is an insignificant threat in comparison with hunger, disease and other survival-related issues they face on a daily basis”. (p. 26) Also, the UK is singled out as being unwilling to alienate the Gulf states which it hopes will invest in its post-Brexit economy. All in all, “US military strikes and the intervention of the Saudi-led coalition since March 2015 have transformed Yemen into a country where external forces are pursuing their own geopolitical struggles, which have little or nothing to do with Yemenis.” (pp. 94-5) 

Lackner’s coverage of Yemen’s history is both comprehensive and in-depth, backed up by statistics and enriched with her own insights into the major political, social and economic transformations of half a century. After covering Yemen’s relations with the rest of the world, from its high rate of labour emigration to foreign interference, she analyses the period when there were two Yemeni republics and what factors led to reunification—developments which have seldom been analysed so clearly. 

The only potentially game-changing event to occur since “Yemen in Crisis” went to press is the assassination of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, but this does not change any of the book’s contentions. Dead or alive, his shadow looms large in the country’s fragmentation and increasing poverty due to his strategy of playing different parties off against each other, his corruption-riddled patronage system, mismanagement of the oil industry and embrace of the neoliberal model. All of this is analysed in detail in the book, and especially how it dramatically increased inequality, dividing Yemenis into a small elite dependent on connections to Saleh, and the vast, poor majority.

Lackner identifies water scarcity on a par with war in terms of threatening Yemen’s very existence. A big part of the problem is big landowners’ over-exploitation of water for irrigation of high value crops — a problem ignored by the former government as Saleh relied on the support of these powerful individuals. Equally to blame is the fact that “external financiers prioritised their international neo-liberal agenda which emphasised the development of high-value export crops at the expense of local food security and the living conditions of the majority”. (p. 225) This was compounded by the fact that many international donors have consistently failed to honour their pledges, and often funded counterproductive projects.

Yemeni society and the political movements it has spawned are highly complex. Yet, Lackner does an admirable job of tracing the rise and growth of influential movements from the Islamists to the Houthis and the southern separatists, and the relations among them, in terms of class, regional and tribal affiliations, as well as historical factors. Particularly interesting is her treatment of tribes whose role has often been misinterpreted. “It is often claimed that jihadis operate in alliance with tribes, something which largely derives from the complete [and often deliberate, some might say racist] misunderstanding of the nature and dynamics of Yemeni tribes.” (p. 141)Her analysis of tribes and their relations to the state and various political/military forces contains insights which could be applied to tribes in other countries and contexts.

Lackner’s arguments are impeccably logical, her writing is lucid and bold. The preface begins with the one-word sentence: Hope — hope for the war to end and for Yemenis to be enabled to embark on more equitable development. “Yemen in Crisis” will be useful to experts and to those seeking new understanding of the subject. Enhancing its clarity and usefulness, the text is prefaced by three excellent maps, a glossary, note on transliteration and abbreviations and a timeline from 1839 (the British occupation of Aden) to July 2017. 

Sally Bland

By Dana Judeh

As we said goodbye to 2017, we looked forward to the hope and possibilities that 2018 brings. Even though we are excited about the possibility of change (a new job, business venture, a new habit or relationship), some of us may feel hesitant or paralysed, creating our own obstacles or making excuses not to change.

This feeling is related to our present reality; it originates from either being stuck in our comfort zone, which makes it very difficult for us to take action and move forward, or because of past negative experiences that unleash an overwhelming number of questions:

Am I really making the right move?

How will my family and friends react to my new decision? What if I miss my old life?

What if this new venture will put me in a situation worse than what I have now?

Will I be overwhelmed by my new situation and decide that I am just not up to the challenge?

What if I fail? Instead of feeling a sense of eagerness about great chances for a better life, you might feel paralysed by a range of fears.

Change is always a bit scary. Even if we are sick and tired of our current situation, at least it’s familiar. We can operate within and negotiate familiar obstacles with relative ease. Starting to ask “what if” questions can keep us from feeling our way into a better reality.

