KDnuggets™ News 12:n23, Oct 23

Features (6) | Software (1) | Courses, Events (2) | Webcasts (3) | Jobs (7) | Academic (2) | Competitions (3) | Publications (3) | NewsBriefs (2) | CFP (4) | Quote

Features

• New Poll: Predicting Obama vs Romney - Oct 2, 2012.
  Who do you prefer in US 2012 Presidential Election and who do you expect to win? Please vote
• Pedro Domingos: A few useful things to know about Machine Learning - Sep 27, 2012.
  A leading researcher explains the "folk knowledge" to successfully develop machine learning applications. This knowledge is not easily available in texbooks, and lack of this knowledge will impair many machine learning and data mining projects.
• Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit, Chicago, Nov 15-16 - Sep 28, 2012.
  Our partners at Innovation Enterprise are organizing Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit in Chicago, to bring together the industry forward-thinking analytics professionals.
• Top news, jobs in September: What will replace Big Data and when? Journeys to Data Mining - Oct 1, 2012.
  Poll Results: What will replace Big Data and when? Journeys to Data Mining by leading researchers
  Top jobs: Data Scientist/Big Data/Hadoop at QuickenLoans; Computational Systems Scientist at Firmenich, New York, NY
• Additions to KDnuggets in September - Oct 1, 2012.
  New companies, datasets, education, meetings, publications, software, solutions
• Top news for Sep 23-29: What will replace Big Data and when? A few useful things about Machine Learning - Sep 30, 2012.
  Poll Results: What will replace Big Data and when? A few useful things to know about Machine Learning; Journeys to Data Mining
  Top jobs: Data Scientist in Alexandria, VA; Professors in Analytics at NTU, Singapore

Software

• Pervasive Big Data and RushAnalytics for KNIME - Sep 26, 2012.
  If you could build 100 analytic models in the time it takes you to develop and test 10 of them today, could you out-predict your competition? Check Pervasive RushAnalytics for KNIME.

Courses, Events

• PACE Data Mining Boot Camp, San Diego, Oct 16-17 - Oct 2, 2012.
  During the two-day PACE Data Mining Boot Camp participants will receive the basic training to learn effective predictive analytic strategies and have access to SDSC Gordon, a top supercomputer with 300 TB flash memory. Register today - seating is limited!
• TMA Courses in Data Analytics [Dec: Vegas, Feb: Orlando] - Oct 2, 2012.
  Get up to speed in data mining faster and more effectively than with any other training program available. Next courses in Las Vegas and Orlando.

Webcasts

• Webinar: Data Mining: Failure to Launch [Oct 10] - Oct 2, 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.
• Oct 17 Webcast: Analytically Speaking with Stu Hunter and David Salsburg - Oct 1, 2012.
  Join them on a walk down memory lane, highlight pivotal experiences and changes they've witnessed in the field of statistics over the years, including stories about other statistics greats - Gertrude Cox, R.A. Fisher, John Tukey and George Box.
• WCAI Research Opportunity Leveraging SmartMeter Data, Oct 26 - Sep 26, 2012.
  SmartMeter PG&E platform can be used to engage customers, reduce energy consumption, and offer customers appealing alternative pricing schemes. The data will include energy usage for 30,000 residential customers across Northern California over 36 months.

Jobs

• Topic Specialist, Knowledge Practice/Analytics, Multiple openings at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Boston - Oct 1, 2012.
  Topic Specialist is responsible for staying current on leading-edge tools and approaches, proactively working with the Team Leader for Advanced and Customer Analytics to deliver analytical advantage to BCG.
• Senior Analyst, Knowledge Practice/Analytics, Multiple openings at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Boston - Oct 1, 2012.
  An opportunity to leverage advanced analytics methodologies to deliver value to BCG clients in collaboration with case teams and Practice Areas. Also supervise the analytics platforms and data sets, lead development of
• Analyst, Knowledge Practice/Analytics, Multiple openings at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Boston - Oct 1, 2012.
  BCG Advanced and Customer Analytics team delivers powerful analytics-based insights, methods, and visualizations designed to help our clients tackle their most pressing business problems.
• Data Scientist at CSS client, Alexandria, VA - Sep 27, 2012.
  Discover actionable insights using a large repository of individual-level data. The ideal candidate is someone who has significant analytical experience with very large datasets and is looking to leverage that knowledge to make a difference.
• Product Manager for Search at BestBuy, Minneapolis, MN - Sep 27, 2012.
  Responsible for supporting the vision and strategy of Best Buy Search and Navigation platform and for the management of the product throughout its lifecycle.
• Associate Product Manager at BestBuy, Minneapolis, MN - Sep 26, 2012.
  High-visibility role to lead work streams for the Content Management and Tools product team for Best Buy's eCommerce/online platforms that are critical to driving our digital capabilities like bestbuy.com, m.bestbuy.com, and our mobile apps.
• Operations Research/Analytics Manager at West, Omaha, NE - Sep 25, 2012.
  Work on an Analytics Insight team covering a gamut of industries - apply your analytical skills to drive a $2B organization forward.

