KDnuggets™ News 12:n02, Jan 24

Features (6) | Courses, Events (2) | Webcasts (3) | Software (2) | Jobs (14) | Academic (6) | Competitions (4) | Meetings (2) | Publications (2) | NewsBriefs (6) | CFP (8) | Quote

Features

• KDDCUP 2012: First Announcement - Jan 13, 2012.
  KDD Cup will focus on User Modeling based on Microblog Data and Search Click Data, and have two tasks: 1. Social Network Mining on Microblogs (Weibo) and 2. User Click Modeling based on Search Engine Log Data
• Ventana Research and KDnuggets Announce Analytics Education and Research Partnership - Jan 18, 2012.
  Focus on predictive analytics and benchmark research
• Social Media Analytics for Enterprise - Jan 19, 2012.
  Ahead of inaugural Social Media Analytics Summit, read our Social Media Analytics Expert Interview Series, covering the rapidly emerging social media analytics industry.
• Social Media Analytics at Text Analytics World San Francisco, Mar 6-7 - Jan 23, 2012.
  Text Analytics World, Mar 6-7 (SF), colocated with PAW, features cutting edge social media analytic methods and techniques.
• Top news for Jan 15-21 - Jan 22, 2012.
  KDDCUP 2012; Amazon Access Competition; Poll Results: Hottest Analytics/DM Topics in 2012;
  Top jobs: 10+ ML researchers at GE; Big Data Analytics at Wipro, Bangalore.
• Top news for Jan 8-14 - Jan 15, 2012.
  Poll Results: Hottest Analytics / DM Topics in 2012; 5 Big Data Startups to Watch; IBM sees gold in data mining
  Top jobs: ML/ DM Research Scientists at AT&T Labs, NJ/San Fransisco; Researcher at 1199 SEIU, NYC/Boston;

Courses, Events

• MS in Predictive Analytics and more at DAMPA: DePaul Center for DM and Predictive Analytics - Jan 23, 2012.
  DePaul DAMPA is an applied research center dedicated to promoting and supporting research projects, academic programs and industry collaborations in data mining and predictive analytics. DePaul Master of Science in Predictive Analytics prepares graduates for leadership roles in the fast-growing field of data analytics.
• Online Courses from Statistics.com - Jan 20, 2012.
  Sign up for 3 courses and save $200 on course tuition! Topics cover Data Mining in R, Decision trees, Forecasting, Visualization, Text mining, Sentiment analysis, and more.

Webcasts

• Webinar, Jan 24: Managing the Next Best Activity with Predictive Analytics - Jan 17, 2012.
  Join Decision management guru, James Taylor and KXEN's VP Marco Casalaina as they discuss how to implement Next Best Activity using best-in-class predictive analytics and business rules.
• Webinar: Data Mining: Failure to Launch [Feb 15, Mar 8] - Jan 23, 2012.
  Learn how to get started with predictive modeling and overcome strategic and tactical limitations that cause data mining projects to fall short of their potential.
• Jan 26, Bentley and webcast: Discovery and Inference with Bayesian Networks - Jan 20, 2012.
  Dealing with the Data Deluge - Knowledge Discovery and Causal Inference with Bayesian Networks, talk by Stefan Conrady at the Bentley U Virtual Analytics Symposium.

Software

• IBM rolls out new social analytics tools - Jan 23, 2012.
  IBM social analytics tools will aggregate unstructured data and find signals to highlight everything from employee sentiment to market trends via unstructured data, SAP applications and Facebook posts.
• Dedoose 3.3 Launched! - Jan 14, 2012.
  Dedoose facilitates the coding and analysis of qualitative data and their integration with demographic and other quantitative data. Dedoose is a SaaS applications in use by marketing, ethnographic, clinical trial, social policy, education, and other research professionals.

