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Rapid Miner User Conference 2012
One of those cool conferences that is on my bucket list- this time in Hungary (That’s a nice place)
But I am especially interested in seeing how far Radoop has come along !
Disclaimer- Rapid Miner has been a Decisionstats.com sponsor for many years. It is also a very cool software but I like the R Extension facility even more!
—————————————————————
and not very expensive too compared to other User Conferences in Europe!-
http://rcomm2012.org/index.php/registration/prices
Information about Registration
- Early Bird registration until July 20th, 2012.
- Normal registration from July 21st, 2012 until August 13th, 2012.
- Latest registration from August 14th, 2012 until August 24th, 2012.
- Students have to provide a valid Student ID during registration.
- The Dinner is included in the All Days and in the Conference packages.
- All prices below are net prices. Value added tax (VAT) has to be added if applicable.
Prices for Regular Visitors
Days and Event |
Early Bird Rate |
Normal Rate |
Latest Registration |
| Tuesday
(Training / Development 1) |
190 Euro | 230 Euro | 280 Euro |
| Wednesday + Thursday
(Conference) |
290 Euro | 350 Euro | 420 Euro |
| Friday
(Training / Development 2 and Exam) |
190 Euro | 230 Euro | 280 Euro |
| All Days
(Full Package) |
610 Euro | 740 Euro | 900 Euro |
Prices for Authors and Students
In case of students, please note that you will have to provide a valid student ID during registration.
Days and Event |
Early Bird Rate |
Normal Rate |
Latest Registration |
| Tuesday
(Training / Development 1) |
90 Euro | 110 Euro | 140 Euro |
| Wednesday + Thursday
(Conference) |
140 Euro | 170 Euro | 210 Euro |
| Friday
(Training / Development 2 and Exam) |
90 Euro | 110 Euro | 140 Euro |
| All Days
(Full Package) |
290 Euro | 350 Euro | 450 Euro |
Time
|
Tuesday
|
Wednesday
|
Thursday
|
Friday
|
09:00 – 10:30 |
Introductory Speech Ingo Mierswa; Rapid-I
Data Analysis
NeurophRM: Integration of the Neuroph framework into RapidMiner |
To be announced (Invited Talk) To be announced
Recommender Systems
Extending RapidMiner with Recommender Systems Algorithms Implementation of User Based Collaborative Filtering in RapidMiner |
Parallel Training / Workshop Session
Advanced Data Mining and Data Transformations or |
|
10:30 – 12:30 |
Data Analysis
Nearest-Neighbor and Clustering based Anomaly Detection Algorithms for RapidMiner Customers’ LifeStyle Targeting on Big Data using Rapid Miner Robust GPGPU Plugin Development for RapidMiner |
Extensions
Image Mining Extension – Year After Incorporating R Plots into RapidMiner Reports An Octave Extension for RapidMiner |
||
12:30 – 13:30 |
Lunch |
Lunch |
Lunch |
|
13:30 – 15:00 |
Parallel Training / Workshop Session
Basic Data Mining and Data Transformations or |
Applications
Application of RapidMiner in Steel Industry Research and Development A Comparison of Data-driven Models for Forecast River Flow Portfolio Optimization Using Local Linear Regression Ensembles in Rapid Miner |
Unstructured Data
Processing Data Streams with the RapidMiner Streams-Plugin Automated Creation of Corpuses for the Needs of Sentiment Analysis
Demonstration
News from the Rapid-I Labs This short session demonstrates the latest developments from the Rapid-I lab and will let you how you can build powerful analysis processes and routines by using those RapidMiner tools. |
Certification Exam |
15:00 – 17:00 |
Book Presentation and Game Show
Data Mining for the Masses: A New Textbook on Data Mining for Everyone Matthew North presents his new book “Data Mining for the Masses” introducing data mining to a broader audience and making use of RapidMiner for practical data mining problems.
