KDnuggets™ News 14:n27, Oct 22

Features

Ebola Analytics and Data Science Lessons - Oct 20, 2014.
We analyze latest Ebola data, examine the recent slowdown in growth of cases in Liberia, and analyze its likely causes. Many problems with data lend themselves to good data science lessons.
New Poll: Methodology for Analytics, Data Mining, Data Science Projects? - Oct 13, 2014.
KDnuggets revisits the question of methodology, and asks "What main methodology are you using for your analytics, data mining, or data science projects?" Please vote.
SPOTLIGHT: Can Data Science Save Humanity from Mosquitoes and other Deadly Insects? - Oct 8, 2014.
KDnuggets launches Spotlight initiative to bring attention to academic research. The journey begins with Prof. Eamonn Keogh and his student, Yanping Chen, who are applying data mining to save us all from insect-vectored diseases.
GraphDB, a powerful graph database, 3 versions and KDnuggets offer - Oct 14, 2014.
GraphDB blends text mining, powerful SPARQL queries, semantic annotation and semantic search into a powerful database that infers new meaning at scale. Free GraphDB Lite and special KDnuggets offer for GraphDB Standard and Enterprise.
Big Data Is Not Big Context - Oct 12, 2014.
Learn about common misconceptions when approaching big data problems, and how the ambiguity of human language requires more sophisticated techniques for more accurate understanding.
DM Radio: Predictive Tools Are Pervasive, with KDnuggets, Predixion, RedPoint, and Appnomic, Oct 30 - Oct 21, 2014.
Today there are many companies offering predictive analytics tools and solutions. How, where, and when can these new tools be leveraged? Listen to DM Radio with KDnuggets, Predixion, RedPoint, and Appnomic, on Oct 30.

Software

Overcoming Text Analytics Barriers - Oct 17, 2014.
Getting the value from companies text assets can be both time consuming and expensive. Learn how to overcome these barriers with "Overcoming Text Analytics Barriers" whitepaper, and at Text Analytics Summit West in San Francisco, Nov 4-5. KDnuggets discount.
DataLadder outperforms IBM and SAS in Record Linkage - Oct 16, 2014.
Data scientists from the Centre for Data Linkage at Curtin U. found that Connecticut-based firm Data Ladder has outperformed several major companies on record linkage.
ADW, free software to measure semantic similarity - Oct 13, 2014.
ADW is a software for measuring semantic similarity of arbitrary pairs of lexical items, from word senses to texts, based on "Align, Disambiguate, and Walk", a WordNet-based state-of-the-art semantic similarity approach. Get it on github.
Interactive Network and Graph Data Repository - Oct 17, 2014.
The network repository currently hosts over 500+ graphs/networks that span 19 collections of graphs from social science, machine learning, scientific computing, and many others.
Develve statistical software, free for non-commercial use - Oct 10, 2014.
Check out Develve 2.0, a six-sigma tool, the new version featuring new utilities for measure system analysis and the design of sophisticated experiments.

Opinions

Salaries in IT - Scrape, refine, and plot case study - Oct 11, 2014.
Very good case study, showing how to scrape with import.io, refine with OpenRefine, and plot with Plot.ly. Also learn about salaries vs age in Belgium.
Perfume, computer programming, and Harvard - Oct 8, 2014.
What is the connection between Perfume, computer programming, and Harvard education? Peter Bruce explains.

Interviews

SPOTLIGHT: Can Data Science Save Humanity from Mosquitoes and other Deadly Insects? #2 - Oct 9, 2014.
KDnuggets launches Spotlight initiative to bring attention to academic research. The journey begins with Prof. Eamonn Keogh, UCR and his talented student, Yanping Chen, who are applying data mining to save us all from insect-vectored diseases.

Reports

Big Data and Hadoop, Big Data Boot Camp LA - Oct 17, 2014.
Big Data Boot Camp LA provided attendees a comprehensive understanding of Big Data and Hadoop technologies. Sujee Maniyam provided a good technical overview of Hadoop and current trends. We provide key takeaways.
Sports Analytics Innovation Summit 2014 San Francisco: Day 2 Highlights - Oct 11, 2014.
Highlights from the presentations by Analytics leaders from San Francisco Giants, New York University and LA Dodgers on day 2 of Sports Analytics Innovation Summit 2014 in San Francisco.
Sports Analytics Innovation Summit 2014 San Francisco: Day 1 Highlights - Oct 10, 2014.
Highlights from the presentations by Analytics leaders from San Francisco 49ers, United States Olympic Committee, and Chelsea FC on day 1 of Sports Analytics Innovation Summit 2014 in San Francisco.
Big Data & Analytics for Retail Summit 2014 Chicago: Day 2 Highlights - Oct 9, 2014.
Highlights from the presentations by Big Data leaders from The Hershey Company, Gongos, Clarks, and Mediacom on day 2 of Big Data & Analytics for Retail Summit 2014 in Chicago.
Big Data & Analytics for Retail Summit 2014 Chicago: Day 1 Highlights - Oct 8, 2014.
Highlights from the presentations by Big Data leaders from Sony Pictures Entertainment, Macy's and Nuevora on day 1 of Big Data & Analytics for Retail Summit 2014 in Chicago.

