KDnuggets™ News 11:n31, Dec 28

Features

• New Poll: Hottest analytics / data mining areas in 2012? - Dec 27, 2011.
  New KDnuggets Poll is asking: What are the hottest analytics / data mining areas in 2012? Please vote on www.kdnuggets.com
• MINE: Maximal Information Nonparametric Exploration software using MIC - Dec 26, 2011.
  The breakthrough method from Reshef brothers (described in a recent Science paper) improves upon Pearson correlation coefficient and introduces a new MIC criteria to find a wide range of non-linear association. The corresponding software is available in Java and R.
• Predictive Analytics World March 2012, San Francisco Early Bird Savings - Dec 27, 2011.
  Predictive Analytics World, March 4-10, 2012, in San Francisco is packed with the top predictive analytics experts, practitioners, authors and business thought leaders. Early bird savings.
• Top news for Dec 18-24 - Dec 25, 2011.
  Five big data predictions for 2012; Social Network Analysis and Mining free access till Dec 31; Data Mining Shakespeare;
  Top jobs: Data Analyst at Nexon; Senior Analyst at US Treasury, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
• Top news for Dec 11-17 - Dec 18, 2011.
  Top Analytics/Data Mining Stories in 2011; Industries where Analytics were applied in 2011; European open data policy
  Top jobs: Analyst, Survey Research at Ingram Micro, Santa Ana; Sr. Scientific SW Engineer at PayScale, Seattle .

Courses, Events

• IBM teams with Universities in India to bring advanced analytics training - Dec 26, 2011.
  IBM is expanding its training for business analytics with new programs in India, China, Ireland and Scotland

Software

• New MINE software can find multiple nonlinear correlations in data - Dec 23, 2011.
  The MINE tool developed by Broad Institure and Harvard can tackle large data sets in a way that no other software program can. It introduces a 21st century version of Pearson correlation coefficient: maximal information coefficient (MIC) can be used to determine nonlinear correlations in data sets equitably.
• Text Analytics Made Easy - Dec 21, 2011.
  IBM white paper "Gaining full value from survey text" shows how to make text analysis easier, more efficient. Discover quick steps you can take to easily conduct text analysis using this automated linguistic-based approach to extract key concepts, sentiments and relationships from unstructred data.
• Provalis Research releases QDA Miner 4 - Dec 14, 2011.
  easy-to-use qualitative analysis software tool for coding, annotating, retrieving and analyzing small and large collections of documents.

Jobs

• Senior Analyst (Systems and Methods) at US Treasury, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Vienna, VA - Dec 23, 2011.
  Become part of the team that safeguards the financial system from the abuses, detects and prevents terrorist financing, money laundering, and other financial crime. Open to all US citizens. Apply by Jan 8
• Senior Analyst (Systems and Methods), federal employees only at US Treasury, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Vienna, VA - Dec 23, 2011.
  Become part of the team that safeguards the financial system from the abuses, detects and prevents terrorist financing, money laundering, and other financial crime.
• Data Analyst at Nexon, El Segundo, CA - Dec 20, 2011.
  provide reports and analyses for adhoc and on-going projects; champion the use of data to drive decision making for Nexon, a pioneer of interactive entertainment software and the leader in MMOG games.
• Analyst, Marketing Performance at Starwood Hotels and Resorts, Stamford, CT - Dec 16, 2011.
  providing insights in support of the Global Marketing Operations and Guest Communication teams related to targeting, segmentation and performance analysis of direct marketing campaigns

Academic/Research positions

• Faculty in machine learning, probabilistic modelling or data mining at Aalto U., Helsinki, Finland - Dec 20, 2011.
  open to outstanding individuals who hold a doctorate and have excellent potential for a successful scientific career. Closing date is Jan 13.
• Faculty, Information Systems at U. of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada - Dec 17, 2011.
  Applicants should have a PhD, (or near completion) in the area of Information Systems with a strong technical background and interest in HCI, information visualization, system analysis, software engineering, machine learning or database. Apply by Jan 31.
• Assoc. Professor in Information Systems or Operations Research at U. of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada - Dec 17, 2011.
  Applicants should have completed their PhD in the last 10 years in Industrial Engineering, OR, CS or Information Systems/Software Engineering; a very strong established record of research, and demonstrated ability as an excellent instructor.
• 3 PhD students in Computational Finance at U. of Luxembourg, Luxembourg - Dec 16, 2011.
  apply Text Mining and Machine Learning methods on financial news sources to document in a measurable way the structure and evolution of Europe financial policy on the Eurozone crisis and to relate it to the reaction of capital market prices.
• 10 Postdoc / Research Associates at Finnish Center of Excellence in Computational Inference (COIN), Helsinki, Finland - Dec 14, 2011.
  work on fundamental questions of inference and in applications in Intelligent Information Access, Computational Molecular Biology and Medicine, Computational History, Computational Climate, Computational Neuroscience and other directions

