Tag: post

stackoverflow.com/tags/r/info

How can you announce this on SO?

Oh…

Sure…go for it.

I’ll downvote it.

🙂

We should also add it into the [r] wiki.

I added it to the wiki.

We should probably try to clean that up a little; some of the other tags have put a lot of effort into it. (e.g. stackoverflow.com/tags/java/info)

Whoa! I didn’t downvote your post.

I was wondering…
Feel free to upvote it to set it back to even.

3:18 PM

I did.

Someone voted to close too.

Some people take themselves way too seriously…

Yup. And not unlike the people constantly call for community-wiki.

BTW I didn’t see the button for CW anymore once it was posted. What am I missing?

I think that I may have seen something about a bug related to that…

Four close votes, and -2 score. Whoa Nelly.

Ha! I’m not overly surprised. Meant to suggest that you use CW…

Ironically, you’re still ahead in the rep. on this question, right? Although I think that it might get downvoted into oblivion before we’re done…

Joshua Ulrich

I up-voted. Dirk, I’ve got your back. 😉

Begin……

3 hours later…

8:09 PM

@DirkEddelbuettel you catch Ajay’s latest? ow.ly/3a8gK

Jeebus

I had actually unsub’ed from his feed. Now I know why. How you’re doing with the Yahoo Pipes app?

Methinks he has some sort of clinical compulsive condition given how every single post has to include a reference that his facvourite software company from NC, and/or members of their management team.

@DirkEddelbuettel I stumbled on that one in Twitter. pipes project has been tabled while I fight some other battles.

I think he’s fishing for SEO sugar with his posts. His use of words seems contrived to include key words over and over

Twitter is so useless, between him and Ed Borasky’s (znmeb) spambots nothing else of value appers.

I guess like so many streams it requires filtering. The basic twitter blocking takes them out prett

y quickly

So blocking is common? They ought to show that: “subscribed to N, listened to by M and showing good taste by blocking O asshats”

8:19 PM

ha! yeah that would be good signaling. Not sure how common it is, but I use it mostly for spam bots. I actually have only blocked 2 warm blooded humans (counting Ajay’s multiple accts as one person)

Oh boy 🙂 Romain has fired a salvo on r-devel: “Depends on what your goal is: getting the job done, or learning about the R/C API”. Hehe.

@JDLong Tell who: One is Shane’s mother, and the other is … ?

http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/london/2010/agenda.php#day1-7

speaking of shane’s mom, he and Josh deciding to be productive members of real society today?

Dirk Eddelbuettel: inline 0.3.7 (dirk.eddelbuettel.com)
The New Orleans Hornets’ Jason Smith: Is He The Next Dirk Nowitski? (bleacherreport.com)

PAWCON -This week in London

Watch out for the twitter hash news on PAWCON and the exciting agenda lined up. If your in the City- you may want to just drop in

Disclaimer- PAWCON has been a blog partner with Decisionstats (since the first PAWCON ). It is vendor neutral and features open source as well proprietary software, as well case studies from academia and Industry for a balanced view.

Little birdie told me some exciting product enhancements may be in the works including a not yet announced R plugin 😉 and the latest SAS product using embedded analytics and Dr Elder’s full day data mining workshop.

Citation-

http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/london/2010/agenda.php#day1-7

Monday November 15, 2010
All conference sessions take place in Edward 5-7

8:00am-9:00am

Registration, Coffee and Danish
Room: Albert Suites

9:00am-9:50am

Keynote
Five Ways Predictive Analytics Cuts Enterprise Risk

All business is an exercise in risk management. All organizations would benefit from measuring, tracking and computing risk as a core process, much like insurance companies do.

Predictive analytics does the trick, one customer at a time. This technology is a data-driven means to compute the risk each customer will defect, not respond to an expensive mailer, consume a retention discount even if she were not going to leave in the first place, not be targeted for a telephone solicitation that would have landed a sale, commit fraud, or become a “loss customer” such as a bad debtor or an insurance policy-holder with high claims.

In this keynote session, Dr. Eric Siegel will reveal:

Five ways predictive analytics evolves your enterprise to reduce risk
Hidden sources of risk across operational functions
What every business should learn from insurance companies
How advancements have reversed the very meaning of fraud
Why “man + machine” teams are greater than the sum of their parts for

enterprise decision support

Speaker: Eric Siegel, Ph.D., Program Chair, Predictive Analytics World

9:50am-10:10am

Platinum Sponsor Presentation
The Analytical Revolution

The algorithms at the heart of predictive analytics have been around for years – in some cases for decades. But now, as we see predictive analytics move to the mainstream and become a competitive necessity for organisations in all industries, the most crucial challenges are to ensure that results can be delivered to where they can make a direct impact on outcomes and business performance, and that the application of analytics can be scaled to the most demanding enterprise requirements.

