KDnuggets™ News 13:n08, Mar 27

Features

Poll Results: Data Scientists against a Pledge - Mar 25, 2013.
The recent KDnuggets Poll asked if there should be a Data Scientist Pledge, and results show an interesting split. While majority of data scientists are against a pledge, a majority of non-professionals favor it. Is this a problem for data scientists?
Top LinkedIn Groups for Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science - Mar 20, 2013.
We investigate most popular LinkedIn groups for Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science.
BigData100: Vote for the Most Influential in Big Data - Mar 14, 2013.
Vote for the most influential Big Data experts on Twitter for #bigdata100
Most interesting Big Data Trends and Free Pass to Big Data TechCon, April 8-10, Boston - Mar 20, 2013.
As a Media Partner for Big Data TechCon, April 8-10, Boston, KDnuggets has a free pass to give away. Email your suggestions by Mar 31 for the most interesting Big Data trends to be eligible to win the KDnuggets pass.
PAW Predictive Analytics World April 2013 San Francisco - Mar 19, 2013.
PAW 2013 (Predictive Analytics World)San Francisco, Apr 14-19, features great speakers from industry leading companies. Check KDnuggets special offer.
KDD Innovation and Service Awards, nominations due May 31 - Mar 26, 2013.
ACM SIGKDD Innovation and Service Awards recognize outstanding technical innovations and outstanding professional contributions to the field of Big data, Data Mining, Knowledge Discovery, and Predictive Analytics.
BPDM scholarships Broadening Participation in Data Mining, KDD 2013 - Mar 26, 2013.
The BPDM Program cultivates a talented and diverse population of data mining researchers by providing scholarships for students of underrepresented groups to interact with and learn from senior researchers in industry. Apply by May 5.
Top news for Mar 17-23: Top LinkedIn Groups for Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining; Tata Big Data Study - Mar 24, 2013.
Data Science Code of Professional Conduct and "Golden Rule"; Top LinkedIn Groups for Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science; Tata Big Data Study - Key Findings
Top jobs: MS and PhD Studentships in Data Mining / Machine Learning at BYU; Director, Account Analytics at Dotomi
Top news for Mar 10-16: GraphLab framework for Machine Learning; Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship in Chicago - Mar 17, 2013.
Salary/Income of Analytics professionals; GraphLab framework for Machine Learning in the Cloud; Data Science Code of Professional Conduct
Top jobs: Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship, Chicago; Data Scientist at Qubit, London

Software

Lavastorm Analytics Survey Results: People, Tools, and Training key investment areas - Mar 23, 2013.
The key areas for analytics investments will be people, tools, and training, according to the recent Lavastorm Analytics Survey.
The Risks of Using Spreadsheets for Statistical Analysis - Mar 26, 2013.
Are spreadsheets more hindrance than help in data analysis? Download "The Risks of Using Spreadsheets for Statistical Analysis" white paper and discover how predictive analytics can produce faster, more accurate results.
Too slow or out of memory problems in Machine Learning/Data Mining? - Mar 25, 2013.
What are some of the problems in machine learning, data mining and related fields that you have difficulties with because they are too slow or need excessively large memory?
Google Wikilinks Big Data: 40 Millions Entities in Context - Mar 20, 2013.
Google research has released Wikilinks Corpus: 40 million total disambiguated mentions within over 10 million web pages - over 100 times bigger than any previous entries, and this data can be used to research many interesting text problems.
Ajaila: Ruby package for Predictive Analysis - Mar 19, 2013.
Ajaila helps you to work with statistical datasets, normalize the data into a common format, build models, visualize your data and scale with Hadoop.

Webcasts

Bentley Living Standards Analytics Symposium/Webcast, Mar 28 - Mar 21, 2013.
This Bentley University Inaugural Symposium will discuss Living Standards Analytics and will feature Discussants from the World Bank, Vietnam General Statistics office, and United Nations Development Program. Attend live or watch webcast.

Courses, Events

UPM Summer School on Advanced Statistics and Data Mining, Madrid, Jun 24 - Jul 5 - Mar 18, 2013.
The summer school will give an introduction to the theoretical foundations and the practical applications of key modern statistical analysis techniques.
DePaul MS in Predictive Analytics, on-campus or online, Computational Methods or Marketing - Mar 15, 2013.
On-campus or online, DePaul's MS in Predictive Analytics graduates develop both analytical skills and business acumen through taking courses in analytics, data mining and marketing. Students can choose from two new Concentrations: Computational Methods and Marketing.

