title: Evil Dead Rise

text: At the South by Southwest premiere, Fede Álvarez announced that his film "Evil Dead" (2013), a remake of "The Evil Dead" (1981), would be getting a sequel and was in the works. In addition, Sam Raimi confirmed plans to write "Evil Dead 4" with his brother Ivan Raimi; it was later specified that the film would be a sequel to "Army of Darkness" (1992). At a WonderCon panel in March 2013, Bruce Campbell and Álvarez stated that their ultimate plan was for Álvarez's "Evil Dead 2" and Raimi's "Army of Darkness 2" to be followed by a seventh film which would merge the narratives of Ash Williams and Mia Allen. On October 30, 2013, co-writer Rodo Sayagues confirmed to "DesdeHollywood" that he and Álvarez would not return for the sequel. That same month, Álvarez took to his Twitter that the rumor was not true. Campbell confirmed that he would reprise his role as Ash in "Army of Darkness 2". Raimi was later confirmed to serve as director on "Army of Darkness 2". By November, Campbell expressed doubts in a fourth "Evil Dead" movie. In September 2017, during a panel at Fan Expo Canada, Campbell stated that he believes the only successful future for the franchise is via a premium cable network, citing "Ash vs Evil Dead" on Starz as an example.


title: Evil Dead Rise

text: In November 2018, Álvarez announced that "They're just ideas right now. Nothing to announce officially. We do have a script for "Don't Breathe 2". That's the only difference. We don't have a script for "Evil Dead 2". But we do have a script for "Don't Breathe 2" that we wrote." He also said that "When I tweeted that I was interested in seeing what people prefer. We were having some internal debates about what people would be interested in most. Unfortunately, "Evil Dead 2" won. Which, I guess I would have preferred "Don't Breathe 2" to win because it's one of my own creations. Obviously "Evil Dead" has the bigger following." On July 10, 2019, Raimi discussed the future of the "Evil Dead" franchise, saying that "We'd like to make another "Evil Dead" feature and in fact we're working on some ideas right now." Raimi said that he would be interested in making another film with Campbell, however, Campbell earlier claimed that he has retired from the role of Ash. He said another option would be a sequel to the 2013 reboot, however, he is unsure if Álvarez would want to make a sequel at this point because the director is a successful "artist in demand" now.


title: Evil Dead Rise

text: In October 2019, Raimi announced at New York Comic Con that a new film is in development. Robert G. Tapert was set to produce, while Raimi and Campbell will serve as executive producers only, all under their Ghost House Pictures banner. In June 2020, Campbell revealed that Lee Cronin was handpicked by Raimi to write and direct the film, then titled "Evil Dead Now". In May 2021, New Line Cinema (who distributed the first film) had picked up the film, with it scheduled to be released on HBO Max and retitled "Evil Dead Rise".


title: Evil Dead Rise

text: In May 2021, it was revealed that Alyssa Sutherland and Lily Sullivan had been cast in the lead roles. In June 2021, Gabrielle Echols, Morgan Davies, and Nell Fisher were added to the cast. In July 2021, Mia Challis joined the cast.


title: Evil Dead Rise

text: Principal photography began in New Zealand on June 6, 2021, with Dave Garbett serving as cinematographer. Garbett previously served as a cinematographer on several episodes of "Ash vs Evil Dead". On July 14, 2021, Cronin revealed that filming was officially half way done. Filming officially concluded on October 27, 2021, with Cronin revealing the film used over 6,500 liters of fake blood.


title: Evil Dead Rise

text: In April 2022, Stephen McKeon was announced to be composing the score, after collaborating with Cronin on "The Hole in the Ground" (2019). Bryan Shaw served as editor on the film, who previously edited 2013's "Evil Dead".


title: Evil Dead Rise

text: "Evil Dead Rise" is scheduled to be released theatrically on April 21, 2023, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film was originally set for a streaming-only release on HBO Max, but was moved to a theatrical release in August 2022 as part of a restructuring plan for film distribution at Warner Bros. that would see the studio relying less on HBO Max-only releases and more on theatrical releases.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Stefanos Tsitsipas (, ; born 12 August 1998) is a Greek professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as world No. 3 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), which he first achieved on 9 August 2021, making him the highest-ranked Greek player in history alongside Maria Sakkari. Tsitsipas was the champion at the 2019 ATP Finals, becoming the youngest winner of the year-end championships in eighteen years. He has won nine ATP singles titles (including two Masters 1000 championships) and appeared in a major final at the 2021 French Open, finishing runner-up to Novak Djokovic. He is also a three-time semifinalist at the Australian Open. He has a career-high doubles ranking of No. 64, achieved on 29 August 2022.Born into a tennis family – his mother Julia Apostoli was a professional on the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) tour and his father trained as a tennis coach – Tsitsipas was introduced to the sport at age three and began taking lessons at age six. As a junior, he was ranked No. 1 in the world. He also became the third Greek player, and first Greek male in the Open Era, to win a junior Grand Slam title with a victory in the 2016 Wimbledon boys' doubles event. Tsitsipas has trained at the Patrick Mouratoglou Academy in France since 2015.Tsitsipas won his first match on the ATP Tour in late 2017 and quickly ascended the ATP rankings the following year. He reached three tour-level finals in 2018 and won his first title at the Stockholm Open. With his runner-up finish at the 2018 Canadian Open, he became the youngest player to defeat four top ten opponents in a single tournament. Since culminating that season with an exhibition title at the Next Gen ATP Finals, Tsitsipas has become a fixture in the world's top 10. He won his first Masters 1000 event at the 2021 Monte-Carlo Masters, and defended his title in 2022. Tsitsipas was named the Greek Male Athlete of the Year for 2019.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas was born on 12 August 1998 to Apostolos Tsitsipas and Julia Apostoli (née Salnikova) in Athens. His father is Greek and he was born in Proastio, Karditsa and his mother is Russian. His maternal grandfather, Sergei Salnikov, was a Soviet footballer who played for Zenit Leningrad, Spartak Moscow and Dynamo Moscow. Both of his parents are experienced tennis players, and his mother in particular was a world No. 1 junior who had a career-high professional ranking inside the top 200 and represented the Soviet Union in the Federation Cup. His parents had been working as tennis instructors at the Astir Palace resort hotel in Vouliagmeni at the time of his birth. They originally met at a WTA tournament in Athens where his mother was competing and his father was a line judge. Stefanos has three younger siblings: two brothers Petros and Pavlos (Paul), and a sister Elisavet who is the youngest. All of his siblings are also tennis players.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: With their strong backgrounds in tennis, Tsitsipas's parents got their oldest son started on tennis at a very young age. Stefanos has said, "My first memory is to be three and to hit balls with my father in the gap between lessons. I remember watching games on TV, as a baby, I can not tell you who was playing, but I remember watching." He also participated in other sports as a kid, including football and swimming. His father said Stefanos made the decision to become a tennis player himself, recalling that his son "woke up in the middle of the night" after a tournament in France at age nine and told him "Dad, I have to tell you something: I want to become a tennis player, I like the competition, I like the challenge."


