KDnuggets™ News 12:n13, May 30

Features (6) | Software (2) | Courses, Events (4) | Webcasts (1) | Jobs (7) | Academic (2) | Competitions (2) | Meetings (4) | Publications (4) | NewsBriefs (4) | CFP (7) | Quote

Features

• Poll Results: Top Analytics, Data Mining, Big Data software used - May 29, 2012.
  For the first time, the number of users of free/open source software exceeded the number of users of commercial software. The usage of Big data software grew five-fold. R, Excel, and RapidMiner were the most popular tools, with Statsoft Statistica getting the top commercial tool spot.
• KDnuggets Exclusive: Interview with Bassel Ojjeh, CEO and co-founder of nPario, makers of a Big Data Platform - May 24, 2012.
  Bassel Ojjeh, CEO and co-founder of nPario has an impressive career, working on analytics and big data at Microsoft, digiMine, and Yahoo. I talked with him about his latest start-up which provides a big data platform used by clients like Yahoo and EA.
• In social data, a fight between science and privacy - May 26, 2012.
  There is a fight brewing between academics and industry over the use of your Facebook activity or search history.
• IIA/Talent Analytics Research Study to understand Analytics Professionals - May 25, 2012.
  The Int. Institute of Analytics and Talent Analytics are co-sponsoring a Research Study to understand traits of Analytics Professionals. Participants will be invited to an exclusive launch of the study results.
• Top news for May 20-26: Analytics, Data Mining, Big Data Software Used? Text Analytics, Text Mining courses - May 27, 2012.
  New Poll: Analytics, Data Mining, Big Data Software Used?; Online courses on Text Analytics, Text Mining;
  Top jobs: Manager - Advanced Analytics at Deloitte; Sr. Research Fellow at REC Research Center, Poland.
• Top news for May 13-19: New Poll: Analytics, DM, Big Data Software Used? 7 Reasons you need predictive analytics - May 20, 2012.
  New Poll: Analytics, Data Mining, Big Data Software Used?; 7 Reasons You Need Predictive Analytics; Is There Big Money in Big Data?
  Top jobs: BI Analyst at Sybron Dental; Scientist, Predictive Analytics at Playdom/Disney.

Software

• White Paper: Analyzing Survey Text: A Brief Overview - May 29, 2012.
  Researchers can easily get more insight from their text responses using new tools for text analysis - spending less time on manual coding and reaping increased cost savings. See how you can gain a more detailed understanding of your survey results. Get it now.
• Polygraph launches Facebook Data Mining, Analytics - May 28, 2012.
  Polygraph tool analyzes major Facebook marketing scenarios and can identify the top 1000 fans with highest online influence.

Courses, Events

• TMA Courses in Predictive Analytics [July: NYC; August: San Jose] - May 28, 2012.
  Get up to speed in data mining faster and more effectively than with any other training program available.
• GATE Open Source Text Mining course, June, U. of Sheffield, UK. - May 22, 2012.
  GATE is an open-source text mining framework and a set of free multi-lingual text mining components, including named entity recognition, information extraction, and sentiment analysis.
• Statistics.com online courses on Text Analytics - May 21, 2012.
  Text is what makes Big Data big. The Institute for Statistics Education has several courses this summer devoted to text analytics and taught by Dr. Nitin Indurkhya.
• Summer School on Advanced Statistics and Data Mining (Madrid, Jun 25 - Jul 6) - May 17, 2012.
  The program includes 12 courses including Bayesian networks, Multivariate data analysis, Feature subset selection, Hot topics in intelligent data analysis, and more.

Webcasts

• Webinar: Data Mining: Failure to Launch [June 7, July 17] - May 28, 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.

Jobs

• Predictive Modeler at GuideOne Insurance, West Des Moines, IA - May 26, 2012.
  Planning and delivering predictive models, statistical analysis, and data mining projects for a variety of uses. The ideal candidate will also have experience in property casualty insurance.
• Manager - Advanced Analytics at Deloitte, National Flexible, Central (Chicago) Preferred - May 23, 2012.
  Developing and managing complex analytical modeling exercises, working with senior leaders to identify new and existing analytical needs, and managing analyses using advanced statistics and data mining techniques to enable better decision making.
• Senior Research Fellow at REC Research & Engineering Center, Wroclaw, Poland - May 22, 2012.
  Work on an exciting project entitled "Computational Intelligence Platform for Evolving and Robust Predictive Systems (INFER)" funded by the European Commission.
• Chief Algorithm Officer/Data Scientist, no prior healthcare experience required at Allazo Health, Telecommute, Philadelphia, or New York City - May 18, 2012.
  Allazo Health combines behavioral science with data mining and machine learning to help health insurers and pharmacy benefit management companies influence patients to adopt healthier behaviors.
• Modeling Engineer at Quantcast, San Francisco, CA - May 17, 2012.
  Modeling Engineers are responsible for tackling Quantcast most persistent and complex data mining and machine learning problems.
• Product Labs engineers and scientists at Quantcast, San Francisco, CA - May 17, 2012.
  The Product Labs team, part of our core R&D group, builds products based on mining our data in new and creative ways.
• Data Mining Scientist at Yahoo!, Boca Raton, FL - May 17, 2012.
  Design data modeling/analysis services used to mine enterprise systems and applications for knowledge and information that enhance business processes.

