KDnuggets™ News 12:n24, Oct 17

Features

• Poll Results: Predicting Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney ( comments) - Oct 16, 2012.
  KDnuggets readers strongly prefer Barack Obama (63%) and 73% think he will win US Presidential election. Outside the US, Romney support is weak, except for a few countries.
• Data Mining Cartoon: Twitter, Facebook, and Prediction ( comments) - Oct 15, 2012.
  New data mining cartoon looks at Social Media and whether it can predict elections and consumer tastes.
• Northwestern Online MS Predictive Analytics - Oct 8, 2012.
  The Northwestern Predictive Analytics program provides a thorough grounding in advanced analytics, practical application, leadership and communication skills - in a completely online format
• Predictive Analytics World London Preview - Oct 16, 2012.
  Predictive Analytics World London (Nov 27-28) features top predictive analytics experts, practitioners, authors and business thought leaders. Experts from SAP, Deloitte, Data Miners and more will be onsite to share the latest advances and techniques.
• Self-Service Analytics with Lavastorm Desktop Public - Oct 5, 2012.
  Download your free copy of Lavastorm Desktop Public - a powerful and easy to use analytics tool, and begin to conduct your data analysis with ease.
• Top news for Oct 7-13: Top news, Oct 7-13: 10 Big Data Sites to Watch; NASA Big Data Challenge; SiteCharm - Oct 14, 2012.
  10 Big Data Sites to Watch; NASA Launches Big Data Challenge; SiteCharm Real-time Website Analytics
  Top jobs: Jr. Researcher, ML/Data Mining/IR at DIPF, Germany; Assoc. Predictive Modeler at Allstate
• Top news for Sep 30 - Oct 6: Machine Learning folk knowledge; Predicting Obama vs Romney; R for Business Analytics - Oct 7, 2012.
  Machine Learning folk knowledge from a leading researcher; New Poll: Predicting Obama vs Romney; R for Business Analytics - Read online
  Top jobs: Topic Specialist, Senior Analyst, Knowledge Practice/Analytics, at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

Software

• SiteCharm: Real-time Website Analytics - Oct 11, 2012.
  SiteCharm converts massive amounts of web data into real-time visual displays that show you how customers are flowing through your website.
• 11Ants Analytics Predictor for Microsoft SQL Server - Oct 4, 2012.
  11Ants Predictor for Microsoft SQL Server is a high speed scoring engine for deploying predictive models to Microsoft SQL Server, enabling users to easily deploy predictive models built with 11Ants Analytics desktop modeling tools.
• IPython Notebook environment for Data Science ( comments) - Oct 16, 2012.
  IPython Notebook is an open-source, web-based interactive computing environment which enables the data scientist to build documents that combine code, text, formulas, visualizations and more to create interactive, documentable, and shareable reports.

Courses, Events

• Wharton Course: Bringing Customer Lifetime Value to Life: Practical Methods and Applications - Oct 10, 2012.
  Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a critical concept for virtually every organization that wants to be customer centric. This 2-day workshop helps clarify key issues and shows how to compute and utilize CLV in a practical business setting.

Webcasts

• Free Webinar, Oct 19: Decision Tree Ensembles: A Winning Combination - Oct 10, 2012.
  This free webinar looks at Decision Tree pros/cons, examines Tree Ensembles: a promising way to overcome the shortcomings of a single tree, and illustrates Tree Ensembles using TreeNet, a powerful modern ensemble of boosted trees.

Meetings

• The Sentiment Analysis Symposium, San Francisco, October 30 - Oct 14, 2012.
  THE conference to learn about technology and solutions that help you discover business value in opinions, emotions, and attitudes in social media, news, and enterprise feedback.