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas began taking lessons at Tennis Club Glyfada near Athens at the age of six, and has continued to train there. His father has always served as his primary coach, and he formally studied tennis coaching at the University of Athens to help train his children. In 2015, Tsitsipas also began training at the Patrick Mouratoglou Academy, splitting time between France and Greece during this period.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas is a former world No. 1 junior. He began playing on the ITF Junior Circuit in 2013 at the age of 14. He did not play in any high-level Grade A tournaments until the Abierto Juvenil Mexicano in November 2014, but was able to make it all the way to the final of his second career Grade A event at the Orange Bowl a month later. Tsitsipas had entered the tournament ranked outside of the top 100 in the junior rankings. In 2015, Tsitsipas got his first opportunity to play in the junior Grand Slam tournaments. In these four events, a quarterfinal at the Australian Open was his best result. He did not win any singles finals that year, but he did have another runner-up finish at the Orange Bowl, this time losing to Miomir Kecmanović in a third set tiebreak. He finished the season as the No. 14 ranked junior in the world.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: In 2016, Tsitsipas had a breakout year, reaching at least the quarterfinals of all eight tournaments that he played, including all four Grand Slams. He became the top-ranked junior in the world after winning his first Grade A title at the Trofeo Bonfiglio. Tsitsipas also won the European Junior Championships later in the year. Tsitsipas's biggest title of the season came in doubles, when he partnered with Estonian player Kenneth Raisma to win his only junior Grand Slam event at Wimbledon. He became the first male Greek to win a junior Grand Slam in the Open Era, and the second overall after Nicky Kalogeropoulos won both the French Open and Wimbledon in 1963. Besides his doubles triumph, Tsitsipas also had his two best finishes in the Grand Slam singles events that year, making the semifinals of both Wimbledon and the US Open. He ended the year as the No. 2 ranked junior in the world, behind only Kecmanović who had played several more events.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas began playing low-level ITF Futures events in Greece in 2013 shortly after turning 15, not long after he started competing on the junior tour. He qualified for his first event on the ATP Challenger Tour at the Burnie International in early 2015 while still 16 years old, but lost his only main draw match to Benjamin Mitchell. Tsitsipas won his first Futures title later that year and would go on to win a total of eleven such titles, five in singles and six in doubles, through the end of 2016. He also won his first Challenger match near the end of 2015 in Mohammedia in Morocco. Tsitsipas returned to Morocco a year later and reached his first two Challenger finals in back-to-back weeks at Mohammedia and Casablanca. This success in Africa helped him crack the top 200 later that October. Towards the end of that month, Tsitsipas was granted a qualifying wild card into the Swiss Indoors in Basel, his first ATP Tour appearance. He defeated Rajeev Ram in the opening round, but was unable to qualify after a loss to Robin Haase.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas played in his first ATP main draw at the 2017 Rotterdam Open, where he lost his debut match to the eventual champion Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. He also made his Grand Slam debut later that year as a qualifier at the French Open, but lost to Ivo Karlović in his first match. After losing in qualifying at the US Open, Tsitsipas won his first Challenger title in Genova. Overall, he qualified for a tour-best eight events during the season, including Wimbledon and the Shanghai Masters. However, he did not win a tour-level match until the very end of the season when he defeated fellow Next Gen player Karen Khachanov in Shanghai. At the European Open in Belgium the following week, Tsitsipas reached his first ATP semifinal as a qualifier. During the event, he upset hometown favorite and world No. 10 David Goffin for his first career top 10 victory. With this run, Tsitsipas became the first Greek player to be ranked in the top 100 of the ATP rankings, accomplishing the feat at the age of 19. He also reached a high enough ranking to be named an alternate for the Next Gen ATP Finals. Tsitsipas closed out the season with another Challenger final, this time in Brest.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas started the year at the Qatar Open where he lost in the quarterfinals to world No. 5 Dominic Thiem, again as a qualifier. After losing in the opening round in his Australian Open debut, his best result in the rest of the early-year hard court season was another quarterfinal at the Dubai Tennis Championships. Tsitsipas's first breakthrough of the year came at the Barcelona Open during the clay court season, where he reached his first career ATP final without dropping a set. During the ATP 500 Series tournament, he defeated three top 20 players including No. 7 Thiem, before losing to world No. 1 Rafael Nadal in a lopsided match. With this result, Tsitsipas moved into the top 50 and became the second Greek to reach an ATP final after Nicky Kalogeropoulos in 1973. His performance also gained national attention in Greece, where tennis is not a widely popular sport. The following week at the Estoril Open, he reached another semifinal. He also picked up a third career top ten victory over No. 8 Kevin Anderson.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas closed out the clay court season by winning his first career Grand Slam match at the French Open against Carlos Taberner before losing to Thiem, the eventual runner-up. He played the next Grand Slam at Wimbledon seeded for first time at No. 31. He took advantage of the seed and produced his best result at a major tournament at the time, a fourth round loss to No. 10 John Isner.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas had his second big breakthrough of the year in the lead up to the US Open. After reaching the semifinals in Washington, he reached his second final of the season and first career Masters final at the Canadian Open. During the tournament, he became the youngest player to record four top ten wins in a single event, defeating No. 8 Dominic Thiem, No. 10 Novak Djokovic, No. 3 Alexander Zverev, and No. 6 Kevin Anderson in succession. He also saved match points in the latter two matches. Tsitsipas lost the final to Nadal on his 20th birthday in a closer match than their first encounter. He also climbed to No. 15 in the world.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: At the US Open, Tsitsipas made his main draw debut, but was upset in the second round by fellow Next Gen player Daniil Medvedev. He cited fatigue as a factor in the loss and proceeded to exit before the quarterfinals at three of his next four tournaments as well. However, Tsitsipas was able to recover at the Stockholm Open. Playing as the third seed, he defeated second seed and No. 14 Fabio Fognini in the semifinals before winning in the final against veteran qualifier Ernests Gulbis. With the victory, he became the first Greek player to win an ATP title. Tsitsipas closed out his season at the Next Gen ATP Finals. He was the top seed at the event and was drawn with Frances Tiafoe, Hubert Hurkacz, and Jaume Munar. Tsitsipas swept his group and defeated Andrey Rublev to advance to the final against second seed Alex de Minaur. He defeated de Minaur in four sets to win the Next Gen Finals. At the end of the year, Tsitsipas was named the ATP Most Improved Player for his breakthrough season.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas began the season at the Hopman Cup alongside Maria Sakkari, making them the first team to represent Greece at the event in 17 years. They finished in a three-way tie for first in their round-robin group, having won their ties against the United States and Switzerland after being upset in their opening tie against Great Britain. They were ranked second on the tiebreak criteria and did not advance out of the group. Tsitsipas's only singles win was against Frances Tiafoe, while one of his losses was against Roger Federer. At the 2019 Australian Open, Tsitsipas reached his first major semifinal, despite having won just five Grand Slam singles matches in total the previous year. All five of his wins at the event came in four sets. He upset world No. 3 and defending champion Roger Federer in the fourth round, saving all twelve of the break points he faced in a rematch of their Hopman Cup encounter earlier in the month. After continuing his run against Roberto Bautista Agut, he easily lost to No. 2 Rafael Nadal, winning only six games. Nonetheless, his performance helped him climb to a career-best ranking of No. 12 in the world to become the highest-ranked Greek player in history.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas built on his Grand Slam success by reaching two finals in February in back-to-back weeks. He won his second career title at the Open 13 in Marseille over Mikhail Kukushkin before finishing runner-up to Federer at the Dubai Tennis Championships. His performance in Dubai put him in the top 10 of the ATP rankings for the first time. Tsitsipas closed out the early year hard court season with a career-best result in doubles, finishing runner-up to the Bryan brothers at the Miami Open with Wesley Koolhof. Tsitsipas also had an excellent clay court season. He won his first career clay court title a month later at the Estoril Open after defeating Pablo Cuevas in the final. The following week, he made another Masters final at the Madrid Open. During the event, he defeated No. 4 Alexander Zverev and No. 2 Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals and semifinals respectively before finishing runner-up to No. 1 Novak Djokovic. This was his first win over Nadal in four attempts. Nadal defeated Tsitsipas a week later at the Italian Open. Nonetheless, Tsitsipas rose to No. 6 in the world after this series of tournaments. At the French Open, Tsitsipas was upset in the fourth round by Stan Wawrinka, in a marathon five set match that ended 6–8 in the final set.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Despite a strong first half of the season, Tsitsipas began to struggle following the French Open. He lost his opening round matches at Wimbledon and the US Open to Thomas Fabbiano and Andrey Rublev respectively, and both Masters tournaments in August. Despite this, he reached a career-best ranking of No. 5 in early August. Tsitsipas ultimately rebounded beginning in October. He defeated Zverev again at the China Open en route to finishing runner-up to No. 5 Dominic Thiem. He then made two semifinals at the Shanghai Masters and the Swiss Indoors, losing to other top five players again in No. 4 Daniil Medvedev and No. 3 Roger Federer. At the end of the season, Tsitsipas qualified for the ATP Finals for the first time, where he was placed in a round-robin group with Nadal, Zverev, and Medvedev. He defeated both Medvedev