Game Show |
User Support
Get some Coffee for free – Writing Operators with RapidMiner Beans Meta-Modeling Execution Times of RapidMiner operators |
||
19:00 |
Social Event (Conference Dinner) |
Social Event (Visit of Bar District) |
Training: Basic Data Mining and Data Transformations
This is a short introductory training course for users who are not yet familiar with RapidMiner or only have a few experiences with RapidMiner so far. The topics of this training session include
- Basic Usage
- User Interface
- Creating and handling RapidMiner repositories
- Starting a new RapidMiner project
- Operators and processes
- Loading data from flat files
- Storing data, processes, and results
- Predictive Models
- Linear Regression
- Naïve Bayes
- Decision Trees
- Basic Data Transformations
- Changing names and roles
- Handling missing values
- Changing value types by discretization and dichotimization
- Normalization and standardization
- Filtering examples and attributes
- Scoring and Model Evaluation
- Applying models
- Splitting data
- Evaluation methods
- Performance criteria
- Visualizing Model Performance
Training: Advanced Data Mining and Data Transformations
This is a short introductory training course for users who already know some basic concepts of RapidMiner and data mining and have already used the software before, for example in the first training on Tuesday. The topics of this training session include
- Advanced Data Handling
- Sampling
- Balancing data
- Joins and Aggregations
- Detection and removal of outliers
- Dimensionality reduction
- Control process execution
- Remember process results
- Recall process results
- Loops
- Using branches and conditions
- Exception handling
- Definition of macros
- Usage of macros
- Definition of log values
- Clearing log tables
- Transforming log tables to data
Development Workshop Part 1 and Part 2
Want to exchange ideas with the developers of RapidMiner? Or learn more tricks for developing own operators and extensions? During our development workshops on Tuesday and Friday, we will build small groups of developers each working on a small development project around RapidMiner. Beginners will get a comprehensive overview of the architecture of RapidMiner before making the first steps and learn how to write own operators. Advanced developers will form groups with our experienced developers, identify shortcomings of RapidMiner and develop a new extension which might be presented during the conference already. Unfinished work can be continued in the second workshop on Friday before results might be published on the Marketplace or can be taken home as a starting point for new custom operators.
Interview Alvaro Tejada Galindo, SAP Labs Montreal, Using SAP Hana with #Rstats
Here is a brief interview with Alvaro Tejada Galindo aka Blag who is a developer working with SAP Hana and R at SAP Labs, Montreal. SAP Hana is SAP’s latest offering in BI , it’s also a database and a computing environment , and using R and HANA together on the cloud can give major productivity gains in terms of both speed and analytical ability, as per preliminary use cases.
Ajay- What made the R language a fit for SAP HANA. Did you consider other languages? What is your view on Julia/Python/SPSS/SAS/Matlab languages
Blag- I think “R” is a must for SAP HANA. As the fastest database in the market, we needed a language that could help us shape the data in the best possible way. “R” filled that purpose very well. Right now, “R” is not the only language as “L” can be used as well (http://wiki.tcl.tk/17068) …not forgetting “SQLScript” which is our own version of SQL (http://goo.gl/x3bwh) . I have to admit that I tried Julia, but couldn’t manage to make it work. Regarding Python, it’s an interesting question as I’m going to blog about Python and SAP HANA soon. About Matlab, SPSS and SAS I haven’t used them, so I got nothing to say there.
Ajay- What is your view on some of the limitations of R that can be overcome with using it with SAP HANA.
Blag- I think mostly the ability of SAP HANA to work with big data. Again, SAP HANA and “R” can work very nicely together and achieve things that weren’t possible before.
Ajay- Have you considered other vendors of R including working with RStudio, Revolution Analytics, and even Oracle R Enterprise.
Blag- I’m not really part of the SAP HANA or the R groups inside SAP, so I can’t really comment on that. I can only say that I use RStudio every time I need to do something with R. Regarding Oracle…I don’t think so…but they can use any of our products whenever they want.
