Category: Analytics

Are we in an Analytics Recession- a decline in SAS is a decline for all #rstats

I was intrigued by David Smith’s blog post at http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2013/08/job-trends-for-statistics-packages.html and played with some of the terms associated with analytics and data science.
Some points on that-
1) The term SAS  is broader than the Statistical Software.
2) The term R is even broader. Accordingly I searched for R language- again it is a narrower term
3) Even by David’s own graph- SAS jobs have declined by 33% over two years, while R jobs have increased by 50%. However some jobs list both SAS and R so will be counted twice.
4) Even by David’s graph , SAS jobs are still twice as many as R jobs. So the overall market for analytics job is declined
5) I have no way to giving an exact conclusion unless I have access to the data, or I fire up a scraper myself.
6) Jobs remains a key area of concern for students and for future growth
7) Python statistical packages may need to be included shortly. I think sometimes it is easier to teach applied statistics (and data mining) to talented coders than teach scripting to talented statisticians.
8) Is hypothesis testing dead in the era of Big Data. What is a t test or chi square for a million rows. Almost all the better theory for such is locked in Bing or Google Research
9) The continued existence of Microsoft OS should be a sobering thought to people claiming ultimate victory too soon. Software needs to be sold, and sometimes the better sold software triumphs over the better designed software.
10) I would think that R has completely dominated the academic statistical market the same way SAS was doing it for business analytics some years back. However there exists much work to be done given some limitations of that software.
11) However SAS Institute revenue continues to grow. One reason for that could be the Institute work for big money clients including the US Government. Despite Drew Conway- I have yet to come across too many cases of the Big Fed using R.
SAS Jobs
The below is a

Using ifelse in R for creating new variables #rstats #data #manipulation

The ifelse function is simple and powerful and can help in data manipulation within R. Here I create a categoric variable from specific values in a numeric variable

> data(iris)

> iris$Type=ifelse(iris$Sepal.Length<5.8,”Small Flower”,”Big Flower”)
> table(iris$Type)
Big Flower Small Flower
77           73

The parameters  of ifelse is quite simple

Usage

ifelse(test, yes, no)
Arguments

test
an object which can be coerced to logical mode.

yes
return values for true elements of test.

no
return values for false elements of tes

 

Summer Reading :NBER

Some of the things I like to read to stay sharp as I grow old.

NBER

For example this paper says how foreign born PHDs do location choices.

Graduates with stronger academic ability, measured by whether they received university support for a research or a teaching assistantship, had a 6.8 percent higher stay rate. Assistantships were the primary means of support for 52 percent of the sample; 11 percent of the sample was supported by a university fellowship or scholarship, which was associated with a 2.7 percent higher stay rate. Students supported by foreign funding, 4 percent of the sample, had an intent to stay that was 26.7 points lower.

As one would expect, ties to the United States are also important. Foreign-born U.S. citizens have a 19.5 percent higher stay rate; green card holders have a 15.3 percent higher stay rate; and U.S. college graduates have a 3.6 percent higher stay rate.

FOAS becomes hottest thing in open source data science #rstats

Within a short time FOAS has lined up an interesting list of projects for Data Science statups and projects for open access and open source.  FOAS accreditation provides the ultimate halmark of open in word and spirit for data science projects.

See it yourself at http://www.foastat.org/projects.html

Screenshot from 2013-07-30 19:42:26

How Geeks Become Hackers in China

The Path-

 

How?

f1f2

Why?

t1t2

Source-

routine activity theory5 (RAT), social learning theory1 (SLT), and situational action theory27 (SAT).

While RAT helps explain how hacking begins, SAT explains why talented young people take the road toward computer hacking, even when presented with many alternatives, and SLT calls for attention to environments that sustain hacking behavior and subculture. However, none of these theories explains the evolution of certain critical elements in the hacker process: motivation, knowledge and skill, opportunity, moral values and judgment, and the environment.

Based on our case evidence and the literature, we developed a framework for understanding and managing hackers and hacking behavior from an evolutionary perspective. The framework’s most significant contribution is its explication of the enablers and constraints influencing hackers, providing guidance for managing the hacking epidemic by schools, universities, and throughout society. This framework calls for zero tolerance for hacking in schools and early intervention (such as through courses in computer ethics in middle and high schools, supervised competitions in defending computer security, and organizing computer security services for organizations) to strengthen the moral values of students against hacking and channel their interest in computers in a positive direction.

http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2013/4/162513-why-computer-talents-become-computer-hackers/fulltext

DataMind – A New Effort to Teach R online for free #rstats

Bringing CodeAcademy gamification(?) to the world of Online Training especially for R- DataMind is an interesting concept.

Will the rest of R community donate teaching courses for free? Watch this space

http://www.datamind.org/#/courses/1

It is created by these excellent gentlemen

Screenshot from 2013-07-18 19:22:36

 

A short science fiction story by The Writer

My attempts at science fiction. Aww shucks!

Ajay Ohri's avatarR for Business Analytics

The Shortest Science Fiction story ever written was not based on science and was not fictional. It was categorized as science-fiction by The Writer, to save himself an explanation or give him – what people call- plausible deniability in case the story became too popular or was taken too seriously by the rest of the humans. Have you ever wondered why sometimes they appear to be gremlins in your computer or on the Internet.

Why your computer sometimes works fast or slow.

. Why some people believe in conspiracy theories and some people believe that Jesus came back to Life after he was born to a Virgin. Some people believe that their government is totally bad . Some believe that government of other countries is totally bad.

People like to approximate their guesses to extremes while taking judgement calls.

Just as intelligence is normally distributed in an average population, so…

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