KDnuggets™ News 14:n19, Jul 30

Features

Poll Results: Largest Dataset Analyzed surprisingly stable - Jul 17, 2014.
The results of KDnuggets annual poll on Largest Dataset Analyzed show surprising stability over the last 3 years, with about 54% of answers in GB range, and confirm the gap between the internet-scale data miners and the rest.
MLlib: Apache Spark component for machine learning - Jul 24, 2014.
MLlib, the machine learning component of Apache Spark, has developed into a tool that supports many common machine learning algorithms and now comes with more mature documentation and a stable API.
MIT CDOIQ Symposium: Where is the Big Data Boundary of Effectiveness? - Jul 25, 2014.
My report on Day 1 of MIT CDOIQ symposium, why MIT seniors may be less smart than freshmen, 6 types of digitization of capital, the main role of Chief Data Officer, 7-Eleven Japan, and the Big Data Boundary of Effectiveness.
KDnuggets Free Pass to Strata Conference + Hadoop World, New York, Oct 15-17, 2014 - Jul 28, 2014.
Strata + Hadoop World NYC is where cutting-edge data science and new business fundamentals intersect-and merge. Win a free KDnuggets 2-day pass or get KDnuggets discount.
Spotting Bad Data Visualizations - Jul 22, 2014.
Good (or bad) Data visualizations can significantly help (or hurt) your case. Learn more about how poorly people can spot bad data visualizations.
PAW: The Predictive Analytics World, Gov, Boston, Health - Jul 28, 2014.
This fall, Predictive Analytics World (PAW) produces three top-rated conferences for analytics professionals, managers, and practitioners who want to learn how to get maximum impact from predictive analytics in their field. KDnuggets discount.
Join the brightest minds at Analytics 2014 - Jul 29, 2014.
The Analytics 2014 conference hosted by SAS will help you hone your skills, learn new techniques and widen your understanding of this complex and ever-changing field. Special KDnuggets discount.
IEEE ICDM Research Contributions and Outstanding Service 2014 Awards, Nominations due Aug 15 - Jul 17, 2014.
The IEEE ICDM Research Contributions Award recognizes influential research contributions to the field of data mining. The Outstanding Service Award is for major service contributions that have promoted data mining as a field and ICDM as the world premier research conference in data mining.

Software

WordSwarm - Visualizing Word Trends in Periodicals - Jul 24, 2014.
Word clouds provide an intuitive way to visualize word-frequency in corpora and are easy to generate. WordSwarm is a new free tool for animating word clouds that show how buzz-words ebb and flow in chronologically ordered text such as journals, blogs, and even Google n-grams.
MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop - visual tool, free download - Jul 18, 2014.
MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop is a fast, easy, and beautiful way to explore data and share your insights. Effortlessly build dashboards with a wide range of interactive visualizations. Free download.
PredictionIO raised $2.5M for Open Source Machine Learning Server - Jul 17, 2014.
An open source machine learning server, PredictionIO, has raised $2.5M to help build smarter application everywhere. It seems that “smarter” is the new sexy.

News

Innocentive Challenge: Novel Approaches for Predicting Life Expectancy - Jul 21, 2014.
Help develop novel methods for life expectancy prediction without using traditional medical records, invasive tests, or examinations in this Innocentive Challenge. Submissions due by August 4th.
Top stories for Jul 20-26 - Jul 27, 2014.
Baby steps in Learning Python; 7 Steps for Learning Data Mining; Spotting Bad Data Visualizations; MLlib: Apache Spark component for machine learning.
Top stories for Jul 13-19 - Jul 20, 2014.
Cartoon: Facebook data science experiment and Happy Cats; GraphLab Create: large-scale machine learning platform for graph, structured, and text data; MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop - visual tool, free download; Interview: Marc Smith on Why We Need Open Tools for Social Networks.

Opinions

Containers: The Enabler of YARN - Jul 28, 2014.
The evolution of a data-center operating system is discussed along with the underlying challenges and approaches being followed. Containers play a big role in enabling the required abstraction and deliver additional benefits.
Why analysts should master public speaking - Jul 27, 2014.
Learn how to advance your career and increase the adoption of your analysis by conveying your message more clearly using public speaking experience.
Data for Good: data-driven projects for social good - Jul 26, 2014.
Data for Good is an exciting new non-profit seeking to highlight the various data science projects and resources that can ultimately contribute to the social good.
Dear CIO, what you have is NOT a Data Lake - Jul 17, 2014.
Data Lakes are often the ideal structure of a company's big data, but the reality is that data is often split into data puddles. Xurmo seeks to eliminate this by integrating Data Virtualization into the Data Lake.

Interviews

Reports

Webcasts and Webinars

Upcoming Webcasts on Analytics, Big Data, Data Science - July 29 and beyond - Jul 28, 2014.
Applications in R, Data-Driven Business, The Grammar and Graphics of Data Science, Data Mining: Failure To Launch, Hadoop and the Relational Database, and more.
Webinar: Data Mining: Failure to Launch [July 31] - Jul 24, 2014.
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. Next webinar is July 31.