“What ifs” are assumptions that are used to assure something with no proof. In order to overcome our fears of change, let us turn the negative assumptions of “what ifs” into positive and motivational ones:

What if I have a “Plan B” or “what if I expand my horizons to what I dream”? This can help you feel more confident about moving forward

What if I choose to see change as gaining better

and healthier habits instead of losing a presently comfortable lifestyle? The wonderful thing about change is that it is completely up to us how we decide to view it

What if I focus on certainty by surrounding myself with support? When change becomes challenging, focus on what you know you will always have like a trusted friend, supportive family member, your strong will or your special talents

Even with these tips that can help us overcome fear, it can be difficult. Remember, you do not have to become fearless. Understanding that fear is a self-defence mechanism will help you to not let fear be the factor that holds you back from change and living your full potential.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

A growing number of people are taking high doses of the painkiller acetaminophen, and many take so much during cold and flu season that they run the risk of liver and kidney damage, two studies suggest.

Throughout the year, 6.3 per cent of acetaminophen users take more than the maximum recommended daily dose at least one day during weeks when they use the drug, one study of 14,481 US adults found.

During cold and flu season, however, people were 24 per cent more likely to exceed the maximum recommended dose of 4,000 milligrammes at least once a week.

Acetaminophen, sold as paracetamol in Europe, can ease a fever, but many people may take too much of the painkiller out of a mistaken belief that it will also cure the flu, said Liffert Vogt, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam Academic Medical Centre in the Netherlands who was not involved in the study.

“I would not recommend taking acetaminophen for cold and flu symptoms,” Vogt said by e-mail. “Taking a cup of soup will be much more efficacious than taking a pill.”

In the US study, the proportion of people taking too much acetaminophen was not large — 6.5 per cent during cold and flu season compared with 5.3 per cent at other times of year. But because millions of adults use the drug, the increase during cold and flu season adds up to a large added risk in the general population, the authors note.

Taking too much acetaminophen (Tylenol) is associated with liver and kidney damage, especially at high doses and with long-term use, Vogt said. While the risk of these complications is lower with acetaminophen than with other painkillers like ibuprofen (Motrin) or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) like Aleve, all of these painkillers can cause problems when people take too much.

Patients need to read labels carefully to make sure all of the different remedies they try to ease cold and flu symptoms do not contain more than the maximum recommended doses of acetaminophen or other painkillers.

“Getting this message out is especially important during cold and flu season, when people may be more likely to treat symptoms with acetaminophen combination products, sometimes without even realising they contain acetaminophen,” lead study author Saul Shiffman of Pinney Associates and the University of Pittsburg said in a statement.

The problem of acetaminophen overuse is not limited to the US; a second study examining painkiller use in France from 2006 to 2015 found that country to be the top user of acetaminophen in Europe. France also ranked third for use of mild opioids, researchers found.

During the study period, use of acetaminophen surged 53 per cent in France.

Thousand-milligramme tablets of acetaminophen have been the most commonly used drug among adults there since 2008. While use of these high-dose pills more than doubled during the Ten-year study period, use of 500-milligramme tablets declined by 20 per cent.

Both studies were published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

Neither study examined rates of health problems associated with taking too much acetaminophen, nor why usage goes up seasonally or over time. Another limitation of the studies is that researchers could not distinguish medically necessary usage from potential substance use problems or accidental overuse.

“This extensive analgesics consumption that we have documented raises the concern of overuse and misuse, as well as addiction to opioids,” said the lead author of the French study, Karima Hider-Mlynarz of the French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety in Saint-Denis.

“Even it is prescribed and widespread used, none of the analgesic drugs are harmless and the dose must always be respected,” Hider-Mlynarz said by e-mail.

By Rania B. Kudsi 

HR Professional and Career Coach 

Initially, let us define what personal branding is and its effectiveness to get you hired. 