Academic/Research positions

• Heilbronn Research Fellow at U. Bristol, Bristol, UK - Sep 28, 2012.
  Research areas include but are not restricted to number theory and algebraic geometry, algebra, combinatorics, probability, quantum information and statistical data mining.
• Asst/Assoc. Professors in Analytics at NTU, Singapore - Sep 25, 2012.
  Looking for excellent candidates with expertise in Data mining of huge data sets, Statistics, Traffic management, transport, routing and scheduling. Experience with industrial projects is a prerequisite.

Competitions

• Kaggle Beginner Competition: Predicting Titanic Survival using Machine Learning - Oct 2, 2012.
  Complete the analysis of who was likely to survive, using the tools of machine learning. Such competition are great starting place for people who don't have a lot of experience in data science and machine learning
• The Economist-Nielsen Data Visualization Challenge - Sep 29, 2012.
  Review Nielsen global data on consumer behavior, generate insightful conclusions with broad implications, and present a compelling visual presentation of the most interesting ideas.
• CrowdAnalytix contest: Predicting loan group category for peer-2-peer lending - Sep 27, 2012.
  The goal of this contest is to predict the group categories of successful listings into loans and analyzing features and social grouping which makes a loan successful

Publications

• Book: Contrast Data Mining: Concepts, Algorithms, and Applications - Sep 25, 2012.
  This book shows many useful and powerful capabilities of contrast mining techniques and algorithms, including tree-based structures, zero-suppressed binary decision diagrams, data cube representations, and clustering algorithms, with applications to biology, image classification, crime analysis, and more.
• Top KDnuggets tweets, Sep 27-30: 8 worst predictive modeling techniques; All credit card PIN numbers in the World analyzed - Oct 1, 2012.
  8 worst predictive modeling techniques; All credit card PIN numbers in the World analyzed; A few useful things to know about Machine Learning; Coursera free course: Computing for Data Analysis using R
• Top KDnuggets tweets, Sep 24-26: Colleges rush to create #BigData/Analytics offerings; Former lawyer wins Kaggle contest with overkill analytics - Sep 27, 2012.
  Colleges rush to create #BigData/Analytics offerings; Former lawyer wins Kaggle contest with "overkill analytics"; Where Sentiment Analysis Heads Next: 6 types of sentiment analysis; Sound of #BigData and Million Songs Dataset: video map of the hottest songs

News Briefs

• Terracotta BigMemory Go offers Real-Time Big Data Access - for free - Sep 26, 2012.
  With BigMemory Go, IT architects can now capitalize on inexpensive server RAM to put as much data in memory as they desire to speed application performance.
• Analytics segment most attractive in the Indian KPO sector - Sep 25, 2012.
  The analytics segment is least affected by the global economic slowdown; Revenue of pure-play analytics firms in India, lead by MuSigma, increased rapidly at a CAGR of 38% from 2007 to 2011.

CFP - Calls for Papers

• CONTEXTAWARE: Machine Learning Approaches to Mobile Context Awareness, due Oct 5
• PAW 13 Toronto: PAW Toronto - call for speaker proposals, due Oct 12
• PAW 13 SF: PAW San Francisco - call for speaker proposals, due Oct 12
• PAW 13 CHI: PAW Chicago - call for speaker proposals, due Dec 19

Quote

More data beats better algorithms, but asking smarter questions beats having more data

Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro, at PAW Boston, comparing different approaches to getting value from analytics, Oct 1, 2012.