ever wondered what Pakistani blogs are saying about UBL. What Libyan bloggers go through to send you a piece.
Dont trust Ne-ew York Times or Fox-y News and /or both.
Read directly using breakthrough machine learning algorithms.
The Boys in Stanford and friends – bring Google Chrome Languages-
Now available at 0 cost. No viruses. Just annoying ads. Superbowl style.
Good news for analytics speakers and listeners. Predictive Analytics Conference is accepting nominations.
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/submit.php
From http://www.kdnuggets.com/2011/03/new-poll-r-in-analytics-data-mining-work.html?k11n07
A new poll/survey on actual usage of R in Data Mining
R has been steadily growing in popularity among data miners and analytic professionals.
In KDnuggets 2010 Data Mining / Analytic Tools Poll, R was used by 30% of respondents.
In 2010 Rexer Analytics Data Miner SurveyR was the most popular tool, used by 43% of the data miners.
Another aspect of tool usefulness is how much does it help with the entire data mining process from data preparation and cleaning, modeling, evaluation, visualization and presentation (excluding deployment).
New KDnuggets Poll is asking:
What part of your analytics / data mining work in the past 12 months was done in R?
http://www.kdnuggets.com/2011/03/new-poll-r-in-analytics-data-mining-work.html?k11n07
Here is an interview with Anne Milley, a notable thought leader in the world of analytics. Anne is now Senior Director, Analytical Strategy in Product Marketing for JMP , the leading data visualization software from the SAS Institute.
Ajay-What do you think are the top 5 unique selling points of JMP compared to other statistical software in its category?
Anne-
JMP combines incredible analytic depth and breadth with interactive data visualization, creating a unique environment optimized for discovery and data-driven innovation.
With an extensible framework using JSL (JMP Scripting Language), and integration with SAS, R, and Excel, JMP becomes your analytic hub.
JMP is accessible to all kinds of users. A novice analyst can dig into an interactive report delivered by a custom JMP application. An engineer looking at his own data can use built-in JMP capabilities to discover patterns, and a developer can write code to extend JMP for herself or others.
State-of-the-art DOE capabilities make it easy for anyone to design and analyze efficient experiments to determine which adjustments will yield the greatest gains in quality or process improvement – before costly changes are made.
Not to mention, JMP products are exceptionally well designed and easy to use. See for yourself and check out the free trial at www.jmp.com.
Ajay- What are the challenges and opportunities of expanding JMP’s market share? Do you see JMP expanding its conferences globally to engage global audiences?
Anne-
We realized solid global growth in 2010. The release of JMP Pro and JMP Clinical last year along with continuing enhancements to the rest of the JMP family of products (JMP and JMP Genomics) should position us well for another good year.
With the growing interest in analytics as a means to sustained value creation, we have the opportunity to help people along their analytic journey – to get started, take the next step, or adopt new paradigms speeding their time to value. The challenge is doing that as fast as we would like.
We are hiring internationally to offer even more events, training and academic programs globally.
Ajay- What are the current and proposed educational and global academic initiatives of JMP? How can we see more JMP in universities across the world (say India- China etc)?
Anne-
We view colleges and universities both as critical incubators of future JMP users and as places where attitudes about data analysis and statistics are formed. We believe that a positive experience in learning statistics makes a person more likely to eventually want and need a product like JMP.
For most students – and particularly for those in applied disciplines of business, engineering and the sciences – the ability to make a statistics course relevant to their primary area of study fosters a positive experience. Fortunately, there is a trend in statistical education toward a more applied, data-driven approach, and JMP provides a very natural environment for both students and researchers.
Its user-friendly navigation, emphasis on data visualization and easy access to the analytics behind the graphics make JMP a compelling alternative to some of our more traditional competitors.
We’ve seen strong growth in the education markets in the last few years, and JMP is now used in nearly half of the top 200 universities in the US.
Internationally, we are at an earlier stage of market development, but we are currently working with both JMP and SAS country offices and their local academic programs to promote JMP. For example, we are working with members of the JMP China office and faculty at several universities in China to support the use of JMP in the development of a master’s curriculum in Applied Statistics there, touched on in this AMSTAT News article.
Ajay- What future trends do you see for 2011 in this market (say top 5)?
Anne-
Growing complexity of data (text, image, audio…) drives the need for more and better visualization and analysis capabilities to make sense of it all.
More “chief analytics officers” are making better use of analytic talent – people are the most important ingredient for success!
JMP has been on the vanguard of 64-bit development, and users are now catching up with us as 64-bit machines become more common.
Users should demand easy-to-use, exploratory and predictive modeling tools as well as robust tools to experiment and learn to help them make the best decisions on an ongoing basis.
All these factors and more fuel the need for the integration of flexible, extensible tools with popular analytic platforms.
Ajay-You enjoy organic gardening as a hobby. How do you think hobbies and unwind time help people be better professionals?
Anne-
I am lucky to work with so many people who view their work as a hobby. They have other interests too, though, some of which are work-related (statistics is relevant everywhere!). Organic gardening helps me put things in perspective and be present in the moment. More than work defines who you are. You can be passionate about your work as well as passionate about other things. I think it’s important to spend some leisure time in ways that bring you joy and contribute to your overall wellbeing and outlook.