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: and Zverev to advance to the knockout stages after two matches. He lost his last group match to Nadal. In the semifinals, Tsitsipas defeated Federer to setup a final against Thiem. Tsitsipas won the championship in a tight match that ended in a third set tiebreak to become the youngest winner of the year-end championship since Lleyton Hewitt in 2001. He finished the season at No. 6 in the world.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: He entered the 2020 Australian Open seeded 6th in the men's bracket, but failed to repeat his success of 2019, losing in the 3rd round to Milos Raonic. He then entered the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament seeded 2nd, but failed to live up to his seed as he lost in the round of 16 to Aljaž Bedene. He recovered quickly to defend his title at the Open 13 tournament, winning his 5th ATP title, recording in the process 4 wins in a row without dropping a set, and defeating Félix Auger-Aliassime in the final. The following week he entered the Dubai Tennis Championships as the second seed behind Novak Djokovic. He recorded 4 wins in a row, reaching the final for the second successive year, where he lost in straight sets to the World No. 1.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: At the US Open, he was seeded 4th in the men's bracket. He beat Albert Ramos Viñolas and Maxime Cressy without dropping a set before losing to Borna Coric in the third round despite having six match points and being a break up in the 5th set.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: At the French Open, he was seeded 5th and reached the semifinal, defeating Grigor Dimitrov and Andrey Rublev, before losing to Djokovic in five sets.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas was unable to defend his 2019 ATP Finals title. He was eliminated from the season ending event with a 1–2 record during the round-robin portion of the competition, having defeated Andrey Rublev, but losing to Dominic Thiem and Rafael Nadal.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas started his 2021 Australian Open campaign with a comfortable straight sets win over Gilles Simon, before surviving a five set thriller with Thanasi Kokkinakis. He then beat Mikael Ymer in straight sets before being given a walkover by an injured Matteo Berrettini. In the quarterfinals, Tsitsipas became only the second player along with Fabio Fognini at the 2015 US Open to beat Rafael Nadal in a grand slam match from two sets to love down. He eventually lost in the semifinals to Daniil Medvedev. In Rotterdam, Tsitsipas lost in the semifinals to the eventual champion Andrey Rublev.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: In April, Tsitsipas won his first Masters 1000 title at the Monte-Carlo Masters, after defeating Aslan Karatsev, Cristian Garín, Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, Dan Evans and Andrey Rublev. In doing so, Tsitsipas became the first Greek player in history to win a Masters title. In May, Tsitsipas defeated Cameron Norrie in straight sets to win the 2021 Lyon Open and his seventh career title.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: At the French Open, Tsitsipas beat Pablo Carreño Busta and Daniil Medvedev to reach his second consecutive French Open semifinal and third consecutive Grand Slam semifinal. He beat Alexander Zverev in five sets to become the first Greek player in history to reach a major final. Tsitsipas achieved a career-high ranking of World No. 4 by advancing to the championship match. There, he lost to world No.1 Novak Djokovic in five sets despite holding a two sets to love lead.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas suffered an early exit at Wimbledon, losing to Frances Tiafoe in the first round. He took his revenge for the Wimbledon loss by defeating Tiafoe in the second round at the 2020 Olympics. He became the first Greek man to win a singles match at the Olympic Games with his first round win over Phillip Kohlschreiber since Augustos Zerlandis in 1924. He lost in the third round to Ugo Humbert of France in three sets. At the US Open, Tsitsipas defeated Andy Murray in 5 sets and Adrian Mannarino in 4 sets to reach the third round. In the third round, he was defeated in 5 sets with a final set tiebreak by World No. 55 and 18 year-old Carlos Alcaraz. At the 2021 BNP Paribas Open he reached the quarterfinals, beating Pedro Martínez, Fabio Fognini and Alex de Minaur before losing to Nikoloz Basilashvili. At the ATP Finals, Tsitsipas lost in straight sets to Andrey Rublev before withdrawing from the tournament due to an elbow injury.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: At the US Open, he faced a backlash for taking extended bathroom breaks. In the Cincinnati Masters before the US Open, during a match against Alexander Zverev, Tsitsipas landed in a controversy for taking an extended toilet break after Zverev complained to the umpire about the situation. In the US Open, the controversy became worse, after Tsitsipas took a toiled break twice, when he was losing his first round match against Andy Murray, and even asked to stop the match while down in one of the games. Murray complained after the second toilet break, claiming that Tsitsipas's breaks are too long and change the momentum of the game. He claimed to have "lost all respect" for Tsitsipas, and later, after losing the match, wrote on Twitter, claiming that it takes Tsitsipas twice as long to go to the toilet as it takes Jeff Bezos to fly into space.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: In doubles, Stefanos has partnered with his brother Petros Tsitsipas in seven tournaments where they have received six wildcards in doubles and they have lost five times out of seven in the first round since the beginning of the year. The misuse of wildcards in the case of the brothers have been brought up by players and fans.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: The Tsitsipas brothers received yet again their second Grand Slam and seventh wildcard for the year at the 2021 Wimbledon Championships. They also received the eight wildcard at the 2021 Hamburg European Open where Stefanos was the runner-up in 2020 and received also a wildcard for the 2021 edition in singles.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: At the 2022 Australian Open, Tsitsipas reached the semifinals for the third time, where he faced Daniil Medvedev in a rematch of the previous year's semifinal. He lost in four sets, and received a coaching violation when his father Apostolos was caught coaching in Greek.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas became the first man born in 1998 or later to get 200 career tour-level wins after defeating defeating Laslo Đere in the first round at the 2022 Abierto Mexicano Telcel tournament.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Stefanos Tsitsipas successfully defended his Monte-Carlo Masters title against Spaniard Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in two sets to capture his second ATP Masters 1000 title.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: At the 2022 Italian Open he reached the quarterfinals, defeating Grigor Dimitrov in the second round, saving two match points in the process and Karen Khachanov in the round of 16. In the quarterfinals he defeated Jannik Sinner to reach his third straight semifinal at a Masters level, earning a tour-leading 30 wins for the season. Next he defeated Alexander Zverev, his second consecutive win on clay, for a place in the final. Tsitsipas and Zverev were the only players to reach the semifinals at all three Masters 1000 tournaments on clay in the season. In the finals, he lost to Novak Djokovic.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: After some early losses in the Stuttgart Open and the Halle Open, Tsitsipas won his first title on grass courts after receiving a last minute wildcard at the Mallorca Open, defeating Roberto Bautista Agut in three tight sets.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: At the 2022 Wimbledon Championship, Tsitsipas lost in the third round to Nick Kyrgios in four sets. In a fiery match, Tsitsipas was fined $10,000 for two code violations.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: He reached his third Masters 1000 final of the season but lost to the in-form and lowest ranked (No. 152) champion in Masters history Croatian Borna Coric.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: At the 2022 US Open, Tsitsipas was seeded fourth. He was defeated by qualifier Daniel Elahi Galán in four sets in the first round, although Tsitsipas saved eight match points.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: In October, Tsitsipas reached the final of Astana Open, Kazakhstan, which he lost in straight sets to Novak Djokovic. Next he reached his seventh final at the Stockholm Open but he was defeated by Holger Rune in straight sets. He lost in the second round in Vienna. He recorded his 60th win for 2022 defeating Tommy Paul in the quarterfinals of the 2022 Rolex Paris Masters to reach his fifth Masters semifinal for the season. In the semifinals, he lost to Novak Djokovic in three sets.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: At the 2022 ATP Finals he lost again to Djokovic, his ninth consecutive loss against the five-time season finale champion, and Andrey Rublev, thus not being able to get past the round robin stage.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas is an aggressive baseliner capable of an all-court player style as well. He aims to hit powerful groundstroke winners and has a particularly strong forehand using an Eastern grip. His forehand is particularly useful in finishing points off of the first serve, as combined with his big serve, he uses his high topspin rate to pull opponents off the court for winners, or go to the net more often than typical baseline players. One of his weaknesses is to overhit and make unforced errors while trying to hit winners. He also struggles returning serve against players with strong kick serves on the backhand side, a weakness he has worked to improve through usage of blocked and slice returns on his backhand.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: His favourite shot is his one-handed backhand, a rarity in modern tennis. His forehand is still his stronger wing, however. He experimented with both one-handed and two-handed backhands in his youth, but chose to go with the former at around eight years old because both of his parents as well as his idol Roger Federer all use a one-handed backhand, and also because it felt more natural. His favourite shot is the backhand down-the-line.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas is regarded as having an all-court game. His favourite surface is grass and Wimbledon is his favourite tournament. Tsitsipas also excels on clay, having grown up playing on that surface in Greece. He has said, "I feel very confident when I step on the dirt. I always show my best tennis on this surface." Tsitsipas has also done well on hard courts, reaching two Masters finals (Canada, Cincinnati) and three Australian Open semifinals.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Former British No. 1 players Greg Rusedski and Annabel Croft have both praised Tsitsipas's on-court demeanor in conjunction with his style of play. Rusedski in particular has said that "[Tsitsipas] reminds me a little bit of Björn Borg. He does all the right things, he is spectacular as a tennis player and was just sensational with the way he was so calm and composed and he didn't blink when it came to the crunch. He has the competitive nature of Andy Murray, but he also has a calmness which reminds me of Roger Federer."


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas studied at an English-language school in his youth. He can speak English, Greek, and Russian. He is a supporter of Greek football club AEK Athens. Tsitsipas's hobbies include vlogging. He hosts his own YouTube channel where he posts videos of his travels. He was in a relationship with New York based research analyst Theodora Petalas from 2019-2022


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas credits his mother's twin sister, who was also a professional tennis player in the Soviet Union, with helping the family's finances so that he could afford to travel with his father to train and compete during his junior career. His maternal grandfather Sergei Salnikov was an Olympic gold medal-winning member of the Soviet national football team and a former manager of FC Spartak Moscow.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: During a Futures tournament in Crete, Tsitsipas nearly drowned while swimming at sea on an off-day. After a current carried him away from the shore, his father noticed what had happened and helped save his life. He attributes his confident approach of "[feeling] absolutely zero fear on the court" to the perspective he gained from this experience.


title: Stefanos Tsitsipas

text: Tsitsipas has expressed interest in promoting the sport of tennis in Greece, where he has said "tennis is not very popular." After his finals appearance at the 2018 Barcelona Open, he commented that his success was helping him achieve this goal. Of his performance and the attention it received, he stated, "Many people were talking about [the final] and I had plenty of interviews that I did on big channels in Greece for big media centres. It got people's attention... It makes me motivated to do even better in the future, and become even more popular... I hope to inspire more people to play tennis in Greece."


title: Solipsism

text: Solipsism (; ) is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.


title: Solipsism

text: Metaphysical solipsism is a variety of solipsism. Based on a philosophy of subjective idealism, metaphysical solipsists maintain that the self is the only existing reality and that all other realities, including the external world and other persons, are representations of that self, and have no independent existence. There are several versions of metaphysical solipsism, such as Caspar Hare's egocentric presentism (or perspectival realism), in which other people are conscious, but their experiences are simply not "present".


title: Solipsism

text: Epistemological solipsism is the variety of idealism according to which only the directly accessible mental contents of the solipsistic philosopher can be known. The existence of an external world is regarded as an unresolvable question rather than actually false. Further, one cannot also be certain as to what extent the external world exists independently of one's mind. For instance, it may be that a God-like being controls the sensations received by mind, making it appear as if there is an external world when most of it (excluding the God-like being and oneself) is false. However, the point remains that epistemological solipsists consider this an "unresolvable" question.


title: Solipsism

text: Methodological solipsism is an agnostic variant of solipsism. It exists in opposition to the strict epistemological requirements for "knowledge" ("e.g." the requirement that knowledge must be certain). It still entertains the points that any induction is fallible. Methodological solipsism sometimes goes even further to say that even what we perceive as the brain is actually part of the external world, for it is only through our senses that we can see or feel the mind. Only the existence of thoughts is known for certain.


title: Solipsism

text: Methodological solipsists do not intend to conclude that the stronger forms of solipsism are actually true. They simply emphasize that justifications of an external world must be founded on indisputable facts about their own consciousness. The methodological solipsist believes that subjective impressions (empiricism) or innate knowledge (rationalism) are the sole possible or proper starting point for philosophical construction. Often methodological solipsism is not held as a belief system, but rather used as a thought experiment to assist skepticism ("e.g." Descartes' Cartesian skepticism).


title: Solipsism

text: A feature of the metaphysical solipsistic worldview is the denial of the existence of other minds. Since personal experiences are private and often considered ineffable, another being's experience can be known only by analogy.


title: Solipsism

text: Philosophers try to build knowledge on more than an inference or analogy. The failure of Descartes' epistemological enterprise brought to popularity the idea that all certain knowledge may go no further than ""I think; therefore I exist"" without providing any real details about the nature of the "I" that has been proven to exist.