Meetings

IDA 2013 Frontier Prize - Mar 21, 2013.
IDA 2013 (The 12th Int. Symposium on Intelligent Data Analysis), London, UK, 17-19 Oct, will focus is on complex real-world problems, and will award the IDA Frontier Prize to the most visionary contribution. Submission deadline: May 6

Jobs

Data Analysis Consultant at Megaputer Intelligence, Bloomington, IN- Mar 27, 2013.
Create data analysis and reporting solutions for Megaputer customers with the help of PolyAnalyst(tm) platform: experimental, proof-of-concept, implementation, and production projects. Develop successful long-term relationships with clients.
Sr. Software Engineer - Ruby, Web, Data Science at State, London, UK - Mar 26, 2013.
State is a busy start-up preparing for the launch of our global opinion network: a Silicon Valley enterprise in the heart of Notting Hill. You're a smart, experienced software developer, motivated by engineering great products.
Digital Marketing Data Analytics, Sr. Manager at Accenture Interactive, New York (preferred), Chicago, Boston, Washington DC - Mar 26, 2013.
Work with Accenture clients to understand their digital marketing needs, and translate those needs to optimize marketing performance, mainly through experimentation, customer segmentation and targeting/personalization.
Director, Data Warehousing at StraighterLine, Baltimore, MD - Mar 25, 2013.
Responsible for all aspects of enterprise data and reporting and play a key strategic role; be both a get-it-done, hands-on leader as well as a strategic thinker able to turn ideas into action.
Data Scientist, Design Graph at Autodesk, San Francisco, CA - Mar 23, 2013.
Join a brand new team developing the next generation of machine intelligence and analytical tools focused at the complex data world of designing and creating buildings, airplanes, movies and pretty much anything you can touch.
Director, Account Analytics at Dotomi, Chicago, IL - Mar 16, 2013.
Dotomi is inventing a future of advertising that consumers love because it is personal and relevant. The Director will work with a team of analytics professionals which provide actionable insight to Dotomi marketers.

Academic/Research positions

Research Fellow/Postdoc at ANU, Canberra, Australia - Mar 22, 2013.
Two-year post-doc position at the ANU, join the project "Privacy-preserving record linkage on multiple large databases", led by Peter Christen (ANU) and Vassilios Verykios (Hellenic Open U., Greece).
Assistant Professor at U. of Louisville, Louisville, KY - Mar 22, 2013.
Searching for a highly motivated computer scientist/engineer with a strong research record in "Cyber Enabled Discovery" with a focus on Big Data, Cloud Computing, and/or Visualization to complement established research programs.
PhD position in data mining at Stockholm University, Sweden - Mar 19, 2013.
Looking for candidates to a PhD position in data mining at the Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University. Ref. No. SU FV-0872-13. Apply by April 30.
MS and PhD Studentships in Data Mining / Machine Learning at BYU, Provo, UT - Mar 17, 2013.
Data Mining Lab research areas include meta-learning and data mining process automation, social network analysis, and social capital in online communities. Financial support will be provided

Competitions

GE NFL Head Health Challenge - Mar 17, 2013.
GE and NFL will award up to $10 million for improved technologies and methods that enable more accurate diagnoses of mild brain injury and prognosis for recovery following acute and/or repetitive injuries.
ICDAR2013: Gender Prediction from Handwriting - Mar 16, 2013.
A non-typical Kaggle competition looks at the prediction of gender from handwriting. Closing date is Apr 15.
CLEF-ER 2013: Named Entity Recognition - Mar 14, 2013.
Produce annotations in a multilingual document where there are explicit references to entities, specified through a Concept Unique Identifier.

Publications

WEF report: Unlocking the Value of Personal Data: From Collection to Usage - Mar 26, 2013.
This important report from World Economic Forum proposes a new approach to personal data that is flexible and adaptive to encourage innovation, but also protects the rights of individuals. It urges change of focus from governing data collection to data use in context.
HP: Big Security for Big Data - Mar 25, 2013.
Learn how organizations can protect, utilize, and gain real-time insight from #BigData. Big data enables not only busineses, but hackers, who set up robust marketplaces to sell sensitive information. See how to deal with this threat.
Siegel: Peril, Promise and the Price of Predictive technology - Mar 22, 2013.
As computers are entrusted to make judgment calls traditionally decided by people, should we worry? Predictions can cause difficulties not only when wrong, but also when they are right. Eric Siegel, founder of PAW: Predictive Analytics World, looks into implications.
Tata Big Data Study - Key Findings - Mar 21, 2013.
Key findings from a global Big Data Study by Tata Consultancy Services include: Big split in spending, with a minority of companies spending big while most companies spend very little, and biggest returns for leaders came from places that laggards did not value as much.
SAP: Change How Business Intelligence is Managed - Mar 20, 2013.
This paper details how in-memory computing can change the way you manage business intelligence and the value your business can derive from the technology.
Big Data Ethics: 4 Principles - Mar 18, 2013.
A proposal to crowdsource a set of big data privacy guidelines, starting with transparency, simplicity by design, and security.
Crunchbase/SiSense interactive startup dashboard: Are Big Data investments declining in 2013? - Mar 16, 2013.
We analyze the Crunchbase start-up database using SiSense interactive dashboard and observe the latest big data trends. Will 2013 Big Data investments fall below 2012 levels?
Top Big Data VC Investors - Mar 15, 2013.
Companies in the Big Data industry have received close to $5B in VC financing in the last few years. We look at the top VC firms that invest in Big Data.
Forrester - Turn Big Data Inward With IT Analytics - Mar 14, 2013.
To combat Big Data complexity, you need machines to analyze conditions to invoke automated actions. This free report from Forrester explains how to perform adaptive automation with IT analytics.