Competitions

• Data Fusion Contest - Dec 19, 2011.
  investigate the potential of multi-modal/multi-temporal fusion of very high spatial resolution imagery. Download three different sets of images (optical, SAR, and LIDAR) over the downtown of San Francisco and choose a research topic to work with.
• One-shot-learning Gesture Recognition - Dec 17, 2011.
  Humans are capable of recognizing patterns like hand gestures after seeing just ONE example. Can machines do that too?

Meetings

• Clarabridge Customer Connections (C3) Users Conference, Mar 5-7, Miami, FL - Dec 15, 2011.
  the leading event for customer experience professionals where you can exchange best practices while networking with business peers, industry analysts, and product experts.

Publications

• Five big data predictions for 2012 - Dec 22, 2011.
  As the "coming out" year for big data and data science draws to a close, what can we expect over the next 12 months? Streaming data processing, data science workflow, rise of data marketplaces, and more.
• Podcast: Social Media Analytics Perspectives Panel - Dec 22, 2011.
  explores effective ways for leveraging social media for competitive advantage; sentiment analysis technology; how to make business sense out of the flood of content
• Data Mining Shakespeare - Dec 22, 2011.
  Processing the bard plays thru DocuScope led to some unusual discoveries, such as that, linguistically, Othello a comedy.
• IIA Predictions for Analytics in 2012 - Dec 22, 2011.
  Big data analytics changes the 2012 technology landscape; "Informed Optimism" will drive rapid growth for cloud-based predictive analytics; and more ...
• Social Network Analysis and Mining - free access till Dec 31 - Dec 20, 2011.
  Social Network Analysis and Mining journal - free access till Dec 31. SNAM journal provides a rapid forum for the dissemination of original research articles in social networks analysis and mining as interdisciplinary research platform.

News Briefs

• STATISTICA Decisioning Platform - Dec 27, 2011.
  StatSoft introduces a new decision support technology for Banking, Insurance and Manufacturing. It integrates predictive analytics, text mining, and a rules engine to deliver recommendations, results, and guidance to front-line workers and decision-makers
• SAS Analytics tie winter storms to spikes in hospitalizations - Dec 23, 2011.
  UCF team wins Data Mining Shootout; predictive analytics can help health care providers prepare
• Orlando Magic sign SAS® Analytics to basketball operations - Dec 20, 2011.
  Orlando Magic NBA team plan to introduce a digital ticketing system. Card data will help staff improve efficiency and customize Magic fans' experiences and create special offers for everyone from diehard basketball fans to those who attend games for the social experience.
• DataMontage Data Visualization Software v. 3 - Dec 19, 2011.
  DataMontage is a Java class library and set of software applications that displays information-dense arrays of timelines and graphs; interactive displays help analysts review and interpret complex, time-oriented data quickly and consistently
• AAA selects KXEN InfiniteInsight(TM) Analytics Platform - Dec 17, 2011.
  Company leverages predictive analytics to optimize marketing campaigns with nearly 70% of its 53 million members
• Microsoft, GE Tackle Healthcare Analytics, Data Aggregation - Dec 17, 2011.
  the 50-50 joint venture will market an open-source technology platform and develop clinical applications with a focus on interoperability of health data and advanced analytics.
• European open data policy - Dec 15, 2011.
  The best way to get value from data is to give it away

CFP - Calls for Papers

• NLDB 2012 : Application of Natural Language Processing to Information Systems, due Jan 15
• MLB-WCCI-12: Special Session on Machine Learning for Business, due Jan 18
• PAW Chicago: Predictive Analytics World Chicago, due Jan 19
• LSNA 2012: The 1st International Workshop on Large Scale Network Analysis, due Feb 5
• KDD-2012: 18th ACM SIGKDD Conf. on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, due Feb 10
• PAW Germany: Predictive Analytics World Germany, due Mar 2
• DA-2012: Data Analytics 2012, due May 7

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