title: Solipsism

text: The theory of solipsism also merits close examination because it relates to three widely held philosophical presuppositions, each itself fundamental and wide-ranging in importance:


title: Solipsism

text: To expand on the second point, the conceptual problem here is that the previous assumes mind or consciousness (which are attributes) can exist independent of some entity having this attribute (a capability in this case), i.e., that an attribute of an existent can exist apart from the existent itself. If one admits to the existence of an independent entity (e.g., the brain) having that attribute, the door is open to an independent reality. (See Brain in a vat)


title: Solipsism

text: Some people hold that, while it cannot be proven that anything independent of one's mind exists, the point that solipsism makes is irrelevant. This is because, whether the world as we perceive it exists independently or not, we cannot escape this perception, hence it is best to act assuming that the world is independent of our minds. (See Falsifiability and testability below)


title: Solipsism

text: However, being aware simply acknowledges its existence; it does not identify the actual creations until they are observed by the user.


title: Solipsism

text: Solipsism was first recorded by the Greek presocratic sophist, Gorgias (c. 483–375 BC) who is quoted by the Roman sceptic Sextus Empiricus as having stated:


title: Solipsism

text: The foundations of solipsism are in turn the foundations of the view that the individual's understanding of any and all psychological concepts (thinking, willing, perceiving, etc.) is accomplished by making an analogy with their own mental states; "i.e.", by abstraction from "inner experience". And this view, or some variant of it, has been influential in philosophy since Descartes elevated the search for incontrovertible certainty to the status of the "primary goal" of epistemology, whilst also elevating epistemology to "first philosophy".


title: Solipsism

text: George Berkeley's arguments against materialism in favour of idealism provide the solipsist with a number of arguments not found in Descartes. While Descartes defends ontological dualism, thus accepting the existence of a material world ("res extensa") as well as immaterial minds ("res cogitans") and God, Berkeley denies the existence of matter but not minds, of which God is one.


title: Solipsism

text: One of the most fundamental debates in philosophy concerns the "true" nature of the world—whether it is some ethereal plane of ideas or a reality of atomic particles and energy. Materialism posits a real "world out there", as well as in and through us, that can be sensed—seen, heard, tasted, touched and felt, sometimes with prosthetic technologies corresponding to human sensing organs. (Materialists do not claim that human senses or even their prosthetics can, even when collected, sense the totality of the universe; simply that they collectively cannot sense what cannot in any way be known to us.) Materialists do not find this a useful way of thinking about the ontology and ontogeny of ideas, but we might say that from a materialist perspective pushed to a logical extreme communicable to an idealist, ideas are ultimately reducible to a physically communicated, organically, socially and environmentally embedded 'brain state'. While reflexive existence is not considered by materialists to be experienced on the atomic level, the individual's physical and mental experiences are ultimately reducible to the unique tripartite combination of environmentally determined, genetically determined, and randomly determined interactions of firing neurons and atomic collisions.


title: Solipsism

text: For materialists, ideas have no primary reality as essences separate from our physical existence. From a materialist perspective, ideas are social (rather than purely biological), and formed and transmitted and modified through the interactions between social organisms and their social and physical environments. This materialist perspective informs scientific methodology, insofar as that methodology assumes that humans have no access to omniscience and that therefore human knowledge is an ongoing, collective enterprise that is best produced via scientific and logical conventions adjusted specifically for material human capacities and limitations.


title: Solipsism

text: Modern idealists believe that the mind and its thoughts are the only true things that exist. This is the reverse of what is sometimes called "classical idealism" or, somewhat confusingly, "Platonic idealism" due to the influence of Plato's theory of forms (εἶδος "eidos" or ἰδέα "idea") which were not products of our thinking. The material world is ephemeral, but a perfect triangle or "beauty" is eternal. Religious thinking tends to be some form of idealism, as God usually becomes the highest ideal (such as neoplatonism). On this scale, solipsism can be classed as idealism. Thoughts and concepts are all that exist, and furthermore, only the solipsist's own thoughts and consciousness exist. The so-called "reality" is nothing more than an idea that the solipsist has (perhaps unconsciously) created.


title: Solipsism

text: There is another option: the belief that both ideals and "reality" exist. Dualists commonly argue that the distinction between the mind (or 'ideas') and matter can be proven by employing Leibniz's principle of the "identity of indiscernibles", which states that if two things share exactly the same qualities, then they must be identical, as in indistinguishable from each other and therefore one and the same thing. Dualists then attempt to identify attributes of mind that are lacked by matter (such as privacy or intentionality) or vice versa (such as having a certain temperature or electrical charge). One notable application of the identity of indiscernibles was by René Descartes in his "Meditations on First Philosophy". Descartes concluded that he could not doubt the existence of "himself" (the famous "cogito ergo sum" argument), but that he "could" doubt the (separate) existence of "his" body. From this, he inferred that the "person Descartes" must not be identical to "the Descartes body" since one possessed a characteristic that the other did not: namely, it could be known to exist. Solipsism agrees with Descartes in this aspect, and goes further: only things that can be known to exist for sure should be considered to exist. "The Descartes body" could only exist as an idea in the mind of the "person Descartes". Descartes and dualism aim to prove the actual existence of reality as opposed to a phantom existence (as well as the existence of God in Descartes' case), using the realm of ideas merely as a starting point, but solipsism usually finds those further arguments unconvincing. The solipsist instead proposes that their own unconscious is the author of all seemingly "external" events from "reality".


title: Solipsism

text: "The World as Will and Representation" is the central work of Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer saw the human will as our one window to the world behind the representation, the Kantian thing-in-itself. He believed, therefore, that we could gain knowledge about the thing-in-itself, something Kant said was impossible, since the rest of the relationship between representation and thing-in-itself could be understood by analogy as the relationship between human will and human body.


title: Solipsism

text: The idealist philosopher George Berkeley argued that physical objects do not exist independently of the mind that perceives them. An item truly exists only as long as it is observed; otherwise, it is not only meaningless but simply nonexistent. Berkeley does attempt to show things can and do exist apart from the human mind and our perception, but only because there is an all-encompassing Mind in which all "ideas" are perceived – in other words, God, who observes all. Solipsism agrees that nothing exists outside of perception, but would argue that Berkeley falls prey to the egocentric predicament – he can only make his own observations, and thus cannot be truly sure that this God or other people exist to observe "reality". The solipsist would say it is better to disregard the unreliable observations of alleged other people and rely upon the immediate certainty of one's own perceptions.


title: Solipsism

text: Rationalism is the philosophical position that truth is best discovered by the use of reasoning and logic rather than by the use of the senses (see Plato's theory of forms). Solipsism is also skeptical of sense-data.


title: Solipsism

text: The theory of solipsism crosses over with the theory of the philosophical zombie in that other seemingly conscious beings may actually lack true consciousness, instead they only display traits of consciousness to the observer, who may be the only conscious being there is.


title: Solipsism

text: Solipsism is not a falsifiable hypothesis as described by Karl Popper: there does not seem to be an imaginable disproof. According to Popper: a hypothesis that cannot be falsified is not scientific, and a solipsist can observe "the success of sciences" (see also no miracles argument). One critical test is nevertheless to consider the induction from experience that the externally observable world does not seem, at first approach, to be directly manipulable purely by mental energies alone. One can indirectly manipulate the world through the medium of the physical body, but it seems impossible to do so through pure thought (psychokinesis). It might be argued that if the external world were merely a construct of a single consciousness, "i.e." the self, it could then follow that the external world should be somehow directly manipulable by that consciousness, and if it is not, then solipsism is false. An argument against this states that this argument is circular and incoherent. It assumes at the beginning a "construct of a single consciousness" meaning something false, and then tries to manipulate the external world that it just assumed was false. Of course this is an impossible task, but it does not disprove solipsism. It is simply poor reasoning when considering pure idealized logic and that's why David Deutsch states that when also other scientific methods are used (not only logic) solipsism is ""indefensible"", also when using the simplest explanations:


title: Solipsism

text: ""If, according to the simplest explanation, an entity is complex and autonomous, then that entity is real.""


title: Solipsism

text: The method of the typical scientist is naturalist: they first assume that the external world exists and can be known. But the scientific method, in the sense of a predict-observe-modify loop, does not require the assumption of an external world. A solipsist may perform a psychological test on themselves, to discern the nature of the reality in their mind – however David Deutsch uses this fact to counter-argue: "outer parts" of solipsist, behave independently so they are independent for "narrowly" defined ("conscious") self. A solipsist's investigations may not be proper science, however, since it would not include the co-operative and communitarian aspects of scientific inquiry that normally serve to diminish bias.


title: Solipsism

text: Solipsism is a form of logical minimalism. Many people are intuitively unconvinced of the nonexistence of the external world from the basic arguments of solipsism, but a solid proof of its existence is not available at present. The central assertion of solipsism rests on the nonexistence of such a proof, and strong solipsism (as opposed to weak solipsism) asserts that no such proof can be made. In this sense, solipsism is logically related to agnosticism in religion: the distinction between believing you do not know, and believing you could not have known.


title: Solipsism

text: However, minimality (or parsimony) is not the only logical virtue. A common misapprehension of Occam's razor has it that the simpler theory is always the best. In fact, the principle is that the simpler of two theories of "equal explanatory power" is to be preferred. In other words: additional "entities" can pay their way with enhanced explanatory power. So the naturalist can claim that, while their world view is more complex, it is more satisfying as an explanation.


title: Solipsism

text: Some developmental psychologists believe that infants are solipsistic, and that eventually children infer that others have experiences much like theirs and reject solipsism.


title: Solipsism

text: The earliest reference to Solipsism is found in the ideas in Hindu philosophy in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, dated to early 1st millennium BC. The Upanishad holds the mind to be the only god and all actions in the universe are thought to be a result of the mind assuming infinite forms. After the development of distinct schools of Indian philosophy, Advaita Vedanta and Samkhya schools are thought to have originated concepts similar to solipsism.


title: Solipsism

text: Advaita is one of the six most known Hindu philosophical systems and literally means "non-duality". Its first great consolidator was Adi Shankaracharya, who continued the work of some of the Upanishadic teachers, and that of his teacher's teacher Gaudapada. By using various arguments, such as the analysis of the three states of experience—wakefulness, dream, and deep sleep, he established the singular reality of Brahman, in which Brahman, the universe and the Atman or the Self, were one and the same.