News

Top stories for Oct 12-18: New Poll: Methodology for Analytics, Data Mining Projects? Big Data Is Not Big Context - Oct 19, 2014.
New Poll: Methodology for Analytics, Data Mining, Data Science Projects? Big Data Is Not Big Context; Big Data on the Internet of Things; ADW, free software to measure semantic similarity.
Request: Crowdsourcing Health and Nutrition Tweets - Oct 20, 2014.
Help investigate the relationships between geo-location, age, gender, and nutrition through the medium of Twitter by labeling tweets for this research project.
Big Data for Social Good IBM + Hadoop Challenge - Oct 20, 2014.
Use city data to develop great applications for social good and earn prizes in IBM's new Big Data for Social Good challenge, starting in November 10. More information on eligibility, terms, and prizes will be available at launch.
LinkedIn Economic Graph Challenge - Oct 16, 2014.
Leverage the LinkedIn Economic Graph for your innovative and ambitious ideas for increasing economic value and gaining insights into economic opportunities using LinkedIn data and support. Proposals due Dec 15.
Lavastorm Wizard and Witches Challenge - Oct 15, 2014.
Make-believe costume company, WigWarts Costumes, is launching a new glow in the dark range of costumes in time for Halloween 2014. Help them combine and analyze data in Lavastorm Wizard and Witches Challenge - entries due Oct 30.
Big Data on the Internet of Things - Oct 14, 2014.
ParStream unveils the first analytics platform purpose-built for the speed and scale of the Internet of Things (IoT).
Top stories for Oct 5-11: Analyzing Ebola spread; Data science shows surveys may assess language more than attitudes - Oct 12, 2014.
Analyzing Ebola - Is it spreading at exponential rate?; Data science shows surveys may assess language more than attitudes; Making Sense of Public Data - Wrangling Jeopardy.
September 2014 Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining Acquisitions and Startups Activity - Oct 9, 2014.
September 2014 acquisitions, startups, and company activity in Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science: Hootsuite, eBay - Paypal, MemSQL/In-Q-Tel, Qualtrics, SingTel, Radius, Numerify, DataStax, Nielsen/Indicus, Mail.ru/VKontakte, Teradata / Think Big Analytics.

Webcasts and Webinars

Upcoming Webcasts on Analytics, Big Data, Data Science - Oct 21 and beyond - Oct 20, 2014.
Big Data Changes everything, Deep Learning + Apache Spark, Data Mining - Failure to Launch, Linear Regression in Python, Demystify your data flows, and more.

Courses

TMA Predictive Analytics Data Mining Training [Las Vegas, Dec | Orlando, Feb] - Oct 21, 2014.
Successful analytics in the big data era does not start with data and software, but with hands-on, immersive training and goal-driven strategy - get it from The Modeling Agency. Next courses in Las Vegas (Dec) and Orlando (Feb).
Salford Comprehensive Data Science Training, Dec 3-5, San Diego or Online - Oct 21, 2014.
Learn the basics tree-structured data mining with CART, and progress to more advanced topics including Linear, Logistic, Nonlinear, Regularized, Lasso, MARS, TreeNet (Stochastic Gradient Boosting) and RandomForests(r), including Latest Refinements and Model Compression.
TESC 18-month Online MBA in Data Analytics - Oct 21, 2014.
Get an affordable online MBA in Data Analytics from Thomas Edison State College - study both foundational business courses and how to analyze and present the data.
MS in Analytics from the University of San Francisco - Oct 14, 2014.
The MS in Analytics at U. San Francisco is an intensive one-year program that provides students with the skills necessary to develop techniques and processes for data-driven decision-making.

