computer science

Yahoo Labs

Yahoo Labs is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Yahoo Labs rather than just read about it. In short: Yahoo! Labs was Yahoo!'s research arm that developed technologies used within the company.

Key takeaways

Yahoo Labs belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Yahoo Labs to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Yahoo Labs from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Yahoo! Labs was Yahoo!'s research arm that developed technologies used within the company. Yahoo! Labs included approximately 200 employees. Yahoo! Labs was headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA; it had three additional locations worldwide: New York, London, and Haifa. Yahoo! Labs Barcelona was closed in early 2015. Yahoo! announced that Yahoo! Labs was being shut down and was subsequently replaced with Yahoo! Research on February 17, 2016.

History In July 2005, Usama Fayyad (Yahoo!’s Chief Data Officer), Prabhakar Raghavan, Andrew Tomkins, Kevin Lang and other employees who were working for the former "Yahoo! Research Labs" organization formed the new research team. Raghavan was named as Head of Yahoo! Research. Ronald J. Brachman, having finished a term as office director at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), joined as the head of worldwide research operations in early September. The team was soon joined by Andrei Broder and Ricardo Baeza-Yates. Yahoo! Labs was formed in 2008 through a proposal by Ronald Brachman and Larry Heck from the "Yahoo! Search and Advertising Sciences Lab". The proposal combined the two labs into a single organization. In 2012, Ron Brachman took over as head of "Yahoo! Labs" and also became Yahoo's chief scientist.

Other ventures Yahoo! Labs" also included a group unrelated to research:

Academic Partnerships Yahoo Labs partnered with certain academic organizations and schools to assist internal operation in Yahoo Labs.

Research areas This is a list of areas that Yahoo! Labs reasearched.

Advertising science Content understanding Data science Image and video understanding Information retrieval Machine learning Metrics and user engagement Natural language and dialogue understanding Optimization and feedback control Scalable systems User modeling and personalization

References

External links Official website

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Yahoo Labs

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Yahoo Labs claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Yahoo Labs before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Yahoo Labs ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Yahoo Labs

In research: Yahoo Labs appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Yahoo Labs in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Yahoo Labs is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Computer science research organizations, Science and technology in the San Francisco Bay Area, Yahoo!, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Yahoo Labs outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Yahoo Labs in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Yahoo Labs means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Yahoo Labs out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Yahoo Labs in simple terms?

Yahoo! Labs was Yahoo!'s research arm that developed technologies used within the company.

Why does Yahoo Labs matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Yahoo Labs?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Yahoo Labs.