KDnuggets™ News 10:n30, Dec 21

Features

• Top KDnuggets stories in 2010 - Dec 21, 2010.
  P != NP Proved?; Comprehensive Social Media Analytics Platforms; Google Prediction API and more.
• New Poll: Analytics/Data Mining Meetings you attended in 2010? - Dec 20, 2010.
  Please vote on www.kdnuggets.com or here
• Top KDnuggets Site Search Terms for 2010 ( comments) - Dec 20, 2010.
  The top KDnuggets site search terms for 2010 are: weka, liberty, data mining. The terms that grew the most in 2010 are wps, liberty, and blogs.
• $3M Heritage Health Data Analysis Prize - Dec 9, 2010.
  can health data be used to accurately predict which patients will be admitted to the hospital? This is the focus of $3M Heritage Health Prize, to spur development of new approaches in the analysis of health data and create new predictive algorithms.
• Tom Davenport Keynote at PAW, March 14-15, San Francisco - Dec 17, 2010.
  The New Quantitative Era: Creating Successful Business Change with Analytics, will be the keynote address at PAW San Francsico by the analytics industry leader Thomas Davenport.
• Poll Results: Computer Configuration for Analytics ( comments) - Dec 20, 2010.
  the typical analytics machine has 2 cores, 3 GB memory, 500 GB disk, and ...
• Most viewed items for Dec 12-18 - Dec 19, 2010.
  Book: Mining of Massive Datasets (free download); Machine Learning/Data Mining in R;
  Top jobs: Senior Data Mining Engineer at eBay Inc., San Jose, CA; Editor-in-Chief, ACM Transactions On Knowledge Discovery From Data at ACM, anywhere;
• Most viewed items for Dec 5-11 - Dec 12, 2010.
  ML/Data Mining in R; 5 Alternative Social Analytics Solutions
  Top jobs: Data Mining Expert/Online Advertising at Resonate, VA; e-Business Analytics at Sigma-Aldrich, MO

Courses (see also All Courses)

• Learn How Experts Mine Data, Feb 14-18, Orlando - Dec 21, 2010.
  Leverage highly valuable and impactful prospective insight from within your existing data through an intensive course series with over 20 years of innovation. Feb 14-18 in Orlando.

Software (see also All Software)

• SPM: Salford Systems New Fast, Accurate Predictive Modeling Suite - Dec 14, 2010.
  Salford technology dramatically accelerates accurate, robust model generation by automatically sifting through databases to isolate significant patterns and relationships. The SPM suite, unveiled at NCDM 2010, also includes CART, TreeNet, MARS, and Random Forest data mining software. Free 30-day trial!
• Avinash Downloadable, Custom Web Analytics Reports - Dec 10, 2010.
  Three super valuable custom reports you can download and get going right away, from Avinash Kaushik, Google's Analytics Evangelist and blogger.
• Anderson Analytics Beta Testing New Text Analytics Software - Dec 14, 2010.
  Market research and data mining consultancy Anderson Analytics is reportedly beta testing its first proprietary text analytics software platform with select Fortune 500 clients.

Jobs (see also All Jobs)

