KDnuggets™ News 12:n17, Jul 25

Features

New Poll: Languages used for analytics / data mining? - Jul 24, 2012.
Sometimes, the high-level visual GUI is not enough and you need to code your great idea (or perform data wrangling) in a lower-level language. New KDnuggets Poll is asking: What programming/statistics languages you used for analytics / data mining?
Data Science and Prediction, by Vasant Dhar: What does Data Science mean? - Jul 17, 2012.
The use of the term "Data Science" is becoming increasingly common along with "Big Data." What does Data Science mean? What skills should a "data scientist" possess?
Data Mining "Nobel Prize": ACM SIGKDD 2012 Innovation Award to Prof. Vipin Kumar - Jul 17, 2012.
KDD Innovation Award, the highest award for technical excellence in the field of Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD), is awarded to Prof. Vipin Kumar for his technical contributions to foundational research in data mining and its applications to mining scientific and climate data.
ACM SIGKDD 2012 Service Award to Dr. Ying Li - Jul 17, 2012.
Dr. Ying Li is recognized for her substantial technical contributions to the practice and application of data mining and for her outstanding service to the global KDD community.
PAW Boston: meet the Top Predictive Analytics Influencers - Jul 24, 2012.
Meet the top predictive analytics influencers who will gather at Predictive Analytics World Boston, Sep 30 - Oct 4, 2012. Special KDnuggets discount.
FREE IBM White Paper: The How's and Why's of Survey Research - Jul 23, 2012.
Discover the seven steps to better survey research -- and discover how predictive analytics can take it to the next level. Get the white paper now.
Top news for Jul 15-21: Nodeable Twitter Big Data Tool; Data Mining In Excel book (free download) - Jul 22, 2012.
Nodeable Twitter Big Data Tool; Data Mining In Excel book (free download); Vasant Dhar: What does Data Science mean?;
Top jobs: Sr. Analytic Scientist at Verisk Analytics; Big Data Engineering Amazon Web Services.
Top news for Jul 8-14: Data Mining In Excel book (free download); Women in Analytics, Data Science - Jul 15, 2012.
Data Mining In Excel book (free download); Women in Analytics and Data Science; Stats to detect scientific fraud;
Top jobs: Sr. Director, Analytics at The Travelers; Data and Analytics Specialist at Zillow

Software

Rexer Analytics 2011 Data Miner Survey: Summary Report - Jul 23, 2012.
The report summarizing the Rexer Analytics 2011 Data Miner Survey is out. Among key findings: CRM / Marketing remains top application; R continues to climb and is used by almost half of respondents. Only 12% rate their company as having very high analytic sophistication.
GraphChi: Fast graph software for Big Data - Jul 20, 2012.
New GraphChi software makes it possible analyze in minutes on a laptop graphs that used to take hours on large clusters of computers.
Top Business Analytics and Advanced Analytics Software Vendors - Jul 13, 2012.
We look at the market size, growth, and revenue for the leading business analytics and advanced analytics software vendors for 2009-2011.
Data Mining Projects - Jul 13, 2012.
real-world projects for an undergraduate data mining course are freely available.
Mapping Public Opinion: A Tutorial - Jul 22, 2012.
Political/county boundaries are not always the best way to break down analysis. This tutorial shows a better alternative: Isarithmic (Continuous) Maps of Public Opinion, including code in R

Courses, Events

TMA Courses in Predictive Analytics [Aug: San Jose; Sep: Wash., DC] - Jul 18, 2012.
Get up to speed in data mining faster and more effectively than with any other training program available.

Webcasts

August 13 Webcast - Analytically Speaking featuring Bob Stine and Peter Bloomfield - Jul 17, 2012.
Join us for a series of monthly webcasts where the foremost analytics experts will share insights that come with years of developing best practices and enjoying great success with analytics.