Ajay- Do you have a case study on an actual usage of R with SAP HANA that led to great results.
Blag- Right now the use of “R” and SAP HANA is very preliminary, I don’t think many people has start working on it…but as an example that it works, you can check this awesome blog entry from my friend Jitender Aswani “Big Data, R and HANA: Analyze 200 Million Data Points and Later Visualize Using Google Maps “ (http://allthingsr.blogspot.com/#!/2012/04/big-data-r-and-hana-analyze-200-million.html)
Ajay- Does your group in SAP plan to give to the R ecosystem by attending conferences like UseR 2012, sponsoring meets, or package development etc
Blag- My group is in charge of everything developers, so sure, we’re planning to get more in touch with R developers and their ecosystem. Not sure how we’re going to deal with it, but at least I’m going to get myself involved in the Montreal R Group.
About-
http://scn.sap.com/people/alvaro.tejadagalindo3
| Name: | Alvaro Tejada Galindo |
| Email: | a.tejada.galindo@sap.com |
| Profession: | Development |
| Company: | SAP Canada Labs-Montreal |
| Town/City: | Montreal |
| Country: | Canada |
| Instant Messaging Type: | |
| Instant Messaging ID: | Blag |
| Personal URL: | http://blagrants.blogspot.com |
| Professional Blog URL: | http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/u/252210910 |
| My Relation to SAP: | employee |
| Short Bio: | Development Expert for the Technology Innovation and Developer Experience team.Used to be an ABAP Consultant for the last 11 years. Addicted to programming since 1997. |
http://www.sap.com/solutions/technology/in-memory-computing-platform/hana/overview/index.epx
and from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_HANA
SAP HANA is SAP AG’s implementation of in-memory database technology. There are four components within the software group:[1]
- SAP HANA DB (or HANA DB) refers to the database technology itself,
- SAP HANA Studio refers to the suite of tools provided by SAP for modeling,
- SAP HANA Appliance refers to HANA DB as delivered on partner certified hardware (see below) as anappliance. It also includes the modeling tools from HANA Studio as well replication and data transformation tools to move data into HANA DB,[2]
- SAP HANA Application Cloud refers to the cloud based infrastructure for delivery of applications (typically existing SAP applications rewritten to run on HANA).
R is integrated in HANA DB via TCP/IP. HANA uses SQL-SHM, a shared memory-based data exchange to incorporate R’s vertical data structure. HANA also introduces R scripts equivalent to native database operations like join or aggregation.[20] HANA developers can write R scripts in SQL and the types are automatically converted in HANA. R scripts can be invoked with HANA tables as both input and output in the SQLScript. R environments need to be deployed to use R within SQLScript
More blog posts on using SAP and R together
Dealing with R and HANAhttp://scn.sap.com/community/in-memory-business-data-management/blog/2011/11/28/dealing-with-r-and-hana
R meets HANA
http://scn.sap.com/community/in-memory-business-data-management/blog/2012/01/29/r-meets-hana
HANA meets R
http://scn.sap.com/community/in-memory-business-data-management/blog/2012/01/26/hana-meets-r
When SAP HANA met R – First kiss
http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/hana/blog/2012/05/21/when-sap-hana-met-r–first-kiss
Using RODBC with SAP HANA DB-
SAP HANA: My experiences on using SAP HANA with R
and of course the blog that started it all-
Jitender Aswani’s http://allthingsr.blogspot.in/
Anonymous Operation India- Using Amazon AWS to go to PirateBay
The cyber -group known as Anonymous has now decided to fight for internet freedom for my 1.2 billion countrymen (India)
So in operation India they go and knock some websites off. The immediate provocation-
1) Legal System prevented access to Pirate Bay (and other sites)
This as per Anons restricts the freedom of glorious motherland of India (which incidentally does have a high number of engineers).
A slight modification to using violence (like DDOS) is to use non violence-this approach is use the free tier at Amazon EC2-http://aws.amazon.com/free/ and sign up and start the windows tier
AWS Free Usage Tier (Per Month): ( only if your torrents are going to be less than 15 gb a month!!)