Courses

Northwestern Online MS in Predictive Analytics - Jul 29, 2014.
Prepare for leadership-level career, learn from distinguished Northwestern faculty and industry experts, build statistical and analytic expertise, and get MS degree entirely online.
Summer School on Resource-Aware Machine Learning, Dortmund - Jul 27, 2014.
Attend summer school in Dortmund, Germany covering Machine Learning with Constrained Resources including topics like detecting astro particles using charging variations in smartphones. Applications are due by August 30.
Course: Tools for Discovering Patterns in Data, Sep 8-9 - Jul 24, 2014.
Dr. John Elder describes powerful analytic methods for classification and estimation, explains the leading algorithms, compares their merits, and demonstrates their effectiveness on practical applications.
Vendor-Neutral Hands-On Training in Data Mining [Wash-DC, Sep | Las Vegas, Dec] - Jul 24, 2014.
Successful analytics in the big data era does not start with data and software, but with immersive hands-on training and goal-driven strategy. Get this training from The Modeling Agency.
U. Delaware Certificate in Analytics: Optimizing Big Data - Jul 23, 2014.
UDel Certificate in Analytics: Optimizing Big Data helps you to understand why big data is so important, sharpen your data management skills, and join the rapidly growing analytics field. Sep 11 - Dec 18, 2014 in Wilmington, DE.
Hands-on Data Mining Training, Boston, NYC, Toronto, Detroit, other locations, $35 - Jul 22, 2014.
Get hands-on data mining training on topics like regression, classification, decision trees, and other techniques in this course conducted by Salford Systems.
NYU Stern Master of Science in Business Analytics - Jul 22, 2014.
The NYU Stern MS in Business Analytics teaches experienced professionals how to understand the role of evidence-based data in decision-making and to leverage data as a valuable strategic asset. Learn more.
Metis Data Science Bootcamp, New York, 12 weeks - Jul 19, 2014.
Learn Data Science in 12 weeks with in-person instruction + ongoing career coaching + job placement support. Apply by Aug 11, 2014.
Wharton: Strategic Value of Customer Relationships, online course - Jul 17, 2014.
In 8-week online program taught by Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader, learn how to decipher the streams of customer data flowing into your company.

Meetings

IEEE Big Data 2014 - 21 Workshops, Posters - CFP - Jul 29, 2014.
IEEE Big Data 2014 offers 21 workshops on the hottest topics in Big Data - papers due in August. Poster submissions due Sep 27. Attend the conference in Washington, D.C. and learn the latest in Big Data research.
PAW: The Predictive Analytics World, Gov, Boston, Health - Jul 28, 2014.
This fall, Predictive Analytics World (PAW) produces three top-rated conferences for analytics professionals, managers, and practitioners who want to learn how to get maximum impact from predictive analytics in their field. KDnuggets discount.
RapidMiner World Boston - August 18-21, Boston, MA, USA - Jul 17, 2014.
Attend RapidMiner World Boston to discuss predictive analytics, big data and data mining, enjoy presentations from industry leaders, and advance your knowledge of RapidMiner and advanced analytics.

Jobs

Academic/Research positions

Publications

Book: Probabilistic Approaches to Recommendations - Jul 28, 2014.
Learn about the challenges of the recommendation problem and common probabilistic solutions to it, then dive into state of the art techniques in Probabilistic Approaches to Recommendation.

Top Tweets

Top KDnuggets tweets, Jul 25-27 - Jul 28, 2014.
Does Apple slow down old iPhones when new ones are released?
The Social Network of Alexander the Great; Kirk D. Borne - from data mining at NASA to teaching Data Science at GMU
Data for Good: data-driven projects for social good.
Top KDnuggets tweets, Jul 23-24 - Jul 25, 2014.
81% of retail firms gather #BigData, only 34% use analytics to drive pricing optimization
Google Brain project: Google is not really a search company
The Journal of Big Data has published its first articles - Hadoop, Mahout, Data MLlib: Apache Spark component for machine learning.
Top KDnuggets tweets, Jul 21-22 - Jul 23, 2014.
Microsoft: Data Scientist
Haskell Data Analysis Cookbook - A practical and concise guide
Large collection of papers on #Security and Machine Learning
Learn Data Science in 12 wks + career coaching.
Top KDnuggets tweets, Jul 18-20 - Jul 21, 2014.
Baby steps in learning #Python for data analysis
My 7 Steps for Learning Data Mining and Data Science - now in Techopedia
A good collection of #MachineLearning tools in #Python
Understanding Random Forests: From Theory to Practice - implementation.
Top KDnuggets tweets, Jul 16-17 - Jul 18, 2014.
An awesome GitHub list of #BigData frameworks, resources, and more
15 interviews with 15 data scientists
14 definitions of data scientist, from funny to serious
Revised standards for statistical evidence.
Top KDnuggets tweets, Jul 14-15 - Jul 16, 2014.
5 R training programs
Making sense of text analytics
Watch: Machine Learning Summer School Pittsburgh 2014
US "Data Scientist" average salary up over 10%, to $112K.

Quote

A small but significant gap in 1-100 PB range separates analysts who work with Terabyte-size commercial data warehouses and 100 PB+ Internet-scale data stores, KDnuggets Poll Results: Largest Dataset Analyzed surprisingly stable.