Jobs

• Statistics Product Marketing Manager at MathWorks, Natick, MA - Oct 16, 2012.
  Responsible for product marketing and product management projects to grow the MathWorks Statistics, Data Analysis, and Computational Biology business areas.
• Senior Data and Market Analyst at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ - Oct 15, 2012.
  Responsible for complex and high quality data analysis and presentation of data related to the advancement of Princeton University Development office.
• OE Program Office Strategy Analyst at U. California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA - Oct 15, 2012.
  Help provide analytical support to the Operational Excellence (OE) initiative, a campus-wide effort launched by the Chancellor to significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the campus operations.
• Associate Predictive Modeler at Allstate, Northbrook, IL - Oct 9, 2012.
  A great opportunity for a creative data scientist to use your machine learning, statistics, data mining, and analytic skills to influence the decision making of a Fortune 100 company.
• Business Intelligence Applications Engineer and Administrator at ConstantContact, Waltham, MA - Oct 8, 2012.
  Key contributor helping to make the company strategy and vision for customer analytics a reality. Ensure that BI systems and processes deliver accurate and timely insights, support strategic analytic initiatives and develop the company predictive analytics capabilities.
• Business Intelligence Senior Applications Engineer at ConstantContact, Waltham, MA - Oct 8, 2012.
  Responsible for the thought leadership and best practices necessary to develop a best-in-class BI architecture. Need to have experience leading large complex BI application projects.
• Computational Biologist - Information Technology and Data Analysis, R&D-1209759 at Dow Agro, Indianapolis, IN - Oct 8, 2012.
  Development and application of algorithms to analyze data from various mass-spectrometry experiments and design of biological experiments using proteomics techniques, analysis, interpretation and presentation
• Data Analytics - Data Miner at Halfaker, Arlington, VA - Oct 5, 2012.
  The Data Miner will be supporting the analysis of large data sets for essential DoD priorities while working closely with the project manager in driving innovation across the program. Candidates must be US citizens and have active Secret clearance.
• Data Analytics - Data Set Associate at Halfaker, Arlington, VA - Oct 5, 2012.
  Join our talented, dynamic team providing sensitive support services to the Department of Defense (DoD), including performing predictive modeling and analytics on large data sets. Candidates must be US citizens and have active Secret clearance.
• Data Scientist at Adlucent, Austin, TX - Oct 5, 2012.
  Data scientist who is passionate about making online advertising more relevant and helpful. You will collaborate with a team of incredibly talented engineers, analysts and innovative account teams to develop new standards for retail advertising.
• IT Specialist, SAS grid, Systems Analysis/Applications Software at The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), US Treasury, Washington, DC - Oct 5, 2012.
  Provide technical support for a SAS grid and expert technical support in all areas and functions associated with OCC systems analysis and applications software.

Academic/Research positions

• Faculty in Big Data at ASU, Tempe, AZ - Oct 9, 2012.
  Areas of interest include: management, analytics, mining or visualization of massive data sets to grow our efforts in the important thrust areas of Health, Energy, Sustainability and Security.
• Postdoc/RA in Machine Learning, Computational Inference at Aalto, Helsinki, Finland - Oct 16, 2012.
  Computational Inference Research (COIN) center goal is to push the boundaries of inference in the data-rich world of today and tomorrow. COIN has several postdoc/RA positions in Computational Inference in Machine learning, computational statistics, and related areas. Apply by Nov 1.
• Internships in Big Data/Data Mining at Telefonica Research, Madrid, Spain - Oct 8, 2012.
  3-months internships in Big Data, machine learning, data mining and social networks, in the area of characterizing the role of mobility patterns in social networks using cell phone records.
• Junior researcher, Machine Learning, Data Mining, IR at DIPF, Frankfurt am Main, Germany - Oct 7, 2012.
  Work with the research group for Knowledge Mining & Assessment, chaired by Prof. Ulf Brefeld, focus on machine learning/data mining for educational research, e.g. personalized computer-based questionnaires or dynamic selection and generation of test items. Apply by Oct 27

Competitions

• NASA, NSF, DOE Launch Big Data Challenge - Oct 11, 2012.
  The competition will be run by the NASA Tournament Lab, a collaboration between NASA, Harvard University and TopCoder, a competitive community of digital creators. Register through Oct 13 for the first Ideation Challenge phase.

Publications

• 30 big data project takeaways - Oct 13, 2012.
  Technology executives are hopping on the big data bandwagon at a rapid clip as they run Hadoop pilots, eye internal information streams and struggle to find talent.
• Nate Silver: The Signal and The Noise: Why so many predictions fail, but some don't - Oct 12, 2012.
  Silver's new book, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don't, is about the explosion of data available in the Internet age, and the challenge of sorting through it all and making thoughtful decisions.
• 10 Big Data Sites to Watch - Oct 10, 2012.
  The websites that are changing the way we understand everything from higher education to climate patterns.
• TechAmerica: Demystifying Big Data Report - Oct 9, 2012.
  The report provides the government with a comprehensive roadmap to using Big Data to better serve the American people. While Big Data is transformative, the journey towards becoming Big Data "capable" will be iterative and cyclical, versus revolutionary. Successful initiatives tend to follow three "Patterns of Deployment".
• Big Data Journal: Call for Papers - Oct 5, 2012.
  Big Data Journal is new, open access, peer-reviewed, and will provide a valuable focus to the emerging field of big data and data science. Led by Editor-in-Chief Edd Dumbill, Principal Analyst O'Reilly Media, the Journal will launch its inaugural issue in 2013 and is now receiving manuscripts.
• Ajay Ohri Book: R for Business Analytics - Read online - Oct 4, 2012.
  The forthcoming book "R for Business Analytics" looks at some of the most common tasks performed by business analysts and helps the user navigate the wealth of information in R and its 4000 packages - check the book online
• Graettinger: Make Your Next Data Mining Presentation Twice As Good - Oct 3, 2012.
  Improving our presentation skills will make for happier clients and bosses. In this article, Tim Graettinger focuses on five crucial practices that will make your next presentation twice as good as your last.
• Top KDnuggets tweets, Oct 11-14: Excel 2010 for analytics: larger data size, many functions, ; "What is Data Science ? The Art of Turning Data into Insight - Oct 15, 2012.
  Excel 2010 for analytics: larger data size, many functions, power pivot; What is Data Science ? The Art of Turning Data into Insights and Products; NASA, NSF, DOE Launch Big Data Challenge; 2 new books say algorithms can't replace human judgement
• Top KDnuggets tweets, Oct 8-10: Great survey - Mathematics at Google; Next-Gen Data Scientists - Oct 11, 2012.
  Great survey! Mathematics at Google: Math in PageRank, Gmail, Google Trends; Next-Gen Data Scientists: Google statistician on what makes a good data scientist; Gil Press reviews 10 Big Data Sites that influence the world; 5 ways #BigData is transforming everyday life - from Human Face of Big Data
• Top KDnuggets tweets, Oct 4-7: Why data scientists won't be replaced by tools; Alex Pentland on Big Data Biggest Obstacles - Oct 8, 2012.
  Why data scientists will not be replaced by tools; Alex Pentland on #BigData Biggest Obstacles: Correlation, Human Understanding, Data; More data beats better algorithms, but better questions beat more data; Study: 40% of mobile ad clicks are useless: 22% are accidental, 18% are fraud
• Top KDnuggets tweets, Oct 1-3: Unexpected: How people eat eggs predicts personality; AI Game bots pass The Turing Test - Oct 4, 2012.
  Unexpected data mining: How people eat eggs predicts their personality type; AI Game bots pass The Turing Test; 5 Key Practices Predictive Analytics Pros are neglecting (but should not); Obama vs Romney predictions; A few useful things about Machine Learning