Top Tweets

Top KDnuggets tweets, Mar 22-24: Predictive Analytics Reading list; Survey finds analytics ROI is taken on faith - Mar 25, 2013.
Predictive Analytics Reading list, an introduction from @mgualtieri; This is trouble! Accenture survey finds analytics ROI is frequently taken on faith; 6 ideas from startups for your #BigData problems; How NYC Geek squad is using #BigData
Top KDnuggets tweets, Mar 20-21: The 20 best tools for data viz; Top LinkedIn Groups for Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining - Mar 22, 2013.
The 20 best tools for data visualization and embedding in your website; Top LinkedIn Groups for Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science ; R grows exponentially, added more packages in 2012 than all SAS functions; Avoid Snowflake Data Science: beautiful, but can't be reproduced - data science wisdom from Amazon
Top KDnuggets tweets, Mar 18-19: Vertical vs. Horizontal Data Scientists; Can we please stop saying "unstructured" data? - Mar 20, 2013.
Vertical vs. Horizontal Data Scientists - why only "Horizontal" data scientists are; Can we please stop saying "unstructured" data?; Coursera: Statistics - Making Sense of Data, key ideas and principles; SAS vs R battle: academics, education favor R, industry, vertical analytics favor SAS
Top KDnuggets tweets, Mar 15-17: Open Data Census assesses the state of open data; Review of "Black Swan" Nissim Taleb #BigData caveats - Mar 18, 2013.
Open Data Census assesses the state of open data around the world - 281 open data cat; Review of "Black Swan" Nissim Taleb #BigData caveats: Big Data brings more false results;; Ayasdi startup uses a topology-based approach to analyze #BigData - can geometric approach; Long-term evolution is 'surprisingly predictable,' Stanford experiment shows http://bit.ly
Top KDnuggets tweets, Mar 13-14: Please vote for @kdnuggets for the #bigdata100; Predictive Analytics is a Goldmine for Startups - Mar 15, 2013.
Please vote for @kdnuggets for the #bigdata100 most influential #bigdata Twitter account; Predictive Analytics is a Goldmine for Startups: 10 great application areas; Foreign students are now majority of MS, PhD computer science students in the US; Data Science Tools: Fast, easy to use, and scalable, and slowly democratize many data scie

News Briefs

PAKDD 2013 Distinguished Contribution Award - Mar 18, 2013.
The Distinguished Contribution Award recognises significant contributions in research and services and goes to Prof. Jaideep Srivastava of U. Minnesota. The award will be presented at PAKDD 2013, Gold Coast, Australia, Apr 14-17.
Kaggle Connect Data Science Consulting - Mar 16, 2013.
Kaggle Connect is a consulting platform that connects companies to the top Kaggle competitors.
Big Data generates Big Returns, says VC Roger Ehrenberg - Mar 15, 2013.
An interview with Roger Ehrenberg, founder of venture capital firm IA Ventures is a leading investor in startups solely around a big data theme. Ehrenberg talks about Big data, what he looks for in firms he invests, Wall Street, and whether consumer privacy is dead.
Facebook likes can reveal religion, politics, race, intelligence - Mar 14, 2013.
Facebook likes can be used to accurately predict race, religion, politicals, sexuality and intelligence. Fans of curly fries and The Colbert report tend to be highly intelligent while those who like Harley Davison or Lady Antebellum not quite so.
KXEN Predictive Offers on Salesforce.com - Real-Time Next Best Activity - Mar 14, 2013.
Customers can instantly personalize conversations with real-time "next best activity". KXEN engine automatically finds next best activity using advanced machine learning.

CFP - Calls for Papers

ICDM'13-W: IEEE ICDM '13 Workshop Proposals, due Apr 2
PAW Boston: Predictive Analytics World, Boston, due Apr 4
DA 2013: DATA ANALYTICS 2013, due Apr 30
CIKM 2013: Conf. on Information and Knowledge Management, due May 10
FOSINT-SI 2013: Open Source Intelligence and Security Informatics , due May 15
IEEE BigData 2013: 2013 IEEE Int. Conference on Big Data, due Jun 2
CI 2013: Climate Informatics, due Jul 8
IEEE Grc2013: Granular Computing, due Jul 15
IOD 2013: Innovation through Open Data, Special issue of Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research , due Aug 1

Quote

"society will need to shed some of its obsession for causality in exchange for simple correlations: not knowing why but only what."

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, By Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Kenneth Cukier, excerpt via Google books