Features
- New Poll: Was Target wrong in using analytics to find pregnant women? - Feb 26, 2012.New KDnuggets Poll is asking: Was Target wrong in using analytics to identify pregnant women from changes in their buying behavior and market to them proactively?
- Poll Results: Analytics/Data Mining Salary by Region - Feb 25, 2012.This year poll received twice as many votes as in 2011. US, AU/NZ and West Europe lead in salaries, and we see a significant number of self-employed analytics professionals doing very well.
- Stephen Colbert on Target and Predictive Analytics - Feb 24, 2012.The Colbert Report looks at Target and how their predictive analytics can identify woman's pregnancy just from the changes in her buying habits. Are those analytics too much?
- Predictive Analytics World, Text Analytics World, March 4-10, San Francisco - Feb 27, 2012.Advanced pricing ends Mar 2. Delivering 7 days of content, including workshop days. Predictive Analytics World, March 4-10, 2012 in San Francisco, is packed with the top predictive analytics experts, practitioners, authors and business thought leaders.
- Big Data Gets Star Treatment in Massachusetts - Feb 17, 2012.How to satisfy the demand for Big Analytics on Big Data? Different approaches showcase the strength of Big Data Industry in Massachusetts.
- Help Create The Human Face of Big Data - Feb 21, 2012.The Human Face of Big Data project is dispatching one hundred leading photographers around the globe to capture how Big Data is enabling us to address humanity's biggest challenges. Suggestions for assignments accepted until Mar 15.
- Top news for Feb 19-25 - Feb 26, 2012.Day in the Life of Big Data; SkyTree Fast Machine Learning Server; When Analytics are creepy
Top jobs: Data Mining Scientist at Apple; Market Research Analyst at Nielsen - Top news for Feb 12-18 - Feb 19, 2012.Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms; Weave OS data viz; Big Data in Mass
Top jobs: Postdoc Researcher - Data Scientist at NREL; Sr. Database Architect at Knowledge Exchange
Courses, Events
- DePaul's MS in Predictive Analytics - Feb 24, 2012.DePaul's MS in Predictive Analytics develops both analytical skills and business acumen. Courses in analytics, data mining and marketing prepare graduates to be leaders in the field.
- Short course: Ten Hot Ideas for Learning from Data (SLDM 3), Mar 15-16, Palo Alto, CA - Feb 21, 2012.This two-day course from Stanford Professors Hastie and Robert Tibshirani gives a detailed overview of statistical models for data mining, inference and prediction, emphasizing the tools useful for tackling modern-day data analysis problems.
Webcasts
- Webinar: Data Mining: Failure to Launch [Mar 8, Apr 10] - Feb 26, 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.
- Webinar, Mar 5: Consuming BIG Data - Feb 22, 2012.This 45 minute webinar, presented by ADVIZOR Solutions and EMC Greenplum, will cover the acquisition, indexing, and storage of big data, how end-users can consume it, and will examine 4 categories of BI: Reporting, Analytical, Content, and Continuous.
Software
- SkyTree Introduces Radically Faster Machine Learning Server - Feb 23, 2012.The Skytree Server - a machine learning engine - is up to 10,000 faster on key algorithms like K-Means Clustering and SVM, and can connect to most databases. Both a free and a commercial version are available.
- Buy Now or Wait for your next Tablet? - Feb 22, 2012.Decide.com, called "perhaps the biggest consumer weapon" by the New York Times, collects and mines billions of transactions to help you decide whether to buy now or wait. Decide.com has the answer for your next Tablet.
- Wolfram Alpha Pro: Data Science for Everyone? - Feb 17, 2012.Wolfram|Alpha Pro lets users take raw data (in many formats) and throw it into the system which will automatically do a whole bunch of analysis, and then return a well-organized report about the data.
- Weave open-source data visualization - Feb 15, 2012.Weave is "ridiculously powerful", designed to let organization offer the public an easy-to-use platform for examining information - creating a "Wikipedia of data". Weave was developed by Georges G. Grinstein and his team at UML.