News Briefs

• Lavastorm Analytics supports R Programming - Oct 16, 2012.
  The new R Analytics Pack brings the full capabilities of the Lavastorm Analytics Engine to R programmers, including the ability for them to bring together disparate data, and profile, inspect, and cleanse the data themselves.
• Boston Big data space hack/reduce seeks resident hackers - Oct 13, 2012.
  hack/reduce mission is to help Boston create the talent and the technologies for the big data-driven economy. Hackers get access to a large-scale compute cluster, hands-on workshops, and a physical space in Kendall Square - applications accepted now!
• Telefonica big data arm offers analytical insights into users ( comments) - Oct 13, 2012.
  Telefonica, the Spanish mobile phone operator and owner of O2, is launching a new division to sell information about its customers.
• Facebook-Datalogix Partnership to Track Offline Purchases - Oct 9, 2012.
  New partnership will measure how often Facebook users see a product advertised on the social site, then complete the purchase in a real-world retail store, by tracking the *anonymized* purchases of more than 100M households.
• NSF Big Data Research Awards - Oct 9, 2012.
  New big data research projects sponsored by NSF aim to develop new tools and methods to extract and use knowledge from collections of large data sets to accelerate progress in science and engineering research and innovation.
• Alteryx Consumerizes Big Data Analytics in the Cloud - Oct 8, 2012.
  The Alteryx Analytics Gallery is released with over 30 proven analytic applications that are free to use and download. These best practice applications help answer the big questions that drive organizational performance across several industries.
• SAS Model Manager supports SAS, PMML, R models - Oct 8, 2012.
  SAS Model Manager provides a central repository for managing and using SAS Enterprise Miner, SAS/STAT, SAS High-Performance Analytics Server, open-source R, and PMML models.
• Location Intelligence - Top 12 Industries - Oct 6, 2012.
  Location Intelligence has a vast array of potential applications across many industries and job functions.
• BusinessInsider Most Valuable Private Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining Companies - Oct 5, 2012.
  Most valuable private companies in Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining space, ranked by revenue, users, market opportunities, growth rates, and the perception of investors and tech gurus.
• Swiss Association for Analytics on LinkedIn - Oct 3, 2012.
  The goal of Swiss Association for Analytics is to spread the word about analytics in Switzerland and to show added value of predictive analytics and data mining to Swiss companies.
• WSJ Next Big Thing in Analytics, Big Data - Oct 3, 2012.
  Analytics and Big Data companies among WSJ list of top US venture-backed companies.

CFP - Calls for Papers

• CaRR 2013: Context-awareness in Retrieval and Recommendation, due Nov 30
• MLDM 2013: Int. Conf. on Machine Learning and Data Mining, due Dec 18
• ICDM 2013: Industrial Conference on Data Mining, due Dec 18
• PAW 13 CHI: PAW Chicago - call for speaker proposals, due Dec 19
• DATA 2013: Data Technologies and Applications, due Feb 6

Quote

Woman: So, what do you do for a living
Dilbert: I'm working on a framework to allow construction of large-scale analytical queries on unstructured data
Woman: I'm a little turned on by that
Dilbert: Settle down. It's just a framework