- 750 hours of Amazon EC2 Linux Micro Instance usage (613 MB of memory and 32-bit and 64-bit platform support) – enough hours to run continuously each month
* - 750 hours of Amazon EC2 Microsoft Windows Server Micro Instance usage (613 MB of memory and 32-bit and 64-bit platform support) – enough hours to run continuously each month
* - 750 hours of an Elastic Load Balancer plus 15 GB data processing*
- 30 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage, plus 2 million I/Os and 1 GB of snapshot storage
* - 5 GB of Amazon S3 standard storage, 20,000 Get Requests, and 2,000 Put Requests
* - 100 MB of storage, 5 units of write capacity, and 10 units of read capacity for Amazon DynamoDB.**
- 25 Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hours and 1 GB of Storage
** - 1,000 Amazon SWF workflow executions can be initiated for free. A total of 10,000 activity tasks, signals, timers and markers, and 30,000 workflow-days can also be used for free
** - 100,000 Requests of Amazon Simple Queue Service
** - 100,000 Requests, 100,000 HTTP notifications and 1,000 email notifications for Amazon Simple Notification Service
** - 10 Amazon Cloudwatch metrics, 10 alarms, and 1,000,000 API requests
** - 15 GB of bandwidth out aggregated across all AWS services
*
and get download speeds of 190 kb/ps to connect to Pirate Bay from the US !!
So you dont know Linux, huh (but do know how to Torrent). Well Amazon has a Windows instance for free too. Shame on you for not knowing Linux though! Illegal torrents hurt artists like Shahrukh Khan the most!!!
http://aws.amazon.com/windows/
How to create a Windows Amazon Instance
http://aws.amazon.com/resources/webinars/?vid=OLfmqcYnhUM&p=015041767CFA57C8
and to download your precious data (why?) from your remote instance to your local PC use these instructions.
1. Go to find the RDP file amazon asked you to downloaded onto your local PC. right-click –> Edit
2. Go to “Local Resources” tab –> “Local devices and resources” –> “More” button
3. Expand the “Drives” and check the disks you want to share when you TS to the remote box.
4. after connect, you will see the new drives in My Computer already mounted for you.
For me, copy speed is 200-300kB/Second. Enjoy!
or even easier
Installing dropbox on both your client machine and EC2 instance is one of the easiest ways to do it. (go to http://dropbox.com) or try the new Google Drive to share content.
–
As for Anonymous- DDOS attacks are easy, IRC press conferences are fun, but there are enough techies in India ,kids.
NOTE- You are liable legally for your actions whether on Amazon AWS or on your own laptop. This is just a technical note- not a moral note.
PS- I wonder if the Chinese can use this to access Facebook. Maybe it is time Anonymous got the guts to hit China for it’s unfree internet.
PPS- Message to Anons— Next time, try giving us a pdf tutorial on how to create an anonymized sql injection/ddos !
Custom T Shirt-
INDIA- Writing code since 3000 BC.
INDIA- We made the zero 0.
Interview Prof Benjamin Alamar , Sports Analytics
Here is an interview with Prof Benjamin Alamar, founding editor of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sport, a professor of sports management at Menlo College and the Director of Basketball Analytics and Research for the Oklahoma City Thunder of the NBA.
Ajay – The movie Moneyball recently sparked out mainstream interest in analytics in sports.Describe the role of analytics in sports management
Benjamin- A very typical first step for a team is to utilize the tools of predictive analytics to help inform their draft decisions.
Benjamin- I got involved in sports through a company called Protrade Sports. Protrade initially was a fantasy sports company that was looking to develop a fantasy game based on advanced sports statistics and utilize a stock market concept instead of traditional drafting. I was hired due to my background in economics to develop the market aspect of the game.