According to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” Personal Branding, in other words, the YOU brand: it is communicating the uniqueness you offer to the world, Personal Branding highlights your skills, experiences, qualifications, strengths, passion, goals and your positive attitude sets which differentiate you and let you stand out from the crowd. 

Why build your Personal Branding? And how does it relate to your career ?

• It helps you understand and define yourself, which leads to connecting yourself with your values, qualifications, skills and allowing you to pursue whatever it is that you are passionate about.

• It helps you figure out what makes you unique and differentiate you from the crowd. 

• It provides a clear focus for personal development.

•It changes your mindset and makes you think outside the box.

• It helps the employer get to know you better, as Personal Branding serves as a CV demonstrating your skills, values, attitude, qualifications, and passion.

• It makes it easy to connect with you; as an active strong branded candidate, employers will be attracted to your profile which will make it easier for you to reach the hiring manager through networking and not through the “apply” button. In fact, they might get in touch before you even think of applying or notice any job opening.

• Personal brands attract recruiters. Most professional recruiters now use social media to do a lot of their scouting, so having an attractive personal brand could draw in potential job opportunities.

• “Developing your personal brand is the proactive way of controlling your career development and how you are perceived in the marketplace.” 

How to build an attractive strong Personal Branding 

Whether you like it or not you have to be active on social media. We are living in a digital age which I believe, made it easier for candidates to market themselves and create their unique identity.

According to lucaspsg.ca, below are some tips how to get started: 

• Get involved on multiple platforms (Especially Linkedin) and align your presence on every channel, building your profiles as fully as possible.

• Follow and engage with leaders and influencers in your industry and join groups and discussions to demonstrate your expertise. This will show that you are an engaged and active part of your professional community. For example, look for groups on LinkedIn relevant to your specific field and engage with other professionals.

• Post frequently and update your profiles regularly. Also, be purposeful in what you share; posting content that adds value to your audience.

• Develop your brand with a professional foundation but showcases the traits and habits that make you unique. If you have a fun hobby, show it off! Just avoid posting anything risky, potentially offensive, or something that might make you seem unprofessional. In other words, be yourself, but use good judgement.

• Learn all that you can and become the expert in that area. You can never stop learning. Read, absorb and teach.

• Share your knowledge: Leaning is not enough; you have to help others. Share your knowledge and be a leader within your field. 

• Do not be afraid to talk about yourself, you have to master the “promote yourself” method and attract hiring managers’ and recruiters’ attention not by bragging but by knowledge, expertise, volunteering, values and interests. 

A successful personal brand is ubiquitous, continuously evolving and has a strong narrative. 

So, what is your story?  What do you want people to associate with you when they see your name? Once you understand how you want your brand to be perceived, you can start to be strategic about it while remaining authentic to who you are.

Below are some social media platforms to build your social branding:

1.   Linkedin 

2.   www.steller.co

3. Personal website: It can be two to three pages, which includes your resume, accomplishments and links to all your social media platforms.

4. Twitter

5. Google+

The writer is the founder of Global HCI and a human resources professional

Programmes that encourage parents to read with their kids may teach more than just book smarts — a new study suggests they may also be associated with better behaviour and emotional health.

Reading interventions have long been linked to improvements in language and literacy, especially among young children whose parents have limited income or education. But less is known about the benefits for more affluent families or the potential for these efforts to improve social, emotional or behavioural functioning for kids and their parents.

The current analysis examined data from 18 previously published studies that included 3,264 families from a variety of backgrounds. Results showed that kids who participated in reading programmes had better social and emotional skills, behaviour and literacy than children who did not.

Parents in the reading programmes also had less stress and anxiety and more confidence in their parenting skills than parents who did not participate in these interventions, researchers report in Pediatrics.

“Reading to children is not only for having a smart child but also for having a happy child and a good parent-child relationship as well,” said lead study author Qian-Wen Xie, of the University of Hong Kong.