Jobs
- Analyst at The Nielsen Company, Wilton, CT - Feb 24, 2012.Collect, assemble, and harmonize data for use in statistical analyses, and prepare marketing effectiveness presentations for Fortune 500 senior and mid-level management.
- Researchers, Data Analytics and Decision Sciences at Xerox Research Centre, Bangalore, India - Feb 22, 2012.Lead/participate in cutting edge research, apply the highest level of technical competence, analytical and problem solving abilities in support of original and creative scientific projects of significant business impact.
- Data Mining Scientist at Apple, Austin, TX - Feb 21, 2012.an outstanding data mining scientist for designing, developing, and fielding data mining solutions that have direct and measurable impact to Apple.
- Market Research Analyst at The Nielsen Company, Evanston, IL - Feb 20, 2012.develop marketing mix and other statistical models, consult to management to quantify what drives sales and use the results to increase market share, revenue, and profit.
- Predictive Modeler / Data Scientist at PredictivEdge Analytics, Blue Bell, PA (outside Philadelphia) - Feb 17, 2012.PredictivEdge Analytics 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.
- UI / UX / Data Visualization Specialist at PredictivEdge Analytics, Blue Bell, PA (outside Philadelphia) - Feb 17, 2012.Are you a talented graphical UI / UX developer with a track record of delivering a rich user experience? Want to work at an early-stage company and apply your talents to deliver world-class solutions in the emerging fields of social networking and social media analytics?
- Lead Architect - Big Data Analytics Platform at Skype, London, UK - Feb 17, 2012.Lead the Skype data analytics platform effort, making the hard decisions around tools, technologies, architecture, implementation and delivery.
- Sr. Software Engineer - Big Data Analytics Platform at Skype, London UK - Feb 17, 2012.creative, highly motivated software engineers to play a key role in the definition, design, implementation and delivery of Skype's data analytics platform.
- Sr. Analyst, Digital Marketing Analytics at iCrossing, New York, NY - Feb 17, 2012.Plays an integral role in delivering online marketing insights to clients by working alongside the iCrossing Strategy teams to define, develop and provide client tracking reports using our proprietary Dashboard system
- Senior Data Scientist (Data Mining / Statistics / Analytics) at PrecisionDemand, Seattle, WA - Feb 16, 2012.Want to make an impact on the world? Have a deep knowledge of machine learning methods and the ability to tune them? Are you a "Big Data Guru", Data Miner, or Statistician?
Academic/Research positions
- Sr. Lecturer Computer and Systems Sciences, with a specialisation in Data Mining at Stockholm University, Sweden - Feb 25, 2012.conduct research, teaching and supervision at the department, including applying for external research funding. The current position focuses in particular on development, implementation and application of algorithms and software for data mining. Apply by
Competitions
- Kaggle to host KDD Cup 2012, focus on Weibo, China's twitter - Feb 26, 2012.Competition will use data from Tencent Weibo micro-blogging service and wil focus on predicting who users will follow and the click-through rates of ads given query and user info.
- Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges Program - Feb 25, 2012.This program gives PhD students access to Yahoo! world-class scientists, big and complex data, and the potential to make a huge impact on the future of the Internet. Applications due Mar 9.
- Contest: Airport guest sentiment analysis - Feb 17, 2012.create a summarization of the opinions, feelings and sentiments expressed in the comments left behind by guests on the website. Submissions due: Feb 26
- MyHeartMap Challenge - Feb 15, 2012.UPenn launched a social, mobile, crowdsourcing contest to locate life-saving defibrillators in Philadelphia, which are often hard to find and access. Monetary prize options. Contest ends Mar 13.
Meetings
- Jun 4-5: The Data Analysis Conference: Tools of the Trade, Atlantic City - Feb 27, 2012.new educational event designed for data analysts seeking to enhance their knowledge about rapidly evolving analytic software applications and techniques. Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro will give a keynote talk on Big Data: The Reality and the Hype.