title: Solipsism

text: The concept of the Self in the philosophy of Advaita could be interpreted as solipsism. However, the transhuman, theological implications of the Self in Advaita protect it from true solipsism as found in the west. Similarly, the Vedantic text Yogavasistha, escapes charge of solipsism because the real "I" is thought to be nothing but the absolute whole looked at through a particular unique point of interest.


title: Solipsism

text: Advaita is also thought to strongly diverge from solipsism in that, the former is a system of exploration of one's mind in order to finally understand the nature of the self and attain complete knowledge. The unity of existence is said to be directly experienced and understood at the end as a part of complete knowledge. On the other hand, solipsism posits the non-existence of the external world right at the beginning, and says that no further inquiry is possible.


title: Solipsism

text: Samkhya philosophy, which is sometimes seen as the basis of Yogic thought, adopts a view that matter exists independently of individual minds. Representation of an object in an individual mind is held to be a mental approximation of the object in the external world. Therefore, Samkhya chooses representational realism over epistemological solipsism. Having established this distinction between the external world and the mind, Samkhya posits the existence of two metaphysical realities Prakriti (matter) and Purusha (consciousness).


title: Solipsism

text: Some interpretations of Buddhism assert that external reality is an illusion, and sometimes this position is [mis]understood as metaphysical solipsism. Buddhist philosophy, though, generally holds that the mind and external phenomena are both equally transient, and that they arise from each other. The mind cannot exist without external phenomena, nor can external phenomena exist without the mind. This relation is known as "dependent arising" ("pratityasamutpada").


title: Solipsism

text: The Buddha stated, "Within this fathom long body is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world and the path leading to the cessation of the world". Whilst not rejecting the occurrence of external phenomena, the Buddha focused on the illusion created within the mind of the perceiver by the process of ascribing permanence to impermanent phenomena, satisfaction to unsatisfying experiences, and a sense of reality to things that were effectively insubstantial.


title: Solipsism

text: Mahayana Buddhism also challenges the illusion of the idea that one can experience an 'objective' reality independent of individual perceiving minds.


title: Solipsism

text: From the standpoint of Prasangika (a branch of Madhyamaka thought), external objects do exist, but are devoid of any type of inherent identity: "Just as objects of mind do not exist [inherently], mind also does not exist [inherently]". In other words, even though a chair may physically exist, individuals can only experience it through the medium of their own mind, each with their own literal point of view. Therefore, an independent, purely 'objective' reality could never be experienced.


title: Solipsism

text: The Yogacara (sometimes translated as "Mind only") school of Buddhist philosophy contends that all human experience is constructed by mind. Some later representatives of one Yogacara subschool (Prajnakaragupta, Ratnakīrti) propounded a form of idealism that has been interpreted as solipsism. A view of this sort is contained in the 11th-century treatise of Ratnakirti, ""Refutation of the existence of other minds"" ("Santanantara dusana"), which provides a philosophical refutation of external mind-streams from the Buddhist standpoint of ultimate truth (as distinct from the perspective of everyday reality).


title: Solipsism

text: In addition to this, the Bardo Thodol, Tibet's famous book of the dead, repeatedly states that all of reality is a figment of one's perception, although this occurs within the "Bardo" realm (post-mortem). For instance, within the sixth part of the section titled "The Root Verses of the Six Bardos", there appears the following line: "May I recognize whatever appeareth as being mine own thought-forms"; there are many lines in similar ideal.


title: Sears

text: Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began as a mail ordering catalog company migrating to opening retail locations in 1925, the first in Chicago. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box discount chain Kmart, which upon completion of the merger, formed Sears Holdings. Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. In 2018, it was the 31st-largest. After several years of declining sales, Sears's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. It announced on January 16, 2019, that it had won its bankruptcy auction, and that a reduced number of 425 stores would remain open, including 223 Sears stores.


title: Sears

text: Sears was based in the Sears Tower in Chicago from 1973 until 1995, and is currently headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Sears announced in 2021 that it would be selling its Hoffman Estates headquarters complex.


title: Sears

text: Richard Warren Sears was born in 1863 in Stewartville, Minnesota to a wealthy family which moved to nearby Spring Valley. In 1879, his father died shortly after losing the family fortune in a speculative stock deal. Sears moved across the state to work as a railroad station agent in North Redwood, then Minneapolis.


title: Sears

text: While he was in North Redwood, a jeweler refused delivery on a shipment of watches. Sears purchased them and sold them at a low price to the station agents, making a profit. He started a mail-order watch business in Minneapolis in 1886, calling it the R.W. Sears Watch Company. That year, he met Alvah Curtis Roebuck, a watch repairman. In 1887, Sears and Roebuck relocated the business to Chicago, and the company published Richard Sears's first mail-order catalog, offering watches, diamonds, and jewelry.


title: Sears

text: In 1889, Sears sold his business for $100,000 ($3 million in 2021 dollars) and relocated to Iowa, planning to be a rural banker. He returned to Chicago in 1892 and established a new mail-order firm, again selling watches and jewelry, with Roebuck as his partner, operating as the A. C. Roebuck watch company. In 1893, they renamed the company Sears, Roebuck, and Co. and began to diversify the product lines offered in their catalogs.


title: Sears

text: Before the Sears catalog, farmers near small rural towns usually purchased supplies, often at high prices and on credit, from local general stores with narrow selections of goods. Prices were negotiated and relied on the storekeeper's estimate of a customer's creditworthiness. Sears built an opposite business model by offering in their catalogs a larger selection of products at published prices.


title: Sears

text: By 1894, the Sears catalog had grown to 322 pages, including many new items, such as sewing machines, bicycles, sporting goods and automobiles (later produced, from 1905 to 1915, by Lincoln Motor Car Works of Chicago [no relation to the current Ford line]). By 1895, the company was producing a 532-page catalog. Sales were over $400,000 ($12 million in 2021 dollars) in 1893 and over $750,000 ($20 million in 2021 dollars) two years later. By 1896, dolls, stoves, and groceries were added to the catalog.


title: Sears

text: Despite the strong and growing sales, the national Panic of 1893 led to a full-scale recession, causing a cash squeeze and large quantities of unsold merchandise by 1895. Roebuck decided to quit, returning later in a publicity role. Sears offered Roebuck's half of the company to Chicago businessman Aaron Nusbaum, who in turn brought in his brother-in-law Julius Rosenwald, to whom Sears owed money. In August 1895, they bought Roebuck's half of the company for $75,000 ($ million today), and that month the company was reincorporated in Illinois with a capital stock of $150,000 ($ million today). The transaction was handled by Albert Henry Loeb of Chicago law firm Loeb & Adler (now Arnstein & Lehr); copies of the transaction are still displayed on the firm's walls.


title: Sears

text: Sears and Rosenwald got along well with each other, but not with Nusbaum; they bought his interest in the firm for $1.3 million in 1903 ($ million today). Rosenwald brought to the mail-order firm a rational management philosophy and diversified product lines: dry goods, consumer durables, drugs, hardware, furniture, and nearly anything else a farm household could desire.


title: Sears

text: Sales continued to proliferate, and the prosperity of the company and their vision for more significant expansion led Sears and Rosenwald to take the company public in 1906, with a stock placement of $40 million ($ billion today). They had to incorporate a new company to bring the operation public; Sears and Rosenwald established Sears, Roebuck and Company with the legal name Sears, Roebuck and Co., in the state of New York, which effectively replaced the original company. The current company inherits the history of the old company, celebrating the original 1892 incorporation, rather than the 1906 revision, as the start of the company.


title: Sears

text: Sears's successful 1906 initial public offering (IPO) marks the first major retail IPO in American financial history and represented a coming of age, financially, of the consumer sector. The company traded under the ticker symbol S and was a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1924 to 1999.


title: Sears

text: In 1906, Sears opened its catalog plant and the Sears Merchandise Building Tower in Chicago's West Side. The building was the anchor of what would become the massive Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex of offices, laboratories, and mail-order operations at Homan Avenue and Arthington Street. The complex served as corporate headquarters until 1973 when the Sears Tower was completed and served as the base of the mail-order catalog business until 1995.


title: Sears

text: By 1907, under Rosenwald's leadership as vice president and treasurer, annual sales of the company climbed to roughly $50 million ($ billion today). Sears resigned from the presidency in 1908 due to declining health, with Rosenwald named president and chairman of the board and taking on full control.


title: Sears

text: In 1910, Sears acquired the David Bradley Plow company. This acquisition would lead to the manufacturing of riding mowers, chainsaws, tillers, etc., in the Bradley Illinois factory.


title: Sears

text: The company was badly hurt during 1919–21 as a severe depression hit the nation's farms after farmers had over-expanded their holdings. To bail out the company, Rosenwald pledged $21 million ($ million today) of his personal wealth in 1921. By 1922, Sears regained financial stability.


title: Sears

text: Rosenwald oversaw the design and construction of the firm's first department store, built on land within the Sears, Roebuck, and Company Complex. The store opened in 1925. In 1924, Rosenwald resigned the presidency but remained as chair until he died in 1932; his goal was to devote more time to philanthropy.


title: Sears

text: The first store opened on February 2, 1925, as an experiment in the North Lawndale Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex. Despite its remote location on the outskirts of Chicago, its success led to dozens of further openings across the country, many in conjunction with the company's mail-order offices, typically in lower-middle-class and working-class neighborhoods, far from the main downtown shopping district. This was considered highly unconventional at a time when shopping was concentrated in city centers, but through World War II, there was an extensive streetcar network in Chicago and other US cities. However, rapidly increasing car ownership and the brand's huge popularity helped attract customers.