Some parents may not realise it is important for them to read aloud with kids from a very young age, Xie said by e-mail. Even when they know reading matters, parents might be pressed for time, unable to afford books, or unfamiliar with interactive reading techniques that can make the biggest impact on cognitive, social, emotional and behavioural development.

All of the studies included in the analysis randomly assigned some families to participate in reading programmes and others to join control groups that did not receive this help. Some included free books.

Some programmes targeted toddlers and preschoolers, while others focused on children in elementary school. Often, the reading interventions were provided to children at risk for behaviour problems or language delays, or kids in low-income households with parents who had limited education.

The majority of programmes gave parents structured training in how to read with children, with anywhere from 2 to 28 group or individual coaching sessions.

One limitation of the analysis was that the studies were too varied to test the effect of specific aspects of the reading programmes. Researchers could not tell, for example, whether free books or one-on-one coaching in families’ homes might influence how well the interventions worked.

Still, the results offer fresh evidence that early literacy programmes have the potential to improve well-being for parents and children, regardless of race, income or gender, said Dr Caroline Kistin, a pediatrics researcher at Boston University School of Medicine who was not involved in the study.

“Shared reading supports child cognitive development, helps children develop the ability to pay attention and cooperate, and serves as a bonding opportunity for parents and children,” Kistin said by e-mail.

“The shared experience — spending time together, sitting close to each other, making connections between the book and daily life — are critical,” Kistin added. “The findings from this study highlight that the time spent reading together also improves parents’ well-being and is associated with decreased stress, decreased depression, and increased markers of parental competence.”

LONDON — I’m 57, with a 30-year-old wife, a fairly new hot water boiler, an old-style television, a petrol car and no kids.

Actually, none of that is true. But that is what you might believe if you purchased access to my data from the world’s largest information broker by market value.

The recent revelation that data miner Cambridge Analytica Ltd. improperly accessed 50 million Facebook users’ personal data has heightened public concern about the way companies harvest and use our personal data.

I asked Arkansas-based Acxiom Corp., which earns over $800 million a year selling consumer profiles to the world’s largest companies, what data and insights it held on me.

In Europe and the US, companies like Acxiom are allowed to collect data from public and other sources about us. European privacy rules, which are due to be strengthened in coming months, require all data gatherers to disclose to any European who asks what information they hold on them. US law does not give Americans the right to this level of disclosure.

The result of my inquiry shows how, even with little raw data, companies attempt to build detailed pictures of individuals’ finances, relationships, personal interests and purchasing tastes.

These profiles now power the elaborate machinery that delivers advertising across the Internet, and can also be used to determine what political issues people are interested in and how they might vote.

The question is: How accurate are the pictures they sketch?

‘Affluent fun seeker’

Acxiom — like its rivals — operates by gathering publicly available information from sources like the electoral roll, which gives individuals’ addresses, and land registry data, which provides details on home ownership such as purchase price and if there is a mortgage on the property.

It also buys data from companies that conduct online surveys, as well as websites where you forgot to tick “don’t share with third parties” and other sources. This data is then put into a proprietary model, which produces a list of data points and propensities, such as the likelihood a consumer might visit a betting shop.

Acxiom sells access to these profiles to companies that wish to target advertising at potential customers. Acxiom doesn’t have a political arm like Cambridge Analytica does, but the two companies do compete for commercial customers.

Facebook, in the wake of the scandal over how it handles personal information, said on Wednesday it would end its partnerships with several large data brokers who help advertisers target people on the social network. Shares in Acxiom traded down more than 10 per cent to $25 following Facebook’s announcement.

The results for a single individual obviously don’t tell us too much about the accuracy of a database that Acxiom says contains 47 million UK profiles and insights into 700 million consumers worldwide.

Also, it seems I am a bad data subject since I usually opt out when asked to give companies data sharing rights.

“Where we have more self-reported, privacy-compliant data about individuals, we can be more accurate. In your case, we held very little of this data and the majority of the variables linked to you, are modelled, based on both your postcode and the household history,” Acxiom said in a statement.