This session will look at the obstacles to successfully applying analysis at the enterprise level, and how today’s approaches and technologies can enable the true “industrialisation” of predictive analytics.

Speaker: Colin Shearer, WW Industry Solutions Leader, IBM UK Ltd

10:10am-10:20am

Gold Sponsor Presentation
How Predictive Analytics is Driving Business Value

Organisations are increasingly relying on analytics to make key business decisions. Today, technology advances and the increasing need to realise competitive advantage in the market place are driving predictive analytics from the domain of marketers and tactical one-off exercises to the point where analytics are being embedded within core business processes.

During this session, Richard will share some of the focus areas where Deloitte is driving business transformation through predictive analytics, including Workforce, Brand Equity and Reputational Risk, Customer Insight and Network Analytics.

Speaker: Richard Fayers, Senior Manager, Deloitte Analytical Insight

10:20am-10:45am

Break / Exhibits
Room: Albert Suites

10:45am-11:35am
Healthcare
Case Study: Life Line Screening
Taking CRM Global Through Predictive Analytics

While Life Line is successfully executing a US CRM roadmap, they are also beginning this same evolution abroad. They are beginning in the UK where Merkle procured data and built a response model that is pulling responses over 30% higher than competitors. This presentation will give an overview of the US CRM roadmap, and then focus on the beginning of their strategy abroad, focusing on the data procurement they could not get anywhere else but through Merkle and the successful modeling and analytics for the UK.

Speaker: Ozgur Dogan, VP, Quantitative Solutions Group, Merkle Inc.

Speaker: Trish Mathe, Life Line Screening

11:35am-12:25pm
Open Source Analytics; Healthcare
Case Study: A large health care organization
The Rise of Open Source Analytics: Lowering Costs While Improving Patient Care

Rapidminer and R were the number 1 and 2 in this years annual KDNuggets data mining tool usage poll, followed by Knime on place 4 and Weka on place 6. So what’s going on here? Are these open source tools really that good or is their popularity strongly correlated with lower acquisition costs alone? This session answers these questions based on a real world case for a large health care organization and explains the risks & benefits of using open source technology. The final part of the session explains how these tools stack up against their traditional, proprietary counterparts.

Speaker: Jos van Dongen, Associate & Principal, DeltIQ Group

12:25pm-1:25pm

Lunch / Exhibits
Room: Albert Suites

1:25pm-2:15pm
Keynote
Thought Leader:
Case Study: Yahoo! and other large on-line e-businesses
Search Marketing and Predictive Analytics: SEM, SEO and On-line Marketing Case Studies

Search Engine Marketing is a $15B industry in the U.S. growing to double that number over the next 3 years. Worldwide the SEM market was over $50B in 2010. Not only is this a fast growing area of marketing, but it is one that has significant implications for brand and direct marketing and is undergoing rapid change with emerging channels such as mobile and social. What is unique about this area of marketing is a singularly heavy dependence on analytics:

Large numbers of variables and options
Real-time auctions/bids and a need to adjust strategies in real-time
Difficult optimization problems on allocating spend across a huge number of keywords
Fast-changing competitive terrain and heavy competition on the obvious channels
Complicated interactions between various channels and a large choice of search keyword expansion possibilities
Profitability and ROI analysis that are complex and often challenging

The size of the industry, its growing importance in marketing, its upcoming role in Mobile Advertising, and its uniquely heavy reliance on analytics makes it particularly interesting as an area for predictive analytics applications. In this session, not only will hear about some of the latest strategies and techniques to optimize search, you will hear case studies that illustrate the important role of analytics from industry practitioners.

Speaker: Usama Fayyad, , Ph.D., CEO, Open Insights

2:15pm-2:35pm

Platinum Sponsor Presentation
Creating a Model Factory Using in-Database Analytics

With the ever-increasing number of analytical models required to make fact-based decisions, as well as increasing audit compliance regulations, it is more important than ever that these models can be created, monitored, retuned and deployed as quickly and automatically as possible. This paper, using a case study from a major financial organisation, will show how organisations can build a model factory efficiently using the latest SAS technology that utilizes the power of in-database processing.

Speaker: John Spooner, Analytics Specialist, SAS (UK)

2:35pm-2:45pm

Session Break
Room: Albert Suites

2:45pm-3:35pm

Retail
Case Study: SABMiller
Predictive Analytics & Global Marketing Strategy

Over the last few years SABMiller plc, the second largest brewing company in the world operating in 70 countries, has been systematically segmenting its markets in different countries globally in order optimize their portfolio strategy & align it to their long term country specific growth strategy. This presentation talks about the overall methodology followed and the challenges that had to be overcome both from a technical as well as from a change management stand point in order to successfully implement a standard analytics approach to diverse markets and diverse business positions in a highly global setting.