Academic/Research positions

• PhD position in machine learning, data analysis and visualization at Aalto U., Finland - May 28, 2012.
  Develop advanced machine learning methods for nonlinear dimensionality reduction, visualization, and exploratory data analysis with multiple data sources. Appy by 22 June 2012
• Postdoc position, Modular Learning Systems at U. of Bristol, UK - May 17, 2012.
  Work with Professor Nello Cristianini and his team on an EU funded project concerning the composition of modular learning systems.

Competitions

• Civic Data Challenge - May 24, 2012.
  Turn the raw data of "civic health" into beautiful, useful applications and visualizations, enabling communities to be better understood and made to thrive.
• Competitions: Predict personality traits, Psychopathy based on Twitter usage - May 21, 2012.
  The 2 competitions will use anonymised dataset of users, their self assessed personality and psychopathy scores, and 337 variables derived from their Twitter information.

Meetings

• KDD-2012 Call for Exhibits - May 29, 2012.
  The annual ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining is the leading forum for data mining researchers and practitioners. Exhibiting at the Conference offers many opportunities to reach the leaders of Analytics, Big Data, and Data Mining.
• ICDM '12: The 12th IEEE Int. Conf. on Data Mining - May 29, 2012.
  Calls for research papers, workshop papers, demos, tutorial proposals, and PhD student forum contributions
• KDD-2012: Data Science, Big Data and Data Mining Leaders gather in Beijing - May 23, 2012.
  Beijing to Welcome Data Science, Big Data and Data Mining Leaders at KDD-2012, 18th Int. ACM Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Conference. The conference will also feature industry Expo, Largest KDD Cup competition, and summer school. Early registration until June 29.
• Analytics Executives and Data Scientists Gather in Boston, September 2012 - May 23, 2012.
  Our partners at IEG. would like to invite you to the Advanced Analytics and Big Data Forum on September 13-14 in Boston.

Publications

• A movie about Paul The Psychic Octopus - Soccer 2010 World Cup Predictor - May 26, 2012.
  Was octopus a better predictor than a Bayesian algorithm? New movie about Paul The Psychic Octopus, whose remarkable string of eight correct 'predictions' during the 2010 Soccer World Cup made him a worldwide superstar. Also an example of Data Mining #FAIL.
• Top KDnuggets tweets, May 21-24: Twitter, Social Network Analysis with R; Most important about Big Data - May 25, 2012.
  Fun example: Twitter, Social Network Analysis with R; What is most important about Big Data; Data Science at LinkedIn; Is data mining still a sin against econometrics? and more
• Top KDnuggets tweets, May 16-20: Rise of R, decline of SAS, SPSS in academia; Google fights cancer - May 21, 2012.
  Rise of R, decline of SAS, SPSS in academia; How common is your birthday? Google fights cancer; What is your #BigData Score? and more.
• Hadoop Education is Vital to Big Data Analysis - May 18, 2012.
  Hadoop is a key Big Data technology, but to date very few universities have included it in their undergraduate or graduate curriculums

News Briefs

• Precog launches easy big-data service, gets $2M funding - May 24, 2012.
  Precog has launched a simple, drop-in app developers can use to collect and analyze vast amounts of data for product features like recommendations, reporting, predictions, and real-time decision-making.
• GigaSpaces XAP 9.0 enables your own real-time Big Data analytics platform - May 24, 2012.
  Out-of-the-Box blueprints for Twitter- and Facebook-like analytics systems available for download
• Angoss KnowledgeSEEKER® and KnowledgeSTUDIO® Version 8.0 New Features - May 18, 2012.
  New features include Text Analytics - Integration with Lexalytics, in-memory analytics using 64-bit addressing, in-DB module integrated with Oracle, Teradata, SQL Server, Netezza, and more.
• Lavastorm Analytics Free Software Edition - May 17, 2012.
  Lavastorm Desktop Public Edition brings the proven power of the Lavastorm Analytics Engine to the mass market

CFP - Calls for Papers

• StrataRx: O'Reilly Conference Making Health Data Work, due Jun 7
• PGM2012: Probabilistic Graphical Models Workshop, due Jun 8
• IEEE ICDM 2012: The 12th IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, due Jun 18
• ADMA 2012: The 8th International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications , due Jul 10
• UISN: The Use and Impact of Social Networking, due Aug 1
• AusDM: Australasian Data Mining Conference, due Aug 1
• ACM SAC 2013 - DATA STREAMS TRACK: SAC 2013 Data Streams Track, due Sep 21

Quote

For the first time, the number of users of free/open source analytics and data mining software exceeded the number of users of commercial analytics and data mining software. KDnuggets 2012 Analytics/Data Mining software poll