Meetings

Boston Docker Global Hack Day and Meetup, Oct 30 - Oct 19, 2014.
Docker is an open platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run distributed applications. Join other Boston-area developers for Docker Global Hack Day #2 at O'Reilly Media in Cambridge, MA.
Boston Data Festival Celebrates Big Data Community, Nov 3-8 - Oct 16, 2014.
Celebrate the big data community, see many world-class speakers, and participate in insightful events at this year's Boston Data Festival. The event takes place November 3-8.
Text Analytics West Summit, Nov 4-5: Use Data Scientists time productively - Oct 14, 2014.
Data scientists time is expensive - it should be used productively to help answer important questions and help business grow. Use their time well at the Text Analytics West Summit, SF, Nov 4-5 - see KDnuggets Offer.
Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit, Chicago, Nov 12-13 - Oct 9, 2014.
Join other data scientists and decision-makers to learn about practical Predictive Analytics from top companies like Amazon, Intel, Twitter, Verizon, and many others. KDnuggets discount.
TDWI Orlando, Dec 7-12, Premier Education Event for BI, Big Data and Analytics - Oct 16, 2014.
Plan your week with the complete 6-day agenda, including course descriptions, keynotes, exhibit hall times, networking events, and BI certification opportunities.

Jobs

Apple: Data Analyst - Oct 20, 2014.
The Maps team is looking for self-motivated team players who are fascinated by data, are curious about patterns and anomalies, and want to derive insights from data to improve our products.
Adobe: Sr. Machine Learning Engineer (C++ / Big Data) - Oct 17, 2014.
Be part of the development team that produces a complex, high-performance analytics product called Adobe Data Workbench. Have superior problem-solving skills an a knack for developing large-scale, high-performance, complex systems.
Catalytic DS: Biomedical Text Mining Developer - Oct 16, 2014.
Help develop cloud-based text analytics solutions that enable researchers to use biomedical information locked in vast repositories of 'read only' scientific publications.
Pacific Life: Sr. Data Scientist - Oct 15, 2014.
Analyze big data to gain a better understanding of our customers - how they interact with our company and our products and what they desire moving forward.
ArrowStreet Capital: Research Associate - Oct 14, 2014.
Join investment research team, support coding new ideas into signals, testing them, and producing return and risk forecasts to drive trading decisions.
Analatom: Artificial Intelligence / Data Mining Engineer (US Permanent Residency or Citizenship Required) - Oct 12, 2014.
Work with large data sets, complex algorithms, and team members from a variety of specialties to solve hard problems. Support a range of clients, including front-line analysts, researchers, and senior leadership.
GuideOne: Lead Predictive Modeler - Oct 11, 2014.
Responsible for advancing the use of predictive models and analytics, project management, planning and delivering predictive models and statistical analysis.
Booking: Product Owner - Data Science - Oct 11, 2014.
Use our data to create products and features improving our customers experience, with a strong focus on driving conversion and customer loyalty.
Alibaba: Senior Data Scientist - Oct 9, 2014.
Develop rich insight into consumer behaviors, preferences and experiences from the vast resources in order to improve the customer experience across a broad range of areas.

Academic and Research positions

Stevens: Tenure-track Asst/Assoc Professor in Business Analytics/Data Science - Oct 17, 2014.
Of particular interest are applicants with backgrounds in data science, statistics, information visualization, machine learning, computer science and related fields. Expected start date Aug 2015.
Virginia Tech: Faculty in AI/Machine Learning, Software Engineering, Data Analytics - Oct 16, 2014.
Virginia Tech seeks applicants for one tenure-track and two tenured faculty positions in three areas: artificial intelligence/machine learning, software engineering, and data analytics/cyber security.
Arizona State University (ASU): Faculty Positions In Big Data Systems - Oct 14, 2014.
ASU Fulton Schools of Engineering have tenure track/tenured faculty positions; Areas of interest include: high performance and trusted systems for management, analytics, mining, and visualization of massive data sets.
CSI-CUNY: Full Professor, Computer Science - Oct 10, 2014.
A unique opportunity to create and lead a core research group with a number of additional tenure-track positions available in the near future.
WPI: Professors (Open Rank), Data Science - Oct 10, 2014.
Join the strong team of existing data science faculty working on interdisciplinary research related to big data on real-world grand challenge problems with societal impact.
UBC: Data Science, Canada Research Chair Tier 1 - Oct 10, 2014.
U. of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, seeks candidates for a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Data Science, at a senior tenured associate professor or professor level. Apply by Jan 31, 2015.
Virginia Tech: Data Analytics/Cyber Security Faculty Position - Oct 9, 2014.
Candidates with research depth and breadth in data analytics, data mining, "big data", data science, or cybersecurity, are encouraged to apply.
U. Miami School of Business Administration: Tenure-Track Faculty in Management Science (Big Data Analytics) - Oct 8, 2014.
Applicants with research interests in all areas of Analytics will be considered, but preference given to those with expertise in Big Data Analytics and the computational challenges of dealing with large data sets.
Stanford, Postdoc: Data-driven Prediction for Subsurface Flow - Oct 17, 2014.
Postdoc Data Scientist position at Stanford Dept of Energy Resources Engineering to develop data-driven prediction modeling for subsurface flow.
U Geneva: PhD position on Learning over distributed streaming data - Oct 17, 2014.
Develop innovative machine learning methods for streaming data in the context of the Internet of Things in this PhD position. Position is funded for three years. Applications submitted by November 30th will be given priority.
U. Geneva: Postdoc position on Learning over distributed streaming data - Oct 19, 2014.
We are looking for an excellent postdoc to work on the development of new machine learning methods for distributed streaming data generated in the context of the Internet of Things.