- Text Analytics Summit Europe, London, Apr 23-24 - Feb 20, 2012.Text analytics has gained real momentum the last 12 months, as organizations across Europe seek to better understand their customer. Text Analytics Summit is for companies who want to use text solutions to make better decisions.
- WSDM: Web Search and Data Mining Conference Report - Feb 20, 2012.Sarah Javanmardi reports on WSDM-2012 (Web Search and Data Mining Conference), that brought over 350 people to Seattle.
Publications
- The Risks of Using Spreadsheets for Statistical Analysis - Feb 23, 2012.Are spreadsheets more hindrance than help in data analysis? Download a free white paper to learn more, including Why over 90% of spreadsheets have errors, the types of spreadsheet errors, their causes and implications, and what is an alternative.
- SchoonerSQL: A super-set of MySQL for Big Data - Feb 21, 2012.Legacy MySQL does not scale well on a single node, which forces granular sharding and results in low utilization of servers. SchoonerSQL made fundamental and extensive improvements to MySQL to exploit multi-core servers, flash memory, and high-performance networking.
- How Companies Learn Your Secrets - Feb 19, 2012.NYtimes examines how companies can predict customer behavior (like how Target finds women are pregnant from changes in their shopping behavior), and also at the psychology of habit forming and how companies use it to influence consumers.
- Misfortune Teller - Feb 16, 2012.A statistics professor says he can predict crime before it occurs. The crime for which an offender was sentenced does is not a good predictor future crime, but there are much better predictors.
News Briefs
- Knewton Is Building The World's Smartest Tutor - Feb 27, 2012.Knewton is building what could become the world's most valuable repository of the ways people learn. "Education is the world's largest data industry", says Knewton's founder.
- Big Data Market $50 Billion by 2017 - Feb 23, 2012.Great report from Wikibon examines the big data market in detail, and projects it to grow 10-fold to $50B worldwide by 2017. HP Vertica is currently the market leader, followed Aster Data, Splunk, and Greenplum.
- SAS Prepares Hadoop-Powered In-Memory BI Platform - Feb 20, 2012.the package will combine the scalability of the Hadoop DFS and the in-memory processing speed of a RAM-intensive server environment, and will offer rapid analytic insight to answer ad-hoc questions.
- Collective[i] Socialized Business Intelligence Network for Marketing - Feb 18, 2012.Collective[i] hosts the industry's first "knowledge network," automating the work associated with analyzing Big Data and socializing knowledge and discussion throughout an enterprise.
CFP - Calls for Papers
- PAW DE 2012: Predictive Analytics World Dusseldorf, due Mar 2
- ICWSM-12-w: Workshops at ICWSM-2012, due Mar 2
- UGCBook: Mining of User Generated Content and Its Applications, due Mar 15
- PAW-GOV 2012: PAW for Government, due Mar 30
- GTM: Global TechMining Conference, due Apr 1
- ICDM-2012-w: ICDM-2012 Workshops, due Apr 6
- KDD-2012-Demos: KDD-2012 Demos and Exhibits, due Apr 6
- TAW Boston 2012: Text Analytics World (Bos), due Apr 13
- PAW Boston 2012: Predictive Analytics World (Bos), due Apr 13
- MCSD 12: Mining Complex and Stream Data, due Apr 28
- SWSM-12: Social Web Search and Mining, due May 1
- ALT-2012: Algorithmic Learning, due May 17
- DS-2012: Discovery Science, due May 17
- PAW London: Predictive Analytics World (UK), due May 25
- ICDM-2012: The 12th IEEE Int. Conf. on Data Mining, due Jun 18
Quote
"After Eisenhower, you couldn't win an election without radio. After JFK, you couldn't win an election without television. After Obama, you couldn't win an election without social networking. I predict that in 2012, you won't be able to win an election without big data."O'Reilly Radar big data columnist Alistair Croll.