Jobs

• Senior Applied Researcher, Microsoft Advertising R&D at Microsoft, Bellevue, WA - Jan 19, 2012.
  Through incisive analytics, we know who cares - both when and where. Above all, we love data and excel at interpreting it for our partners. A major goal is to develop the long term strategy for combatting fraud and improving traffic quality across adCenter.
• Senior Statistician at Thomson Reuters, Santa Barbara, CA; Ann Arbor, MI; or Baltimore, MD. - Jan 19, 2012.
  expertise in the analysis of healthcare fraud, in statistics, health services research, epidemiological methods, and healthcare provider performance. Strong data mining skills and experience.
• Big Data Analytics Professionals at Wipro Limited, Bangalore, India - Jan 18, 2012.
  The Strategic Technology Office at Wipro Limited is looking for Data Scientists, Stream Data Mining, and Semantic Web Gurus for solving Big Emerging Economy Challenges.
• 10+ outstanding machine-learning researchers at GE Global Research, San Ramon, CA - Jan 17, 2012.
  work with a world-class multidisciplinary team to develop and deploy scalable predictive, reasoning and data mining algorithms and software for diverse industrial applications, including anomaly detection, diagnostics & prognostics on sensor, video, imagery and text data.
• Web Analytics Engineer at Wapo Labs, part of the Washington Post Company, Washington, DC - Jan 16, 2012.
  Want to leave your mark on a Fortune 500 company as part of a fast-paced, rapidly expanding team dedicated toward charting out the future of news? WaPo Labs is hiring a Web Analytics Engineer to help quench our ever-growing thirst for online data.
• Partner Presales Specialist at KNIME, Zurich, Switzerland - Jan 15, 2012.
  At KNIME, we are merging science with start-of-the-art technology and an exciting Silicon Valley startup spirit. Partner Presales Specialist: experience in working with partners, enabling them to establish an international channel network
• QA/Tech Support Engineer at KNIME, Zurich, Switzerland - Jan 15, 2012.
  At KNIME, we are merging science with start-of-the-art technology and an exciting Silicon Valley startup spirit. QA/Tech Support Engineer: bringing the KNIME testing system to the next level and making sure our reputation for rock solid technology keeps pace with our growing business.
• User Interface / Experience Specialist at KNIME, Zurich, Switzerland - Jan 15, 2012.
  At KNIME, we are merging science with start-of-the-art technology and an exciting Silicon Valley startup spirit. UI / Experience Specialist - responsible for improvements to the KNIME Client interface and the design and development of our next generation KNIME Web interface.
• Senior Software Engineer (Machine Learning) - Search Analytics at A9.com, Palo Alto, CA - Jan 14, 2012.
  an exciting opportunity to design, implement, and apply state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to rich and voluminous user behavior and textual data for one of the largest search engines on the web.
• Software Engineer - Search Relevance at A9.com, Palo Alto, CA - Jan 14, 2012.
  A9.com, the search technology subsidiary of Amazon.com, is looking for highly motivated engineers interested in improving the quality of Amazon's product search.
• Principal Predictive Modeler/Senior Data Scientist at Allstate Insurance, Northbrook, IL - Jan 13, 2012.
  a creative Senior Data Scientist to use ML, statistics, data mining, and analytic skills to influence the decision making, including identifying and developing pricing opportunities.
• Predictive Analyst at Blue Slate Solutions, Columbia, SC - Jan 13, 2012.
  be well versed in data preparation techniques, IR, machine learning, visualization, and classification algorithms, and the use of tools like RapidMiner, R, and SAS. Must start by January 30, 2012.
• Data Analyst - Matching at eHarmony, Santa Monica, CA - Jan 12, 2012.
  As part of the eHarmony Matching team, responsible for generating tactical analyses and insights to support the operation and improvement of eHarmony's matchmaking and delivery systems.
• Senior Manager, Analytical Operations at SIRIUS XM Radio, New York, NY - Jan 11, 2012.
  conducting statistical analyses in support of our marketing and strategic initiatives. Have strong consultative skills in addition to quantitative ability.

Academic/Research positions

• Postdoc in Data Mining at Monash U., Melbourne, Australia - Jan 23, 2012.
  a motivated and creative postdoctoral researcher to join the Monash University data mining group working with Professors Geoff Webb and Ann Nicholson on discovering associations in the context of background knowledge.
• PhD position in "Process Mining" at Eindhoven U. of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands - Jan 18, 2012.
  The AIS group is one of the leading groups in the exciting new field of process mining which focus on process discovery (extracting process models from event logs), conformance checking, and extension.
• Post-doc Research Associates at USC, Computational Biology, Los Angeles, CA - Jan 17, 2012.
  focus on using high-throughput genomic data from our experiments and public sources to study disease mechanisms and disease connections.
• Postdoc Researcher at Xavier U. of Louisiana and UIC, New Orleans, LA, USA - Jan 12, 2012.
  The Next Generation Data Mining/ Social Computing at UIC and the Data Mining & Bioinformatics Group at Xavier U. of Louisiana are seeking applications for a joint postdoc researcher.
• 3 PhD/Postdoc positions in Data Mining, Machine Learning, Constraint Programming at KU Leuven, Belgium - Jan 12, 2012.
  The Machine Learning group of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven has several open positions (at the Ph.D. or post-doc level) in the area of data mining and its combination with constraint satisfaction and constraint programming.
• Academic staff in databases and data mining at U. of Antwerp, Belgium - Jan 12, 2012.
  contribute to the research-oriented education in the Msc program on databases; research in the areas of databases and data mining; The main language of instruction is Dutch;