Publications

Book: Data Mining for Managers - Oct 14, 2014.
This book by a leading data mining consultant is meant for both practitioners and end users of data mining solutions, and it focuses more on the data and less on the math.
Book: Modern Optimization with R - Oct 10, 2014.
Learn the most relevant concepts related to modern optimization methods and how to apply them using multi-platform, open source, R tools in this new book on metaheuristics.
Deep Learning RNNaissance, an insightful, comprehensive, and entertaining overview - Oct 9, 2014.
Watch this great overview of history and present state of Deep Learning, which is revolutionizing Machine learning, vision, robotics, and many other areas.

Top Tweets

Top KDnuggets tweets, Oct 17-19 - Oct 20, 2014.
Air traffic data analyzed to predict Ebola spread;
Some cool public data sources you can use for your next data science project;
Data science can't be point and click ! Finding random correlation is too easy;
Bayes Rule in an animated gif.
Top KDnuggets tweets, Oct 15-16 - Oct 17, 2014.
STOP and THINK, sometimes the simplest caption is the best;
This model tracks Ebola outbreak well so far, predicts Ebola to burn out in December;
BAH launches online course "Explore Data Science";
Watch: R wizard Hadley Wickham dplyr tutorial at useR! 2014 conf.
Top KDnuggets tweets, Oct 13-14: Data mining classics - Oct 15, 2014.
Also - The Open Source Data Science MS Curriculum: UW/Coursera + Harvard ;
Statistical Modeling vs Machine Learning - mapping the terms and concepts;
Very useful! Python 2.7 Quick Reference Sheet.
Top KDnuggets tweets, Oct 10-12 - Oct 13, 2014.
7 Most Data Rich Companies in the World;
R and #DataScience Webinar slides - status, why, code examples;
Another list of 200+ #BigData thought leaders to follow on Twitter;
Popular #BigData predictive apps and APIs.
Top KDnuggets tweets, Oct 8-9 - Oct 10, 2014.
IBM #Watson presentation: Clinical data determines only 10% of health;
A @Kaggle hero 100-line Python code for online logistic regression;
The Winner of Kaggle Criteo Data Science on his Odyssey;
For Data Viz lovers: Keynote by Tableau CEO Christian Chabot on "Art of Analytics".
Top KDnuggets tweets, Oct 6-7 - Oct 8, 2014.
Great TED talk by @KnCukier "Big Data is better data";
Top 10 One-Person Startups;
7 critical elements of effective dashboards and visualizations;
Making Sense of Public Data - Wrangling Jeopardy.

CFP - Calls for Papers

Due Oct 22, 2015 ACM India SIGKDD Conf. on Data Sciences (IKDD CODS) , Bangalore, India. March 18-21, 2015
Due Oct 24, 7th Int. Conf. on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (BICoB) , Honolulu, HI, USA. Mar 9-11, 2015
Due Nov 7, 2015 Int. Conf. on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, and Prediction (SBP15) , Washington DC, USA, Mar 31 - Apr 3, 2015
Due Nov 15, Mining Urban Data - Special Issue - Information Systems (Elsevier) , Guest editors: Ioannis Katakis, Gennady Andrienko, Dimitrios Gunopulos, Vana Kalogeraki, Pedro Jose Marron, Katharina Morik, Olivier Verscheure, Yannis Ioannidis
Due Dec 15, Big Data Analytics, Special issue of the JTAER , Guest Editors: Jouni Markkula et al
Due Feb 17, The 4th Int. Conf. on Data Management Technologies and Applications - DATA 2015 , Colmar, Alsace, France. 20-22 July, 2015

Quote

Ebola is presently an example of "small data" (let's hope it stays this way), but its data has many problems which lend themselves to useful data science lessons that can be applied to Big Data as well. Gregory Piatetsky, Oct 2014.