Jobs

Data Mining Research Engineer - Big Data/HPC at Bosch, Palo Alto, CA - Jul 24, 2012.
Develop and implement algorithms, design test cases for distributed and parallel predictive analytics; Improve scalability and performance; Stay up-to-date with research and industry.
Data Mining Research Engineer - Algorithms at Bosch, Palo Alto, CA - Jul 24, 2012.
Research, develop and apply advanced statistical algorithms for analysis of big data across Bosch business domains (automotive, healthcare, industrial); Collaborate with product management, marketing and engineering; Stay current with latest research and publish.
Data Mining Research Engineer - Active Learning at Bosch, Palo Alto, CA - Jul 24, 2012.
Research, develop and apply active learning methods in applications across various Bosch business domains (automotive, healthcare, industrial)
Director of Technology (Title Negotiable) at ORBmedia, Washington, D.C. - Jul 23, 2012.
ORBmedia is a new digital, data fueled journalism organization, combining classic journalistic reporting and new technical capabilities to generate and deliver a daily multi-media story to a diverse global audience. Application deadline: Sep 9.
Predictive Modeler / Data Scientist at BehaviorMatrix, Blue Bell, PA (outside Philadelphia) - Jul 19, 2012.
Perform statistical analysis to extract information from data and use it to predict future trends and behavior patterns. BehaviorMatrix applies proprietary behavioral analysis to big data.
Developer / Data Scientist (NLP / Big Data Analytics) at BehaviorMatrix, Blue Bell, PA (outside Philadelphia) - Jul 19, 2012.
We are looking for a talented, energetic individual with demonstrated excellence in delivering robust solutions based on leading-edge technologies in the field of social media analytics, natural language processing, cognitive and neuroscience.
Application Developer / Data Engineer at BehaviorMatrix, Blue Bell, PA (outside Philadelphia) - Jul 19, 2012.
Enjoy working with data and back-end databases? Have experience with and want to learn more about Map/Reduce and NoSQL technologies? BehaviorMatrix applies proprietary behavioral analysis to big data.
UI / UX / Data Visualization Specialist at BehaviorMatrix, Blue Bell, PA (outside Philadelphia) - Jul 18, 2012.
BehaviorMatrix is a digital media analytics company that applies proprietary behavioral analysis to big data in order to provide advertisers, product managers, investors, and parents, unique insights into brands, products, and other topics.
Exciting Engineering opportunities to work on Big Data at Amazon Web Services, Seattle, WA | Palo Alto, CA | Dublin, Ireland - Jul 18, 2012.
Looking for top engineering talent - engineers (at all experience levels) and software development managers (with experience leading teams that have built large scale distributed systems).
VP of Weather Intelligence at The Weather Channel, Boston, MA - Jul 16, 2012.
A highly-qualified business executive to foster and lead an emerging weather and business analytics team, which researches relationships, dependencies and tendencies between the weather and business data.
Data Mining Scientist/Engineer at Yahoo!, Boca Raton, FL - Jul 13, 2012.
Design data modeling/analysis services used to mine enterprise systems and applications for knowledge and information that enhance business processes.
Senior Analytics Consultant at Metrics Marketing, Westlake, OH - Jul 12, 2012.
Metrics Marketing, a database marketing and interactive services agency, is seeking a Senior Analytics Consultant to design, execute, and deliver strategic analytics and insights.

Competitions

CrowdAnalytix Competition: Churn Prediction in Telecom - Jul 18, 2012.
This contest is about reducing customer churn (attrition) using analytics. Submission deadline: July 30
DARPA Innovation House Study: Mine Visual and Geospatial Big Data - Jul 16, 2012.
DARPA Innovation House Study will provide a focused residential research environment and funding for up to 8 teams, to design and demonstrate novel research approach to extracting meaningful content from large volumes of varied visual and geospatial media. Apply by July 31.
Nokia Mobile Data Challenge 2012: your friends determine where you are going - Jul 15, 2012.
Nokia Research Center Lausanne collected data from smartphones of almost 200 participants over 1+ year and released it for the research community. One striking result is that your friends info is remarkably accurate in determining where you will be in 24 hours.