There I met Roland Beech (who now works for the Mavericks) and Aaron Schatz (owner of footballoutsiders.com) and learned about the developing field of sports statistics. I then changed my research focus from economics to sports statistics and founded the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. Through the journal and my published research, I was able to establish a reputation of doing quality, useable work.
For students, I recommend developing very strong data management skills (sql and the like) and thinking carefully about what sort of questions a general manager or coach would care about. Being able to demonstrate analytic skills around actionable research will generally attract the attention of pro teams.
About-
Benjamin Alamar, Professor of Sport Management, Menlo College

Professor Benjamin Alamar is the founding editor of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sport, a professor of sports management at Menlo College and the Director of Basketball Analytics and Research for the Oklahoma City Thunder of the NBA. He has published academic research in football, basketball and baseball, has presented at numerous conferences on sports analytics. He is also a co-creator of ESPN’s Total Quarterback Rating and a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal. He has consulted for teams in the NBA and NFL, provided statistical analysis for author Michael Lewis for his recent book The Blind Side, and worked with numerous startup companies in the field of sports analytics. Professor Alamar is also an award winning economist who has worked academically and professionally in intellectual property valuation, public finance and public health. He received his PhD in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2001.
Prof Alamar is a speaker at Predictive Analytics World, San Fransisco and is doing a workshop there
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2012/agenda.php#day2-17
2:55-3:15pm
Track 1: Sports Analytics
Case Study: NFL, MLB, & NBA
Competing & Winning with Sports Analytics
The field of sports analytics ties together the tools of data management, predictive modeling and information systems to provide sports organization a competitive advantage. The field is rapidly developing based on new and expanded data sources, greater recognition of the value, and past success of a variety of sports organizations. Teams in the NFL, MLB, NBA, as well as other organizations have found a competitive edge with the application of sports analytics. The future of sports analytics can be seen through drawing on these past successes and the developments of new tools.
You can know more about Prof Alamar at his blog http://analyticfootball.blogspot.in/ or journal at http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jqas. His detailed background can be seen at http://menlo.academia.edu/BenjaminAlamar/CurriculumVitae
Predictive Models Ain’t Easy to Deploy
This is a guest blog post by Carole Ann Matignon of Sparkling Logic. You can see more on Sparkling Logic at http://my.sparklinglogic.com/
Decision Management is about combining predictive models and business rules to automate decisions for your business. Insurance underwriting, loan origination or workout, claims processing are all very good use cases for that discipline… But there is a hiccup… It ain’t as easy you would expect…
What’s easy?
If you have a neat model, then most tools would allow you to export it as a PMML model – PMML stands for Predictive Model Markup Language and is a standard XML representation for predictive model formulas. Many model development tools let you export it without much effort. Many BRMS – Business rules Management Systems – let you import it. Tada… The model is ready for deployment.
What’s hard?
The problem that we keep seeing over and over in the industry is the issue around variables.
Those neat predictive models are formulas based on variables that may or may not exist as is in your object model. When the variable is itself a formula based on the object model, like the min, max or sum of Dollar amount spent in Groceries in the past 3 months, and the object model comes with transaction details, such that you can compute it by iterating through those transactions, then the problem is not “that” big. PMML 4 introduced some support for those variables.
The issue that is not easy to fix, and yet quite frequent, is when the model development data model does not resemble the operational one. Your Data Warehouse very likely flattened the object model, and pre-computed some aggregations that make the mapping very hard to restore.
It is clearly not an impossible project as many organizations do that today. It comes with a significant overhead though that forces modelers to involve IT resources to extract the right data for the model to be operationalized. It is a heavy process that is well justified for heavy-duty models that were developed over a period of time, with a significant ROI.
This is a show-stopper though for other initiatives which do not have the same ROI, or would require too frequent model refresh to be viable. Here, I refer to “real” model refresh that involves a model reengineering, not just a re-weighting of the same variables.