title: Sears

text: Sears retail stores were pioneering and broke the conventions of the time in three ways: their location away from central shopping districts, innovative store design, and unconventional product mix and retailing practices. Many stores at this time were designed by architect George C. Nimmons and his firms. The architecture was driven by merchandising needs rather than the desired outer appearance. This made the stores excellent examples of the modern architecture of the time – styles made famous by Bertram Goodhue and Eliel Saarinen.


title: Sears

text: Its stores were oriented to motorists. Set apart from existing business districts amid residential areas occupied by their target audience, they had ample, free, off-street parking and communicated a clear corporate identity. In the 1930s, the company designed fully air-conditioned, "windowless" stores, such as Sears-Pico in 1939 in Los Angeles, which was the first to have an open plan selling floor (instead of breaking up the floor into discrete sections).


title: Sears

text: Sears was also a pioneer in creating department stores that catered to men and women. The stores included hardware and building materials. It de-emphasized the latest clothing fashions in favor of practical and durable clothing and allowed customers to select goods without the aid of a clerk.


title: Sears

text: In 1933, Sears issued the first of its Christmas catalogs known as the "Sears Wishbook", a catalog featuring toys and gifts, separate from the annual Christmas Catalog. From 1908 to 1940, it included ready-to-assemble Sears Catalog Home kit houses.


title: Sears

text: Sears opened its first store in Mexico City in 1947; the Mexican stores would later spin off into Sears Mexico, which in 2020 operated more than 75 stores across Mexico. In July 2021, it was announced that Sears Mexico is considering renaming their stores to distance itself from its failing former parent in the United States.


title: Sears

text: From the 1920s to the 1950s, Sears built many urban department stores in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico (apart from, but not far from, existing central business districts), and they overshadowed the mail-order business. Following World War II, the company expanded into suburban markets and malls. In 1959, it had formed the Homart Development Company for developing malls. Many of the company's stores have undergone major renovations or replacements since the 1980s. Sears began to diversify in the 1930s, creating Allstate Insurance Company in 1931 and placing Allstate representatives in its stores in 1934 (Allstate was also used as a house brand on a range of motorized vehicles sold by Sears). Over the decades, it established major national brands, such as Kenmore, Craftsman, DieHard, Silvertone, Supertone, and Toughskins.


title: Sears

text: The success of Sears outdoor products raised the attention of the Federal Government and the antitrust laws. Sears purchased David Bradley to manufacture farm and lawn equipment. Its success was broken up in 1962 as they sold more plows than John Deere. Sears sold 1/2 of the David Bradley factory in Bradley, Illinois to the Newark Ohio Company that was shortly acquired by Roper Industries.


title: Sears

text: Sears reached its pinnacle in the 1970s. In 1974, Sears completed the 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago, which became the world's tallest building, a title it took from the former Twin Towers in New York. Upon moving out of Chicago, Sears sold the Sears Tower in 1988. In the sale contract of the tower, Sears retained its naming rights to the building until 2003, but the Sears Tower retained the name until early 2009, when London-based insurer Willis Group Holdings, Ltd. was given the building's naming rights to encourage them to occupy the building. Sears moved to the new Prairie Stone Business Park in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, between 1993 and 1995. The Sears Centre is a 10,001-seat multi-purpose arena located in Hoffman Estates adjacent to the Prairie Stone campus.


title: Sears

text: The Sears catalog became known in the industry as "the Consumers' Bible". The company sold to foreign customers, such as after the American occupation of Greenland in World War II, Philippines, among others, when locals ordered from catalogs left by soldiers. Novelists and story writers often portrayed the importance of the catalog in the emotional lives of rural folk. The catalog also entered the language, particularly of rural dwellers, as a euphemism for toilet paper, as its pages could be torn out and used as such. In addition, for many rural African-Americans, especially in areas dominated by Jim Crow racial segregation, the Sears catalog was a vital retail alternative to local white-population-dominated stores, bypassing the stores' frequent intention to deny them fair access to their merchandise.


title: Sears

text: However, as the nation urbanized, Sears's catalog business faced competition from city department stores. Rural America's population was slow-growing and possessed far less spending power than urban America.


title: Sears

text: In the 1980s, the company began to diversify into non-retail entities such as buying Dean Witter and Coldwell Banker in 1981. In 1984, it launched Prodigy as a joint venture with IBM, and introduced the Discover credit card in 1985. However, these actions have been said to have distracted management's attention from the core retail business and allowed competing retailers to gain significant ground, culminating with Walmart surpassing Sears as the largest retailer in the United States in 1990.


title: Sears

text: In the 1990s, the company began divesting itself of many non-retail entities, which were detrimental to its bottom line. Sears spun off its financial services arm, which included brokerage business Dean Witter Reynolds and Discover Card. It sold its mall building subsidiary Homart to General Growth Properties in 1995. Sears later acquired hardware chain Orchard Supply Hardware in 1996 and started home improvement store The Great Indoors in 1997.


title: Sears

text: The cost of distributing the once highly influential general merchandise catalog became prohibitive; sales and profits had declined. The company discontinued the catalog in 1993. It dismissed 50,000 workers who had filled the orders.


title: Sears

text: In 1992, California successfully sued the company for falsely finding things wrong with automobiles in for repair for other reasons. In 1997, criminal charges were made. In 1998, Sears announced it had sold the remnants of Western Auto (which it had acquired in 1988) to Roanoke-based Advance Auto Parts. The business deal was not what experts in the after-market automotive industry expected: Sears, Roebuck became "one of the largest shareholders" after obtaining a 40% stake in Advance Auto Parts and merging their two store networks, which included Western Auto's wholesale and retail operations. The existing store network of Advance Auto Parts, comprising 915 stores in 17 U.S. states, merged with 590 U.S.-based Parts America Stores in addition to 40 Western Auto stores in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. In 1997, Sears sold 85% of its Mexico affiliate to Grupo Carso. Sears Holdings continued to produce specialty catalogs and reintroduced a smaller version of the Holiday Wish Book in 2007.


title: Sears

text: In 2003, Sears sold its U.S. retail credit card operation to Citibank. The remaining card operations for Sears Canada were sold to JPMorgan Chase in August 2005. In 2003, Sears opened a new concept store called Sears Grand. Sears Grand stores carried everything that a regular Sears carries, and more. Sears Grand stores were about . A 2021 article in "Forbes" stated that most Sears Grand stores were shuttered by 2010.


title: Sears

text: On November 17, 2004, Kmart Holdings Corporation announced it would acquire Sears, Roebuck, and Co. for $11 billion after Kmart completed its recovery from bankruptcy. As a part of the acquisition, Kmart Holding Corporation, along with Sears, Roebuck, and Co., was transformed into the new Sears Holdings Corporation. The new company started trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange as SHLD; Sears sold its single-letter ticker symbol 'S' in the New York Stock Exchange that it had held since 1910 to Sprint Corporation. The new corporation announced that it would continue to operate stores under both the Sears and Kmart brands. In 2005, the company began renovating some Kmart stores and converting them to the Sears Essentials format, only to change them later to Sears Grands. The combined company's profits peaked at $1.5 billion in 2006.


title: Sears

text: By 2010, the company was no longer profitable; from 2011 to 2016, the company lost $10.4 billion. In 2014, its total debt ($4.2 billion at the end of January 2017) exceeded its market capitalization ($974.1 million as of March 21, 2017). Sears declined from more than 3,500 physical stores to 695 US stores from 2010 to 2017. Sales at Sears stores dropped 10.3 percent in the final quarter of 2016 when compared to the same period in 2015.


title: Sears

text: Sears spent much of 2014 and 2015 selling off portions of its balance sheet; namely, Lands' End and its stake in Sears Canada, one of the biggest e-commerce players in Canada, with Can$505 million in sales in 2015—more than Walmart and others who had begun pushing aggressively into online sales, such as Canadian Tire. Sears stated that the company was looking to focus on becoming a more tech-driven retailer. Sears's CEO and top shareholder said the sell-off of key assets in the last year had given the retailer the money it needs to speed up its transformation. Sears Holdings had lost a total of US$7 billion in the four years to 2015. In part, the retailer was trying to curb losses by using a loyalty program called Shop Your Way. Sears believed the membership scheme would enhance repeat business and customer loyalty in the long term.


title: Sears

text: CEO Eddie Lampert also concluded an arrangement that sold the Craftsman brand to Stanley Black & Decker Inc. for approximately US$900 million. In October 2017, Sears and appliance manufacturer Whirlpool Corporation ended their 101-year-old association, reportedly due to pricing issues, although Whirlpool continued supplying Sears with Kenmore-branded appliances. In May 2018, Sears announced it had formed a "special committee" to explore the sale of Kenmore.


title: Sears

text: On September 24, 2018, the retailer's CEO warned that the company was "running out of time" to salvage its business. Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018, ahead of a $134 million debt payment due that day. On November 23, 2018, Sears Holdings released a list of 505 stores, including 266 Sears stores, that were for sale in the bankruptcy process, while all others would hold liquidation sales.


title: Sears

text: On January 16, 2019, Sears Holdings announced it would remain open after Lampert won a bankruptcy auction for the company with an offer to keep about 400 stores open. On February 7, 2019, a bankruptcy judge approved a $5.2 billion plan by Sears's chairman and biggest shareholder to keep the business going. The approval meant roughly 425 stores, including 223 Sears stores, and 45,000 jobs would be preserved.


title: Sears

text: In April 2019, Sears announced the opening of three new stores with a limited set of merchandise under the name Sears Home & Life. Also that month, Sears closed its store at Windward Mall in Kaneohe, Hawaii, and its store at Oakbrook Center in Oak Brook, Illinois (which was razed and already rebuilt as a 1 story store), making it the first post-bankruptcy closure for the brand since being bought by ESL.


