KDnuggets™ News 11:n16, June 29

Features

Supreme Court Strikes Down Ban on Medical Data Mining - Jun 25, 2011.
Data on what doctors are prescribing is protected by the First Amendment, and pharma companies have every right to buy that information and use it to target their marketing efforts, the Supreme Court has ruled.
KDD 2011, Aug 21-24, San Diego. Early reg by June 30 - Jun 28, 2011.
KDD-2011 is analytics/data mining top conference for researchers and practitioners. Register by June 30 for lowest rates. New this year: Industry Practice Expo with successful case studies from top companies.
New Poll: Annual Vacation Time? - Jun 28, 2011.
We do need a vacation from data. Vote in the poll and let me know how much vacation time you took (or plan to take) in 2011.
White paper on Uplift, Webcast on Analytic Talent, Analytics Conf. in NYC - Jun 27, 2011.
publications and events from PAW, including a paper on Uplift modeling, PAW NYC full agenda, Text Analytics World topics and case studies, PAW Government agenda, PAW London Keynotes and Case Studies and more.
Most viewed items for Jun 19-25 - Jun 26, 2011.
LexisNexis open-sources its Hadoop killer; What do Data Miners Need to Learn?
Top jobs: Senior Data Mining Engineer at eBay; Sr. Data Miner/Predictive Analyst at Elder Research, DC.

Webcasts

Webinar: Data Mining: Failure to Launch - Jun 22, 2011.
Attend this free webinar on July 14 or Aug 24 to learn how to get started with data mining and overcome both strategic and tactical limitations that cause data mining projects to fall short of their potential.
July 13 Webcast: The Analytics Power Lunch for Power Users - Jun 16, 2011.
Webcast Building Better Models for Predicting Product Quality will explore use of multiple predictive modeling techniques, use of bootstrap and boosting, and more.

Software

Yahoo launching Hadoop spinoff - Jun 28, 2011.
By incorporating next-generation features and capabilities, HortonWorks hopes to make Hadoop easier to consume and better suited for running production workloads.
Forecasting Ace Project - Jun 28, 2011.
explores new methods to combine predictions from a wide range of volunteer participants to provide more accurate forecasts of global events.
Hungarian pharmaceutical data - Jun 23, 2011.
Thesys group published several pharmaceutical datasets derived from Hungarian prescription data.
Call to R enthusiasts to work on The R Programming wikibook - Jun 23, 2011.
a call for both R community members and R-bloggers, to come and help make The R Programming wikibook be amazing

Jobs

Statistician/Algorithms Scientist at Guardian Analytics, Los Altos, CA - Jun 28, 2011.
Ground breaking fraud detection start-up is looking for a Research Scientist able to develop, analyze and program cutting-edge algorithms based on Bayesian networks, probability theory and statistical and behavioral models central to their fraud prevention SaaS applications.
Senior Web Implementation Analyst at Sears, Hoffman Estates, IL - Jun 28, 2011.
responsible for the tagging/tracking of Sears web analytics implementations; Work with business partners to capture tracking requirements; translate into implementation specs; ensure quality of data and reporting
Data Ops Engineer at WaPo Labs, Washington, DC - Jun 27, 2011.
discover and leverage data to improve our products and the organization. Our goal is to continue to drive consumer engagement by analyzing new sources of data, developing new metrics to track our progress, bending and folding our data to find meaningful segments and visualizing everything to make it understandable and engaging.
Data Analyst - Windows Live Intelligence at Microsoft, Redmond, WA - Jun 24, 2011.
If you like getting deep into data and telling the story the data shows you, you can have an incredible impact for Microsoft consumers and Windows Live! Join the team that is driving Windows Live success using the mountains of data from our intelligence systems.
Data Scientist - Quantitative Modeler at Collective, New York, NY - Jun 24, 2011.
a top 10 digital advertising network and leading technology platform provider, seeks talented and motivated data scientists to work on the cutting edge of Big data and apply modern machine learning and data mining algorithms to drive enormous value for a rapidly growing business.
Vice President Analytics at DataQuick, San Diego, CA - Jun 23, 2011.
lead developing, enhancing property data models used in business decision making in the mortgage lending industry; responsible for ongoing modeling enhancements to DataQuick's automated valuation models; oversee new, custom analytic efforts.
Scientist at ID Analytics, San Diego, CA - Jun 22, 2011.
be part of a team developing statistical score modeling, score model development, score model deployment, large scale database analysis, statistical algorithms and other advanced technologies.
Director, Marketing Analytics at The Children's Place, Secaucus, NJ - Jun 22, 2011.
responsible for best-in-class analytics, measurement, and data strategies to inform business initiatives focused on enhancing the overall customer experience.

Competitions

Student Data-Mining-Cup 2011 Results - Jun 27, 2011.
Students from Dortmund and Karlsruhe won the DATA-MINING-CUP 2011 and are therefore among the best up-and-coming data miners in the world

News Briefs

Digital Reasoning Introduces Select Partner Program for Big Data Analytics - Jun 28, 2011.
to support the growing ecosystem of leading technology vendors building the next generation of analytic solutions for Big Data.
Keeping Score on How You Take Your Medicine - Jun 26, 2011.
new FICO Medication Adherence Score predicts which patients are at highest risk for skipping or incorrectly using prescription medications.
IBM's Netezza Rolls out Large-scale Analytic Appliance - Jun 25, 2011.
new analytic appliance can analyze up to 10 petabytes of data in minutes.
Medicare claims soon to be open for data mining - Jun 23, 2011.
Researchers would be able to pay for individual physicians claims information to develop quality reports for the public.

CFP - Calls for Papers

Quote

"Gathering dataz is speech?" A twitter response to US Supreme Decision in IMS v. Sorrell, which overturned VT ban on prescription data mining, since Data mining of information was considered to be commercial speech

(for serious analysis, see IMS v. Sorrell: Pharmaceutical Speech Protected by Court - Opinion Analysis )