For those initiatives where time is of the essence, the challenge will be to bring closer those two worlds, the modelers and the business rules experts, in order to streamline the development AND deployment of analytics beyond the model formula. The great opportunity I see is the potential for a better and coordinated tuning of the cut-off rules in the context of the model refinement. In other words: the opportunity to refine the strategy as a whole. Very ambitious? I don’t think so.
About Carole Ann Matignon
http://my.sparklinglogic.com/index.php/company/management-team
| Carole-Ann Matignon | ![]() |
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Predictive Analytics World Events in 2012
A new line up of Predictive Analytics World and Text Analytics World conferences and workshops are coming March through July, plus see the save-the-dates and call-for-speakers for events in Sept, Oct, and Nov.
CONFERENCE: Predictive Analytics World – San Francisco
March 4-10, 2012 in San Francisco, CA
http://predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2012
Discount Code for $150 off: AJAYBP12
CONFERENCE: Text Analytics World – San Francisco
March 6-7, 2012 in San Francisco, CA
http://textanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2012
Discount Code for $150 off: AJAYBP12
VARIOUS ANALYTICS WORKSHOPS:
A plethora of 1-day workshops are held alongside PAW and TAW
For details see: http://pawcon.com/sanfrancisco/2012/analytics_workshops.php
SEMINAR: Predictive Analytics for Business, Marketing & Web
March 22-23, 2012 in New York City, NY
July 26-27, 2012 in São Paulo, Brazil
Oct 11-12, 2012 in San Francisco
A concentrated training program lead by PAW’s chair, Eric Siegel
http://businessprediction.com
CONFERENCE: Predictive Analytics World – Toronto
April 25-26, 2012 in Toronto, Ontario
http://predictiveanalyticsworld.com/toronto/2012
Discount Code for $150 off: AJAYBP12
CONFERENCE: Predictive Analytics World – Chicago
June 25-26, 2012 in Chicago, IL
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/chicago/2012/
Discount Code for $150 off: AJAYBP12
From Ajay-
CONTEST- If you use the discount code AJAYBP12, you will not only get the $150 off, but you will be entered in a contest to get 2 complementary passes like I did last year . Matt Stromberg won that one
http://www.decisionstats.com/contest-2-free-passes-to-predictive-analytics-world/
see last year results-
http://www.decisionstats.com/congrats-to-matt-stromberg-winner-2-free-passes-to-paw-new-york/
Analytics Conferences for 2012
NOTE: Early Bird registration for PAW and TAW San Francisco is January 20th – $400 lower than Onsite Price.
CONFERENCE: Predictive Analytics World – San Francisco
March 4-10, 2012 in San Francisco, CA
http://predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2012
Discount Code : AJBP12
CONFERENCE: Text Analytics World – San Francisco
March 6-7, 2012 in San Francisco, CA
http://textanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2012
Discount Code :AJBP12
VARIOUS ANALYTICS WORKSHOPS:
A plethora of 1-day workshops are held alongside PAW and TAW
For details see: http://pawcon.com/sanfrancisco/2012/analytics_workshops.php
SEMINAR: Predictive Analytics for Business, Marketing & Web
March 22-23, 2012 in New York City, NY
July 26-27, 2012 in São Paulo, Brazil
A concentrated training program lead by Eric Siegel.
http://businessprediction.com
CONFERENCE: Predictive Analytics World – Toronto
April 26-27, 2012 in Toronto, Ontario
http://predictiveanalyticsworld.com/toronto/2012
Discount Code :AJBP12
CONFERENCE: Predictive Analytics World – Chicago
June 25-26, 2012 in Chicago, IL
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/chicago/2012/
Discount Code :AJBP12
MORE ANALYTICS EVENTS:
PAW Düsseldorf: November 6-7, 2012 – http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.de
PAW London: November 27-28, 2012 – http://www.pawcon.com
PAW Videos: Available on-demand – http://www.pawcon.com/video








Carole-Ann Matignon – Co-Founder, President & Chief Executive Officer