Competitions

• Predicting Customer Acquisition & Retention using Structured and Semi-structured Data - Jan 21, 2012.
  SiriusXM will be providing researchers with the complete "360 view" for 300,000 subscribers, including structured and unstructured data, all anonymized. Learn more during Feb 10 webcast.
• Eye Movements Verification and Identification Competition - Jan 18, 2012.
  determine how people may be identified based on their eye movement characteristic.
• Aspiring Minds Job Matching Competition - Jan 16, 2012.
  the competition focus is efficient matching of people to jobs by merit: one that appeals most to the worker while delivering maximum value to their employer. Young people / students are encouraged to participate
• Amazon Access Data Science Competition - Jan 16, 2012.
  build a model, learned using historical data, that will determine an employee's access needs such that manual access transactions (grants and revokes) are minimized as the employee's attributes change over time

Meetings

• KDD-2012 Industry/Government Track CFP, papers due Feb 10 - Jan 21, 2012.
  I/G track solicits papers describing implementations of KDD solutions relevant to industrial or government settings; advance the understanding of practical, applied, or pragmatic issues and highlight new research challenges arising from real KDD applications
• Marketing on the Move: Understanding Mobile Consumer Behavior Feb 27-28, Philadelphia - Jan 21, 2012.
  presentations from practitioners and academic researchers who are pioneering the field of mobile customer analytics

Publications

• BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: Mining Text Data - Jan 18, 2012.
  This is a detailed survey book on text mining, which discusses the classical key topics, including clustering, classification, and dimensionality reduction; and emerging topics such as social networks, multimedia and transfer. The table of contents and sample survey chapters available online.
• IEEE ICDM 2011 Community Meeting Presentation - Jan 12, 2012.
  an overview and interesting observations from IEEE ICDM 2011 conference

News Briefs

• IDC: Oracle, IBM, Microsoft Lead Business Analytics Market - Jan 23, 2012.
  Oracle held the top spot during first half of 2011 with 20 percent global market share and 17.9 percent semiannual year-over-year growth. 14 vendors managed to surpass $100 million in global BA revenue during the first half of 2011
• Audiovox Car Connection is Powered by Agnik Analytics - Jan 23, 2012.
  New Location Based Services Systems focus on protecting family and providing significant in-vehicle monitoring and management capability
• Enterprise Hadoop: Big data processing made easier - Jan 20, 2012.
  Amazon, Cloudera, Hortonworks, IBM, and MapR mix simpler setup of Hadoop clusters with proprietary twists and trade-offs. Peter Wayner tests different Hadoop offerings and reports.
• Splunk Answers Business Demand For Big Data Analysis - Jan 19, 2012.
  Real-time IT tool for tracking log files, clickstreams, and message queues finds a second (more valuable) use answering business questions.
• SAS Retail Analytics Applications - Jan 17, 2012.
  If the shoe fits, you must be shopping at DSW - Shoe retailer reduces stock outs, increases customer loyalty using SAS® Size Optimization, and more SAS Retail Success stories
• Oracle Big Data Appliance - Jan 16, 2012.
  New Engineered System and Oracle Big Data Connectors Help Unlock the Value of Enterprise Big Data. New system features 864 GB memory, 216 CPU cores, and 648 TB of disk storage.

CFP - Calls for Papers

• DMHM: Data Mining for Healthcare Management, due Jan 30
• NLDB 2012: Application of Natural Language Processing to Information Systems, due Jan 31
• KDD-2012: 18th ACM SIGKDD Conf. on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, due Feb 10
• ICML-12-w: ICML 2012 - Call for Workshops , due Feb 10
• KDD-2012-IG: KDD-2012 Industry/Government Track, due Feb 10
• SIGIR 2012-w: SIGIR 2012: Workshop Proposals, due Feb 20
• RWDM-12: Special Issue on Real World Data Mining , due Feb 29
• ECML-PKDD-2012-demos : ECML PKDD 2012 call for demos and NECTAR-track submissions, due May 18

Quote

"Data is the new oil", Andreas Weigend