Btw, nice interviews over the past several months—I hadn’t kept up, but will check it out more often!
Biography– Source- http://www.sas.com/knowledge-exchange/business-analytics/biographies.html
Anne Milley is Senior Director of Analytics Strategy at JMP Product Marketing at SAS. Her ties to SAS began with bank failure prediction at Federal Home Loan Bank Dallas and continued at 7-Eleven Inc. She has authored papers and served on committees for F2006, KDD, SIAM, A2010 and several years of SAS’ annual data mining conference. Milley is a contributing faculty member for the International Institute of Analytics. anne.milley@jmp.com
Here is an interview with David Katz ,founder of David Katz Consulting (http://www.davidkatzconsulting.com/) and an analyst at the noted firm http://dataspora.com/. He is a featured speaker at Predictive Analytics World http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2011/speakers.php#katz)
Ajay- Describe your background working with analytics . How can we make analytics and science more attractive career options for young students
David- I had an interest in math from an early age, spurred by reading lots of science fiction with mathematicians and scientists in leading roles. I was fortunate to be at Harry and David (Fruit of the Month Club) when they were in the forefront of applying multivariate statistics to the challenge of targeting catalogs and other snail-mail offerings. Later I had the opportunity to expand these techniques to the retail sphere with Williams-Sonoma, who grew their retail business with the support of their catalog mailings. Since they had several catalog titles and product lines, cross-selling presented additional analytic challenges, and with the growth of the internet there was still another channel to consider, with its own dynamics.
After helping to found Abacus Direct Marketing, I became an independent consultant, which provided a lot of variety in applying statistics and data mining in a variety of settings from health care to telecom to credit marketing and education.
Students should be exposed to the many roles that analytics plays in modern life, and to the excitement of finding meaningful and useful patterns in the vast profusion of data that is now available.
Ajay- Describe your most challenging project in 3 decades of experience in this field.
David- Hard to choose just one, but the educational field has been particularly interesting. Partnering with Olympic Behavior Labs, we’ve developed systems to help identify students who are most at-risk for dropping out of school to help target interventions that could prevent dropout and promote success.
Ajay- What do you think are the top 5 trends in analytics for 2011.
David- Big Data, Privacy concerns, quick response to consumer needs, integration of testing and analysis into business processes, social networking data.
Ajay- Do you think techniques like RFM and LTV are adequately utilized by organization. How can they be propagated further.
David- Organizations vary amazingly in how sophisticated or unsophisticated the are in analytics. A key factor in success as a consultant is to understand where each client is on this continuum and how well that serves their needs.
Ajay- What are the various software you have worked for in this field- and name your favorite per category.
David- I started out using COBOL (that dates me!) then concentrated on SAS for many years. More recently R is my favorite because of its coverage, currency and programming model, and it’s debugging capabilities.
Ajay- Independent consulting can be a strenuous job. What do you do to unwind?
David- Cycling, yoga, meditation, hiking and guitar.
Biography-
He is the founder and President of David Katz Consulting, specializing in sophisticated statistical services for a variety of applications, with a special focus on the Direct Marketing Industry. David Katz has an extensive background that includes experience in all aspects of direct marketing from data mining, to strategy, to test design and implementation. In addition, he consults on a variety of data mining and statistical applications from public health to collections analysis. He has partnered with consulting firms such as Ernst and Young, Prediction Impact, and most recently on this project with Dataspora.
For more on David’s Session in Predictive Analytics World, San Fransisco on (http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2011/agenda.php#day2-16a)
Room: Salon 5 & 6
4:45pm – 5:05pm
Track 2: Social Data and Telecom 
Case Study: Major North American Telecom
Social Networking Data for Churn Analysis
A North American Telecom found that it had a window into social contacts – who has been calling whom on its network. This data proved to be predictive of churn. Using SQL, and GAM in R, we explored how to use this data to improve the identification of likely churners. We will present many dimensions of the lessons learned on this engagement.
Speaker: David Katz, Senior Analyst, Dataspora, and President, David Katz Consulting
Exhibit Hours
Monday, March 14th:10:00am to 7:30pm
Tuesday, March 15th:9:45am to 4:30pm
Lyx releases new version- now if only there was a SIMPLE way to put R code in a Lyx existing text class (having tried Sweave and sweaved myself into knots ! 😦
and I hope Ubuntu Linux 10.10 netbook fixes the curious case of disappearing menu bar in Lyx
see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-appmenu/+bug/619811
(Hint start Lyx using from the terminal:
QT_X11_NO_NATIVE_MENUBAR=1 lyx)
Latest News from the
We are pleased to announce the release of LyX 1.6.9
We are pleased to announce the fourth public pre-release of LyX 2.0.0.
Except usual bugfixing we fixed random crashes connected with the new background export and compilation feature.
As far as new features is considered it is now possible
Since this is most probably the last beta release we also added convertor for old (1.6) preference files which are automatically checked on the startup now.
Revo R gets more and more yum yum-
he following new features:
Revolution R Enterprise 4.2 is available immediately for 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems and both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows systems. Pricing starts at $1,000 per single-user workstation
And its free for academic licenses- so come on guys it is worth atleast one download, and test.
http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/downloads/free-academic.php
DECISION STATS 