My Acxiom profile has around 750 individual data fields under a dozen categories from “household composition” to “employment & income” and “lifestyle & interests”. It categorises me as an “affluent fun-seeker”. The accuracy of that description depends on your definition, I suppose, but some of the information is plain wrong.

To start with, I’m 46 years old, not 57. I won’t reveal my wife’s age, but I will confirm that when I got married at age 34, it was not to a teenager. Two children mean we’re not “empty nesters”, I drive a diesel car and our boiler is more than 15 years old, not less than five years as Acxiom identifies it as.

That could be a disappointment for the companies, including Tesco supermarket, Twitter, Ford Motor Company and Facebook, to whom Acxiom said it may have provided my data in the past year. Or maybe not.

Profile errors

The fact that my profile contains errors isn’t necessarily a problem for marketers said Carol Hargreaves, a professor and director of the Data Analytics Consulting Centre at the National University of Singapore.

What really matters is the predictions of one’s behaviour, interests and propensity to buy certain kinds of products.

“The things you sell to a male of 46 or a male of 57 are the same,” Hargreaves said.

In some potentially key areas, the data is certainly better than a random guess. It predicted that I had just a 5.2 per cent probability of being self-employed, rather than employed. Official data shows around 17 per cent of Britons are self-employed.

Acxiom’s prediction of my household income was also much closer to the actual number than the average published by the Greater London Authority for my electoral ward, or local electoral district, the narrowest official estimate.

But if purchase decisions are driven by lifestyle interests, the data collected on me is of little use to marketers.

My predicted annual car mileage was 12874 to 16093km, based on “modelled probability”. This figure echoes the 13526 miles that car breakdown group the RAC says the average London motorist drives each year. But it’s over twice my annual mileage.

Acxiom incorrectly says I don’t have a flat screen television, something it “derived through modelling”, even though a UK government report from 2013 says most households do.

One in seven Britons is a member of a gym, according to a 2017 industry survey; Acxiom reckons there’s a 47.5 per cent chance that I am interested in belonging to a gym. My last subscription expired over a decade ago.

Acxiom also thinks I am more likely to be interested in crossword puzzles — I haven’t done one since the 1980s — than in current affairs, which has been my working life for 20 years.

On the positive side, there are indications Acxiom does not engage in racial profiling: The company predicts I have a 13.6 per cent probability of interest in regularly going to a bar. I asked Hargreaves, the professor, if this seemed a statistically reasonable estimate for an Irish journalist. After she stopped laughing, Hargreaves said accurate predictions hinged on the raw data on which the profile is based.

Band wagon

Acxiom said individual inaccuracies did not undermine the value of its service.

“We know from working with leading brands, that data helps them deliver more accurate and relevant marketing to customers at scale... The key factor here is, ‘at scale’,” it said in a statement.

Annabel Kilner, chief commercial officer at furniture retailer
MADE.com said consumer data helped firms deliver messages that consumers found relevant.

“We adopt a test and learn approach to optimising our campaigns,” Kilner said.

Xiaojing Dong, associate professor of marketing and business analytics at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley, said that qualitative predictions like those produced by Acxiom gave advertisers a much better idea of who they are reaching.

But Hargreaves said there was concern among some advertisers that the consumer profiles they purchase from data aggregators may not always be worth the large fees involved. Hargreaves said she is about to start working with clients of companies like Acxiom to ascertain whether they were getting value for money.

“Some of the data vendors are just jumping on the band wagon,” she said.

The key to accurate profiling, experts said, was good raw data. The best is held by those companies with whom we have the deepest interactions — social media giants like Facebook or Twitter and retailers like Amazon.com.

Stephan Lewandowsky, a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol in Britain, said that explains why companies like Cambridge Analytica would be so eager to access Facebook data.

“The difference between using the electoral roll and Facebook is that the information we reveal on Facebook is sufficient for a computer programme to infer our personality with greater accuracy than our own spouse,” he said.