title: Sears

text: On June 3, 2019, the company announced that Transform Holdco would acquire Sears Hometown & Outlet Stores. As per deal, it might need to divest its Sears Outlet division to gain approval. On August 6, 2019, it was announced that 26 stores, including 21 Sears stores, including the last Sears store in Alabama, at Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, and the last Sears store in West Virginia, at Huntington Mall in Barboursville, would close in October, with plans to "accelerate the expansion of our smaller store formats which includes opening additional Home & Life stores and adding several hundred Sears Hometown stores after the Sears Hometown and Outlet transaction closes." On August 31, 2019, management announced that Transform would close an additional 92 stores, including 15 Sears stores, by the end of 2019. 100 more stores closed by January 2020. 51 Sears stores were closed in February 2020. More stores continued to close throughout 2020 and 2021, including the final Sears in Maine at The Maine Mall. As of September 16, 2021 the company's website listed 35 Sears stores.


title: Sears

text: In September 2021, Sears announced that it would close more stores, including the last Sears store in New York City. The New York City Sears closed by November 24, 2021, and will potentially be redeveloped.


title: Sears

text: In December 2021, Transformco announced its plans to sell the 2.3 million-square-foot Sears headquarters in Hoffman Estates, which includes 100 acres of undeveloped land.


title: Sears

text: On January 19, 2022, Sears shut the remaining 15 Sears Auto Centers in the United States. The Sears Auto Center website now displays a message reading: "Auto Centers have closed for business. We appreciate your patronage over the years. If you have any questions concerning warranty claims, please visit us at Sears Help."


title: Sears

text: Although the organization is a shadow of its former self, it still operates a few locations. In May 2022, it was announced that roughly 100 more Sears Hometown stores, including the last four in Michigan, would close permanently.


title: Sears

text: From 2006 until 2020, it had the naming rights to an 11,000-seat multi-purpose family entertainment, cultural and sports center in Hoffman Estates that was previously known then as the Sears Centre but has since been renamed the Now Arena.


title: Sears

text: The company sponsored the television series "". The company also underwrote the PBS television series "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood", under the name The Sears-Roebuck Foundation, from the show's premiere in 1968 until 1992.


title: Sears

text: Through the Sears Auto Centers, the company sponsored the Formula Drift Darren McNamara Sears/Falken Saturn Sky drift car. It sponsored the NASCAR Truck Series, using the Craftsman brand as the title sponsor, from the series' inception in the 1995 NASCAR SuperTruck Series presented by Craftsman to the 2008 season, when the agreement ended. It sponsored the #10 Gillett Evernham Motorsports car of Scott Riggs for the September 2, 2007, running of the Sharp AQUOS 500 at California Speedway through its Sears Auto Center branch. However, Riggs failed to qualify for the event. In 2016, Craftsman became the title sponsor of the World Racing Group, World of Outlaws Sprint car racing series.


title: Sears

text: Sears has struggled with employee relations. One notable example was the shift in 1992 from an hourly wage based on longevity to a base wage (usually between US$3.50 and US$6 per hour) and commissions ranging from 0.5% to 11%. Sears claimed the new base wage, often constituting a substantial (up to 40%) cut in pay, was done "to be successful in this highly competitive environment".


title: Sears

text: In early October 2007, Sears cut commission rates for employees in some departments to between 0.5% and 4% but equalized the base wage across all Home Improvement and Electronics departments. In 2011, commission rates on non-base items were cut by 2% in the electronics department. In late 2009, the electronic department's commission on "base items" was cut to 1%. As of 2017, appliances is the only remaining department where compensation is based entirely on commission. Other departments give a base pay plus commission. In many stores, jewelry department associates receive a low base salary with a 1% commission on their sales.


title: Sears

text: In March 2019, Sears claimed that it was ending life insurance benefits for an undisclosed number of its 90,000 retirees. A few months earlier, the company handed out over $25 million in bonuses to executives. This key Sears Retiree Benefit was worth between $5,000 and $15,000 for most of the pool (29,000) of eligible retired employees.


title: Sears

text: In May 2019, former Sears Holdings chairman and CEO Eddie Lampert, months after purchasing the remains of Sears from the holding company, threatened not to pay out the $43 million in pension payments owed to 90,000 former Sears and Kmart employees and retirees. A "Forbes" editorial pointed out that Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury at the time, was a board member of Sears Holding until 2016, and was, at the time, one of three directors of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which manages administration of pensions for defunct or bankrupt businesses.


title: Deep learning

text: Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised.


title: Deep learning

text: Deep-learning architectures such as deep neural networks, deep belief networks, deep reinforcement learning, recurrent neural networks, convolutional neural networks and Transformers have been applied to fields including computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing, machine translation, bioinformatics, drug design, medical image analysis, climate science, material inspection and board game programs, where they have produced results comparable to and in some cases surpassing human expert performance.


title: Deep learning

text: Artificial neural networks (ANNs) were inspired by information processing and distributed communication nodes in biological systems. ANNs have various differences from biological brains. Specifically, artificial neural networks tend to be static and symbolic, while the biological brain of most living organisms is dynamic (plastic) and analog.


title: Deep learning

text: The adjective "deep" in deep learning refers to the use of multiple layers in the network. Early work showed that a linear perceptron cannot be a universal classifier, but that a network with a nonpolynomial activation function with one hidden layer of unbounded width can. Deep learning is a modern variation which is concerned with an unbounded number of layers of bounded size, which permits practical application and optimized implementation, while retaining theoretical universality under mild conditions. In deep learning the layers are also permitted to be heterogeneous and to deviate widely from biologically informed connectionist models, for the sake of efficiency, trainability and understandability, hence the "structured" part.


title: Deep learning

text: Deep learning is a class of machine learning algorithms that uses multiple layers to progressively extract higher-level features from the raw input. For example, in image processing, lower layers may identify edges, while higher layers may identify the concepts relevant to a human such as digits or letters or faces.


title: Deep learning

text: Most modern deep learning models are based on artificial neural networks, specifically convolutional neural networks (CNN)s, although they can also include propositional formulas or latent variables organized layer-wise in deep generative models such as the nodes in deep belief networks and deep Boltzmann machines.


title: Deep learning

text: In deep learning, each level learns to transform its input data into a slightly more abstract and composite representation. In an image recognition application, the raw input may be a matrix of pixels; the first representational layer may abstract the pixels and encode edges; the second layer may compose and encode arrangements of edges; the third layer may encode a nose and eyes; and the fourth layer may recognize that the image contains a face. Importantly, a deep learning process can learn which features to optimally place in which level "on its own". This does not eliminate the need for hand-tuning; for example, varying numbers of layers and layer sizes can provide different degrees of abstraction.


title: Deep learning

text: The word "deep" in "deep learning" refers to the number of layers through which the data is transformed. More precisely, deep learning systems have a substantial "credit assignment path" (CAP) depth. The CAP is the chain of transformations from input to output. CAPs describe potentially causal connections between input and output. For a feedforward neural network, the depth of the CAPs is that of the network and is the number of hidden layers plus one (as the output layer is also parameterized). For recurrent neural networks, in which a signal may propagate through a layer more than once, the CAP depth is potentially unlimited. No universally agreed-upon threshold of depth divides shallow learning from deep learning, but most researchers agree that deep learning involves CAP depth higher than 2. CAP of depth 2 has been shown to be a universal approximator in the sense that it can emulate any function. Beyond that, more layers do not add to the function approximator ability of the network. Deep models (CAP > 2) are able to extract better features than shallow models and hence, extra layers help in learning the features effectively.


title: Deep learning

text: Deep learning architectures can be constructed with a greedy layer-by-layer method. Deep learning helps to disentangle these abstractions and pick out which features improve performance.


title: Deep learning

text: For supervised learning tasks, deep learning methods eliminate feature engineering, by translating the data into compact intermediate representations akin to principal components, and derive layered structures that remove redundancy in representation.


title: Deep learning

text: Deep learning algorithms can be applied to unsupervised learning tasks. This is an important benefit because unlabeled data are more abundant than the labeled data. Examples of deep structures that can be trained in an unsupervised manner are deep belief networks.


title: Deep learning

text: Deep neural networks are generally interpreted in terms of the universal approximation theorem or probabilistic inference.


title: Deep learning

text: The classic universal approximation theorem concerns the capacity of feedforward neural networks with a single hidden layer of finite size to approximate continuous functions. In 1989, the first proof was published by George Cybenko for sigmoid activation functions and was generalised to feed-forward multi-layer architectures in 1991 by Kurt Hornik. Recent work also showed that universal approximation also holds for non-bounded activation functions such as the rectified linear unit.


title: Deep learning

text: The universal approximation theorem for deep neural networks concerns the capacity of networks with bounded width but the depth is allowed to grow. Lu et al. proved that if the width of a deep neural network with ReLU activation is strictly larger than the input dimension, then the network can approximate any Lebesgue integrable function; If the width is smaller or equal to the input dimension, then a deep neural network is not a universal approximator.


title: Deep learning

text: The probabilistic interpretation derives from the field of machine learning. It features inference, as well as the optimization concepts of training and testing, related to fitting and generalization, respectively. More specifically, the probabilistic interpretation considers the activation nonlinearity as a cumulative distribution function. The probabilistic interpretation led to the introduction of dropout as regularizer in neural networks. The probabilistic interpretation was introduced by researchers including Hopfield, Widrow and Narendra and popularized in surveys such as the one by Bishop.


title: Deep learning

text: Some sources point out that Frank Rosenblatt developed and explored all of the basic ingredients of the deep learning systems of today. He described it in his book "Principles of Neurodynamics: Perceptrons and the Theory of Brain Mechanisms", published by Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, Inc., Cornell University in 1962.


title: Deep learning

text: The first general, working learning algorithm for supervised, deep, feedforward, multilayer perceptrons was published by Alexey Ivakhnenko and Lapa in 1967. A 1971 paper described a deep network with eight layers trained by the group method of data handling. Other deep learning working architectures, specifically those built for computer vision, began with the Neocognitron introduced by Kunihiko Fukushima in 1980.