• Sr. Analyst/Statistician, Traffic Analytics at Amazon.com, Seattle, WA - Dec 17, 2010.
  provide advanced analytics supporting email marketing throughout Amazon; work directly with business teams to enable better targeting & measurement of email performance; building customer segments; determining long-term value of email customers.
• Research Scientist in Large Scale Data Analytics at Ricoh Innovations, Menlo Park, CA - Dec 17, 2010.
  help identify opportunities for discovering insights in data from sensors, systems, and worker activity and develop the necessary algorithms to surface them.
• Quantitative Modeling Consultants at Agilex Technologies, Alexandria, VA - Dec 16, 2010.
  support government programs; be a self-starter with demonstrated experience using SAS and SQL programming
• Sr. Software Development Engineers at Agilex Technologies, Alexandria, VA - Dec 16, 2010.
  support government programs; be a self-starter with demonstrated experience using machine learning to develop algorithms and enterprise systems to perform network based search and text extraction through entity resolution using structured and unstructured data
• Sr. Predictive Algorithms Developer at Salesforce.com, San Francisco, CA - Dec 16, 2010.
  The Data and Analytics team seeks an outstanding Data Mining and Analytics Developer for a groundbreaking R&D project to help our clients achieve extraordinary value by utilizing our application in the manner best suited to their needs.
• Senior Test Lead - Bing at Microsoft, Bellevue, WA - Dec 14, 2010.
  manage and lead a team of highly skilled engineers, define strategies for measuring product quality, testing techniques and manage team staffing.
• Senior Software Development Engineer in Test - Bing at Microsoft, Bellevue, WA - Dec 14, 2010.
  quantify and define relevance for search engine result pages that focus on contextual signals from user search terms; define scenarios for search terms that have context, like location, search history etc., and work across the product.
• Senior Data Mining Engineer at eBay Inc., San Jose, CA - Dec 11, 2010.
  part of Trust and Safety research group. Work on preventing and catching fraud, enforcing eBay policies, and mining data to help build future strategies.
• e-Business Analyst, Analytics at Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO - Dec 8, 2010.
  support sales growth and operational improvements by identifying trends, reporting on key metrics, and translating data into actionable metrics for various teams within the organization.

Academic/Research positions

• Research Professor Database Systems at U. of Antwerpen, Antwerpen, Belgium - Dec 20, 2010.
  lecturing, scientific research and service to society. During the first period of (maximum) ten years, scientific research will be the main activity.
• Research Fellow in Machine Learning at Monash U., Near Melbourne, Australia - Dec 17, 2010.
  seeking applicants to join an active machine learning research team led by Geoff Webb for a project investigating learning complex classifiers without search.
• PhD students in Machine Learning at U. of Nottingham Ningbo, China, Ningbo, China - Dec 15, 2010.
  Applications due Jan 15; The PhD scholarships are funded for three years. Suggested projects include Designing active heuristics; Use of representation and meta-bias in machine learning algorithms.
• Editor-in-Chief, ACM Transactions On Knowledge Discovery From Data at ACM, anywhere - Dec 14, 2010.
  Submit your nominations by Jan 21. ACM is looking for a new EiC for ACM TKDD, whose term will begin in Apr 2011.

Meetings (see also All Meetings)

• Data Sciences Summer Institute, UIUC, May 22-July 2, 2011 - Dec 14, 2010.
  students will attend an intensive class in the mathematical foundations of Data Sciences, tutorials on advanced Data Science topics, talks by a dozen expert speakers from around the country, and work on collaborative research projects.

Audio/Video

• Freakonomics Blog: Do more expensive wines taste better? - Dec 18, 2010.
  When you take a sip of Cabernet, what are you tasting? The grape? The tannins? The oak barrel? Or the price? Latest Freakonomics podcast has the answer.
• Machine Learning: A Love Story - Dec 17, 2010.
  Hilary Mason presents the history of machine learning covering some of the most significant developments taking place over the last two decades, especially the fundamental math and algorithmic tools employed.
• Welcome To Salford Systems, by Dan Steinberg - Dec 14, 2010.
  CEO of Salford Systems gives an overview of Salford Systems and its award-winning software.