Publications

Data Mining In Excel book draft (free download) - Jul 14, 2012.
This book is intended for the business student (and practitioner) of data mining techniques, and all data mining algorithms are provided in an Excel add-in XLMiner.
Reject Inference Methods - Jul 24, 2012.
Developing a solid and sound model/scorecard using a reject inference can substantially increase the size, and quality of a customer base or portfolio. Here we look at the use and development of reject inferences.
Pew Research on the Future of Big Data - Jul 20, 2012.
The survey responded were split, with 53% agreeing with a relatively positive future where Big Data improves social, political, and economic intelligence. However, 39% were concerned that Big Data could cause more problems than it solves between now and 2020.
Framing the Data Mining Problem - Part 2 - Jul 19, 2012.
Tim Graettinger focuses on three key questions that help to clearly and explicitly define the problem to be solved at the outset of a data mining project.
Ethics of Big Data: avoid creepiness - Jul 18, 2012.
New book, Ethics of Big Data, by a consultant and a doctor of philosophy, argues that as personal data becomes increasingly public, creators of big data will increasingly face ethical decision points.
Vasant Dhar defends his proposal of Facebook as Information Market on CNBC - Jul 17, 2012.
How will Facebook justify its enormous valuation? Prof. Vasant Dhar discusses his idea of Facebook as information market on CNBC with Henry Blodgett.
Ajay Ohri interviews Alain Chesnais, Chief Scientist Trendspottr, ACM past president - Jul 17, 2012.
Alain Chesnais talks about computer graphics, social media, Big data, Facebook, ACM and more.
UH Data Mining Hypertextbook - Jul 13, 2012.
This book includes chapters on Clustering, Classification, Visualization and Association Rule mining, animations of some of the key algorithms, and is provided free to other instructors thanks to NSF
Top KDnuggets tweets, July 19-22: Coursera online courses in ML, Stats, Data; Community Detection in Networks with R - Jul 23, 2012.
Coursera online courses in Machine Learning, Stats, Data Analysis from top universities; Community Detection in Networks with R; The Myth of De-Identification: three data points can identify 87% in US; What do top Kaggle competitors focus on?
Top KDnuggets tweets, July 16-18: Fantastic tutorial: Social Media Analysis; Top 10 Big data sources, methods - Jul 19, 2012.
Fantastic tutorial: Social Media Analysis with Twitter and Python; Top 10 Big data sources and their DM methods; SAS CEO Jim Goodnight on Analytics, Big Data, competition; NYU Prof. Vasant Dhar: What does Data Science mean?
Top KDnuggets tweets, July 12-15: What Exactly Is GitHub? Data Mining In Excel book - Jul 16, 2012.
What Exactly Is GitHub Anyway? Data Mining In Excel book (free download); Prediction Quality Over Statistical Purity; An algorithm predicts your location by looking at your friends.
Top KDnuggets tweets, July 9-11: The 3 I's Of Big Data, SAS leads Advanced Analytics market - Jul 12, 2012.
The 3 I's Of Big Data; SAS leads Advanced Analytics market with 35.2% share; Predictive coding: a judge approves use of machine learning; SF Bay ACM Data Mining Camp

News Briefs

A Memristor True Random-Number Generator - Jul 23, 2012.
Taiwan engineers invented a low-power circuit that can generate true random digits using natural electronic "noise".
Nodeable brings Twitter Big Data Tool the Cloud - Jul 21, 2012.
Nodeable new service StreamReduce is a cloud-hosted real-time big data analytics product, based on Storm engine acquired by Twitter last year.
Analytics software market strong - Jul 12, 2012.
The global market for business analytics software grew roughly 14% in 2011, fueled by hype about "big data" and new technological innovations. IDC predicts the market size will be $51B by 2016.

CFP - Calls for Papers

Quote

Dilbert: Dogbert raising venture capital for his location-based, social-media, cloud start-up

Dilbert: How Dogbert raised venture capital for his location-based, social-media, cloud start-up (not flattering).