The session explains how country specific growth strategies were converted to objective variables and consumption occasion segments were created that differentiated the market effectively by their growth potential. In addition to this the presentation will also provide a discussion on issues like:

The dilemmas of static vs. dynamic solutions and standardization vs. adaptable solutions
Challenges in acceptability, local capability development, overcoming implementation inertia, cost effectiveness, etc
The role that business partners at SAB and analytics service partners at AbsolutData together play in providing impactful and actionable solutions

Speaker: Anne Stephens, SABMiller plc

Speaker: Titir Pal, AbsolutData

3:35pm-4:25pm

Retail
Case Study: Overtoom Belgium
Increasing Marketing Relevance Through Personalized Targeting

Since many years, Overtoom Belgium – a leading B2B retailer and division of the French Manutan group – focuses on an extensive use of CRM. In this presentation, we demonstrate how Overtoom has integrated Predictive Analytics to optimize customer relationships. In this process, they employ analytics to develop answers to the key question: “which product should we offer to which customer via which channel”. We show how Overtoom gained a 10% revenue increase by replacing the existing segmentation scheme with accurate predictive response models. Additionally, we illustrate how Overtoom succeeds to deliver more relevant communications by offering personalized promotional content to every single customer, and how these personalized offers positively impact Overtoom’s conversion rates.

Speaker: Dr. Geert Verstraeten, Python Predictions

4:25pm-4:50pm

Break / Exhibits
Room: Albert Suites

4:50pm-5:40pm
Uplift Modelling:
Case Study: Lloyds TSB General Insurance & US Bank
Uplift Modelling: You Should Not Only Measure But Model Incremental Response

Most marketing analysts understand that measuring the impact of a marketing campaign requires a valid control group so that uplift (incremental response) can be reported. However, it is much less widely understood that the targeting models used almost everywhere do not attempt to optimize that incremental measure. That requires an uplift model.

This session will explain why a switch to uplift modelling is needed, illustrate what can and does go wrong when they are not used and the hugely positive impact they can have when used effectively. It will also discuss a range of approaches to building and assessing uplift models, from simple basic adjustments to existing modelling processes through to full-blown uplift modelling.

The talk will use Lloyds TSB General Insurance & US Bank as a case study and also illustrate real-world results from other companies and sectors.

Speaker: Nicholas Radcliffe, Founder and Director, Stochastic Solutions

5:40pm-6:30pm

Consumer services
Case Study: Canadian Automobile Association and other B2C examples
The Diminishing Marginal Returns of Variable Creation in Predictive Analytics Solutions

Variable Creation is the key to success in any predictive analytics exercise. Many different approaches are adopted during this process, yet there are diminishing marginal returns as the number of variables increase. Our organization conducted a case study on four existing clients to explore this so-called diminishing impact of variable creation on predictive analytics solutions. Existing predictive analytics solutions were built using our traditional variable creation process. Yet, presuming that we could exponentially increase the number of variables, we wanted to determine if this added significant benefit to the existing solution.

Speaker: Richard Boire, BoireFillerGroup

6:30pm-7:30pm

Reception / Exhibits
Room: Albert Suites

Tuesday November 16, 2010
All conference sessions take place in Edward 5-7

8:00am-9:00am

Registration, Coffee and Danish
Room: Albert Suites

9:00am-9:55am
Keynote
Multiple Case Studies: Anheuser-Busch, Disney, HP, HSBC, Pfizer, and others
The High ROI of Data Mining for Innovative Organizations

Data mining and advanced analytics can enhance your bottom line in three basic ways, by 1) streamlining a process, 2) eliminating the bad, or 3) highlighting the good. In rare situations, a fourth way – creating something new – is possible. But modern organizations are so effective at their core tasks that data mining usually results in an iterative, rather than transformative, improvement. Still, the impact can be dramatic.

Dr. Elder will share the story (problem, solution, and effect) of nine projects conducted over the last decade for some of America’s most innovative agencies and corporations:

Streamline:

Cross-selling for HSBC
Image recognition for Anheuser-Busch
Biometric identification for Lumidigm (for Disney)
Optimal decisioning for Peregrine Systems (now part of Hewlett-Packard)
Quick decisions for the Social Security Administration

Eliminate Bad:

Tax fraud detection for the IRS
Warranty Fraud detection for Hewlett-Packard

Highlight Good:

Sector trading for WestWind Foundation
Drug efficacy discovery for Pharmacia & UpJohn (now Pfizer)

Moderator: Eric Siegel, Program Chair, Predictive Analytics World

Speaker: John Elder, Ph.D., Elder Research, Inc.