Publications

• The Originative Statistical Regression Models: Are They Too Old and Untenable? - Dec 20, 2010.
  Statistical ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, and logistic regression (LR) models are popular techniques for prediction (of a continuous dependent variable) or classification (of a categorical dependent variable).
• 20% off on Chapman/CRC Books on Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery - Dec 17, 2010.
  Get 20% off on Data Mining with R: Learning with Case Studies, Privacy-Aware Knowledge Discovery: Novel Applications and New Techniques, Handbook of Educational Data Mining, or other Chapman/CRC Books purchased on website.
• Google ngrams: In 500 Billion Words, New Window on Culture - Dec 17, 2010.
  Google has made a mammoth database culled from nearly 5.2 million digitized books available to the public for free downloads and online searches, opening a new landscape of possibilities for research and education in the humanities.
• Healthcare Predictive Modeling News - Dec 17, 2010.
  monthly newsletter focusing on predictive modeling in healthcare, featuring articles, news, key data, technology developments, recent studies, and more.
• Report: Ten Database Activities Enterprises Need to Monitor - Dec 16, 2010.
  Most enterprises are paying too little attention to the very real security risks associated with their databases. Auditors, security and risk professionals, and data owners need to watch for telltale behaviors that may indicate serious database security problems.
• Interview with VisiStat Analytics CEO: Jim Bennette - Dec 15, 2010.
  Most companies only know what basic web analytics tools such as Google Analytics can do, but there is really so much more that can be done. One of the more interesting developments is in the sophistication of identifying and tracking of anonymous visitors and their behavior.
• Advocacy group urges a broader view of government data mining - Dec 13, 2010.
  Many federal efforts that use data mining might be flying under the radar because the law requiring agencies to report on such activities applies a very narrow definition of the practice
• Book: Mining of Massive Datasets (free download) - Dec 11, 2010.
  This book was developed over several years teaching a course on Web Mining at Stanford by A. Rajaraman (Kosmix) and J. Ullman (Stanford),
• Data mining depression - Dec 9, 2010.
  Information technology could improve prevention, treatment of depression

News Briefs

• FICO Patents 100th Analytic Innovation - Dec 21, 2010.
  The breakthroughs covered by these patents are behind FICO's industry-leading solutions in credit scoring, credit account management, credit fraud management, insurance fraud management and other areas.
• Social Ad Targeter Media6degrees Raises $17 Million Second Round - Dec 20, 2010.
  Social media audience data provider Media6Degrees has closed a $17 million second round from Menlo Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners and Venrock.
• Geotagging reveals not only where you are, but also people you might know - Dec 19, 2010.
  Comparing the locations of photos with social network contacts, researchers found that as few as three "co-locations" at different times and places could predict with high probability that two people posting photos were socially connected.
• Salford Systems, DataLab USA collaborate to win DMA Analytics Challenge - Dec 14, 2010.
  The efficiency of the algorithms allowed us to focus on testing innovative approaches to the direct marketing scenario. As a result, we produced 37 percent more profit than the average competitor.
• Business Analytics at SAP(r) EcoHub - Dec 13, 2010.
  Site Provides Customers With Intuitive Starting Point for Business Analytics Problem-Solving; Partners Offer Growing Number of Analytics Products and Services
• Mobile analytics firm Flurry raises $15M - Dec 13, 2010.
  Flurry runs analytics service used in iPhone and Android apps, and AppCircle, a recommendation platform that suggests apps the user might like.
• GeoEye to Acquire SPADAC Inc. - Dec 12, 2010.
  for $46M in cash and stock. SPADAC, a geospatial predictive analytics company, will become a wholly owned subsidiary named GeoEye Analytics.
• HP Gives Up on Business Intelligence and Analytics Markets - Dec 10, 2010.
  HP decided to leave the BI market, which includes analytics and data warehousing software. It will do this by shutting down its marketing, sales and product efforts with HP Neoview and related technologies
• Predictions for analytics in 2011 - Dec 9, 2010.
  From Int. Institute for Analytics experts, including Tom Davenport, John Elder, Bill Franks, Jeanne Harris, Anne Milley, Niel Nickolaisen, Jeremy Shapiro and James Taylor.

CFP - Calls for Papers (see also All CFP)

• Sentiment Analysis Symposium, due Jan 7
• Int. Conf. on Artificial Neural Networks, due Jan 14
• Self-Organizing Maps, due Jan 14
• Computational Intelligence for Security in Information Systems, due Jan 21
• KDD-2011: Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Workshop proposals, due Feb 1
• Practical Data Mining and Machine Learning for Optics Applications, due Feb 1
• DATA MINING CUP 2011, due Feb 1
• KDD-2011: Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, due Feb 11
• Web Science, due Feb 28
• Social Eco-Informatics, due Mar 1
• SIGSPATIAL 2011: Advances in Geographic Information Systems, due May 1

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