David Donoho xamplify sucks

David Donoho

David Donoho, a statistics professor at Stanford, has worked on wavelets, curvelets, ridgelets, and beamlets.

David Donoho and Xamplify

Dave Donoho was associated with Xamplify (almost) right from start, sometimes listed as part of management team and sometimes as one of its advisors. Just like Niels Waller of Vanderbilt. While Niels Waller was the psychometrics advisor, David Donoho was the statistics advisor. During my 8 months at Xamplify, I saw Dave Donoho visit our office once and it apparently had nothing to do with any technical advising.

David Donoho and Hype

The company generously used David Donoho’s name on its recruitment ads, website, and presentation material for potential customers/investors. In return Donoho discreetly dropped Jeffrey Klein and Xamplify’s name in academic conferences. (He also mentioned Jim Simons' Renaissance Technologies' scientist too.)

David Donoho and Statistics

The company claimed things like its survey of about 1000 customers could accurately predict psychometrics of millions of other customers – individually. David Donoho’s name was mentioned as the architect of its methodology. In reality, the company could not even accurately predict most psychometrics of the customers who took the survey, let alone for other customers.

David Donoho and Me

When I responded to company’s job ad, Donoho was listed as one of its statistics advisors. Cool, I thought. During the interview too, Sumer Johal and Tom Emerson led me to believe so. However, David Donoho never showed up except once. After I left the company, I sent an email to Donoho (and to Niels Waller, Alan Stein, Elwyn Berlekamp) to remove their names from the website or else. Their names were removed.

David Donoho, Money Laundering, and Homeland Security

Soon after Donoho’s name was removed from Xamplify’s website, the company came up with the announcement that it could accurately predict from response to its online survey, which individuals are likely to be involved in money laundering activities. It is interesting that around that time Dave Donoho and other mathematicians attended a conference regarding mathematical sciences' role in Homeland Security.

David (Dave) Donoho, Stanford, Links