Also see Dr. Elder’s full-day workshop

9:55am-10:30am

Break / Exhibits
Room: Albert Suites

10:30am-11:20am
Telecommunications
Case Study: Leading Telecommunications Operator
Predictive Analytics and Efficient Fact-based Marketing

The presentation describes what are the major topics and issues when you introduce predictive analytics and how to build a Fact-Based marketing environment. The introduced tools and methodologies proved to be highly efficient in terms of improving the overall direct marketing activity and customer contact operations for the involved companies. Generally, the introduced approaches have great potential for organizations with large customer bases like Mobile Operators, Internet Giants, Media Companies, or Retail Chains.

Main Introduced Solutions:-Automated Serial Production of Predictive Models for Campaign Targeting-Automated Campaign Measurements and Tracking Solutions-Precise Product Added Value Evaluation.

Speaker: Tamer Keshi, Ph.D., Long-term contractor, T-Mobile

Speaker: Beata Kovacs, International Head of CRM Solutions, Deutsche Telekom

11:20am-11:25am

Session Changeover

11:25am-12:15pm
Thought Leader
Nine Laws of Data Mining

Data mining is the predictive core of predictive analytics, a business process that finds useful patterns in data through the use of business knowledge. The industry standard CRISP-DM methodology describes the process, but does not explain why the process takes the form that it does. I present nine “laws of data mining”, useful maxims for data miners, with explanations that reveal the reasons behind the surface properties of the data mining process. The nine laws have implications for predictive analytics applications: how and why it works so well, which ambitions could succeed, and which must fail.

Speaker: Tom Khabaza, khabaza.com

12:15pm-1:30pm

Lunch / Exhibits
Room: Albert Suites

1:30pm-2:25pm
Expert Panel: Kaboom! Predictive Analytics Hits the Mainstream

Predictive analytics has taken off, across industry sectors and across applications in marketing, fraud detection, credit scoring and beyond. Where exactly are we in the process of crossing the chasm toward pervasive deployment, and how can we ensure progress keeps up the pace and stays on target?

This expert panel will address:

How much of predictive analytics’ potential has been fully realized?
Where are the outstanding opportunities with greatest potential?
What are the greatest challenges faced by the industry in achieving wide scale adoption?
How are these challenges best overcome?

Panelist: John Elder, Ph.D., Elder Research, Inc.

Panelist: Colin Shearer, WW Industry Solutions Leader, IBM UK Ltd

Panelist: Udo Sglavo, Global Analytic Solutions Manager, SAS

Panel moderator: Eric Siegel, Ph.D., Program Chair, Predictive Analytics World

2:25pm-2:30pm

Session Changeover

2:30pm-3:20pm
Crowdsourcing Data Mining
Case Study: University of Melbourne, Chessmetrics
Prediction Competitions: Far More Than Just a Bit of Fun

Data modelling competitions allow companies and researchers to post a problem and have it scrutinised by the world’s best data scientists. There are an infinite number of techniques that can be applied to any modelling task but it is impossible to know at the outset which will be most effective. By exposing the problem to a wide audience, competitions are a cost effective way to reach the frontier of what is possible from a given dataset. The power of competitions is neatly illustrated by the results of a recent bioinformatics competition hosted by Kaggle. It required participants to pick markers in HIV’s genetic sequence that coincide with changes in the severity of infection. Within a week and a half, the best entry had already outdone the best methods in the scientific literature. This presentation will cover how competitions typically work, some case studies and the types of business modelling challenges that the Kaggle platform can address.

Speaker: Anthony Goldbloom, Kaggle Pty Ltd

3:20pm-3:50pm

Breaks /Exhibits
Room: Albert Suites

3:50pm-4:40pm
Human Resources; e-Commerce
Case Study: Naukri.com, Jeevansathi.com
Increasing Marketing ROI and Efficiency of Candidate-Search with Predictive Analytics
InfoEdge, India’s largest and most profitable online firm with a bouquet of internet properties has been Google’s biggest customer in India. Our team used predictive modeling to double our profits across multiple fronts. For Naukri.com, India’s number 1 job portal, predictive models target jobseekers most relevant to the recruiter. Analytical insights provided a deeper understanding of recruiter behaviour and informed a redesign of this product’s recruiter search functionality. This session will describe how we did it, and also reveal how Jeevansathi.com, India’s 2nd-largest matrimony portal, targets the acquisition of consumers in the market for marriage.

Speaker: Suvomoy Sarkar, Chief Analytics Officer, HT Media & Info Edge India (parent company of the two companies above)

4:40pm-5:00pm
Closing Remarks

Speaker: Eric Siegel, Ph.D., Program Chair, Predictive Analytics World