title: Deep learning

text: The term "Deep Learning" was introduced to the machine learning community by Rina Dechter in 1986, and to artificial neural networks by Igor Aizenberg and colleagues in 2000, in the context of Boolean threshold neurons.


title: Deep learning

text: In 1989, Yann LeCun et al. applied the standard backpropagation algorithm, which had been around as the reverse mode of automatic differentiation since 1970, to a deep neural network with the purpose of recognizing handwritten ZIP codes on mail. While the algorithm worked, training required 3 days.


title: Deep learning

text: Independently in 1988, Wei Zhang et al. applied the backpropagation algorithm to a convolutional neural network (a simplified Neocognitron by keeping only the convolutional interconnections between the image feature layers and the last fully connected layer) for alphabets recognition and also proposed an implementation of the CNN with an optical computing system. Subsequently, Wei Zhang, et al. modified the model by removing the last fully connected layer and applied it for medical image object segmentation in 1991 and breast cancer detection in mammograms in 1994.


title: Deep learning

text: In 1994, André de Carvalho, together with Mike Fairhurst and David Bisset, published experimental results of a multi-layer boolean neural network, also known as a weightless neural network, composed of a 3-layers self-organising feature extraction neural network module (SOFT) followed by a multi-layer classification neural network module (GSN), which were independently trained. Each layer in the feature extraction module extracted features with growing complexity regarding the previous layer.


title: Deep learning

text: In 1995, Brendan Frey demonstrated that it was possible to train (over two days) a network containing six fully connected layers and several hundred hidden units using the wake-sleep algorithm, co-developed with Peter Dayan and Hinton. Many factors contribute to the slow speed, including the vanishing gradient problem analyzed in 1991 by Sepp Hochreiter.


title: Deep learning

text: Since 1997, Sven Behnke extended the feed-forward hierarchical convolutional approach in the Neural Abstraction Pyramid by lateral and backward connections in order to flexibly incorporate context into decisions and iteratively resolve local ambiguities.


title: Deep learning

text: Simpler models that use task-specific handcrafted features such as Gabor filters and support vector machines (SVMs) were a popular choice in the 1990s and 2000s, because of artificial neural network's (ANN) computational cost and a lack of understanding of how the brain wires its biological networks.


title: Deep learning

text: Both shallow and deep learning (e.g., recurrent nets) of ANNs have been explored for many years. These methods never outperformed non-uniform internal-handcrafting Gaussian mixture model/Hidden Markov model (GMM-HMM) technology based on generative models of speech trained discriminatively. Key difficulties have been analyzed, including gradient diminishing and weak temporal correlation structure in neural predictive models. Additional difficulties were the lack of training data and limited computing power.


title: Deep learning

text: Most speech recognition researchers moved away from neural nets to pursue generative modeling. An exception was at SRI International in the late 1990s. Funded by the US government's NSA and DARPA, SRI studied deep neural networks in speech and speaker recognition. The speaker recognition team led by Larry Heck reported significant success with deep neural networks in speech processing in the 1998 National Institute of Standards and Technology Speaker Recognition evaluation. The SRI deep neural network was then deployed in the Nuance Verifier, representing the first major industrial application of deep learning.


title: Deep learning

text: The principle of elevating "raw" features over hand-crafted optimization was first explored successfully in the architecture of deep autoencoder on the "raw" spectrogram or linear filter-bank features in the late 1990s, showing its superiority over the Mel-Cepstral features that contain stages of fixed transformation from spectrograms. The raw features of speech, waveforms, later produced excellent larger-scale results.


title: Deep learning

text: Many aspects of speech recognition were taken over by a deep learning method called long short-term memory (LSTM), a recurrent neural network published by Hochreiter and Schmidhuber in 1997. LSTM RNNs avoid the vanishing gradient problem and can learn "Very Deep Learning" tasks that require memories of events that happened thousands of discrete time steps before, which is important for speech. In 2003, LSTM started to become competitive with traditional speech recognizers on certain tasks. Later it was combined with connectionist temporal classification (CTC) in stacks of LSTM RNNs. In 2015, Google's speech recognition reportedly experienced a dramatic performance jump of 49% through CTC-trained LSTM, which they made available through Google Voice Search.


title: Deep learning

text: In 2006, publications by Geoff Hinton, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Osindero and Teh showed how a many-layered feedforward neural network could be effectively pre-trained one layer at a time, treating each layer in turn as an unsupervised restricted Boltzmann machine, then fine-tuning it using supervised backpropagation. The papers referred to "learning" for "deep belief nets."


title: Deep learning

text: Deep learning is part of state-of-the-art systems in various disciplines, particularly computer vision and automatic speech recognition (ASR). Results on commonly used evaluation sets such as TIMIT (ASR) and MNIST (image classification), as well as a range of large-vocabulary speech recognition tasks have steadily improved. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) were superseded for ASR by CTC for LSTM. but are more successful in computer vision.


title: Deep learning

text: The impact of deep learning in industry began in the early 2000s, when CNNs already processed an estimated 10% to 20% of all the checks written in the US, according to Yann LeCun. Industrial applications of deep learning to large-scale speech recognition started around 2010.


title: Deep learning

text: The 2009 NIPS Workshop on Deep Learning for Speech Recognition was motivated by the limitations of deep generative models of speech, and the possibility that given more capable hardware and large-scale data sets that deep neural nets (DNN) might become practical. It was believed that pre-training DNNs using generative models of deep belief nets (DBN) would overcome the main difficulties of neural nets. However, it was discovered that replacing pre-training with large amounts of training data for straightforward backpropagation when using DNNs with large, context-dependent output layers produced error rates dramatically lower than then-state-of-the-art Gaussian mixture model (GMM)/Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and also than more-advanced generative model-based systems. The nature of the recognition errors produced by the two types of systems was characteristically different, offering technical insights into how to integrate deep learning into the existing highly efficient, run-time speech decoding system deployed by all major speech recognition systems. Analysis around 2009–2010, contrasting the GMM (and other generative speech models) vs. DNN models, stimulated early industrial investment in deep learning for speech recognition, eventually leading to pervasive and dominant use in that industry. That analysis was done with comparable performance (less than 1.5% in error rate) between discriminative DNNs and generative models.


title: Deep learning

text: In 2010, researchers extended deep learning from TIMIT to large vocabulary speech recognition, by adopting large output layers of the DNN based on context-dependent HMM states constructed by decision trees.


title: Deep learning

text: Advances in hardware have driven renewed interest in deep learning. In 2009, Nvidia was involved in what was called the “big bang” of deep learning, “as deep-learning neural networks were trained with Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs).” That year, Andrew Ng determined that GPUs could increase the speed of deep-learning systems by about 100 times. In particular, GPUs are well-suited for the matrix/vector computations involved in machine learning. GPUs speed up training algorithms by orders of magnitude, reducing running times from weeks to days. Further, specialized hardware and algorithm optimizations can be used for efficient processing of deep learning models.


title: Deep learning

text: In 2012, a team led by George E. Dahl won the "Merck Molecular Activity Challenge" using multi-task deep neural networks to predict the biomolecular target of one drug. In 2014, Hochreiter's group used deep learning to detect off-target and toxic effects of environmental chemicals in nutrients, household products and drugs and won the "Tox21 Data Challenge" of NIH, FDA and NCATS.


title: Deep learning

text: Significant additional impacts in image or object recognition were felt from 2011 to 2012. Although CNNs trained by backpropagation had been around for decades, and GPU implementations of NNs for years, including CNNs, fast implementations of CNNs on GPUs were needed to progress on computer vision. In 2011, this approach achieved for the first time superhuman performance in a visual pattern recognition contest. Also in 2011, it won the ICDAR Chinese handwriting contest, and in May 2012, it won the ISBI image segmentation contest. Until 2011, CNNs did not play a major role at computer vision conferences, but in June 2012, a paper by Ciresan et al. at the leading conference CVPR showed how max-pooling CNNs on GPU can dramatically improve many vision benchmark records. In October 2012, a similar system by Krizhevsky et al. won the large-scale ImageNet competition by a significant margin over shallow machine learning methods. In November 2012, Ciresan et al.'s system also won the ICPR contest on analysis of large medical images for cancer detection, and in the following year also the MICCAI Grand Challenge on the same topic. In 2013 and 2014, the error rate on the ImageNet task using deep learning was further reduced, following a similar trend in large-scale speech recognition.


title: Deep learning

text: Image classification was then extended to the more challenging task of generating descriptions (captions) for images, often as a combination of CNNs and LSTMs.


title: Deep learning

text: Some researchers state that the October 2012 ImageNet victory anchored the start of a "deep learning revolution" that has transformed the AI industry.


title: Deep learning

text: In March 2019, Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun were awarded the Turing Award for conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing.


title: Deep learning

text: Artificial neural networks (ANNs) or connectionist systems are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. Such systems learn (progressively improve their ability) to do tasks by considering examples, generally without task-specific programming. For example, in image recognition, they might learn to identify images that contain cats by analyzing example images that have been manually labeled as "cat" or "no cat" and using the analytic results to identify cats in other images. They have found most use in applications difficult to express with a traditional computer algorithm using rule-based programming.


title: Deep learning

text: An ANN is based on a collection of connected units called artificial neurons, (analogous to biological neurons in a biological brain). Each connection (synapse) between neurons can transmit a signal to another neuron. The receiving (postsynaptic) neuron can process the signal(s) and then signal downstream neurons connected to it. Neurons may have state, generally represented by real numbers, typically between 0 and 1. Neurons and synapses may also have a weight that varies as learning proceeds, which can increase or decrease the strength of the signal that it sends downstream.


title: Deep learning

text: Typically, neurons are organized in layers. Different layers may perform different kinds of transformations on their inputs. Signals travel from the first (input), to the last (output) layer, possibly after traversing the layers multiple times.