Tag: web

Interview- Top Data Mining Blogger on Earth , Sandro Saitta

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If you do a Google search for Data Mining Blog- for the past several years one Blog will come on top. data mining blog – Google Search http://bit.ly/kEdPlE

To honor 5 years of Sandro Saitta’s blog (yes thats 5 years!) , we cover an exclusive interview with him where he reveals his unique sauce for cool techie blogging.

Ajay- Describe your journey as a scientist and data miner, from early experiences, to schooling to your work/research/blogging.

Sandro- My first experience with data mining was my master project. I used decision tree to predict pollen concentration for the following week using input data such as wind, temperature and rain. The fact that an algorithm can make a computer learn from experience was really amazing to me. I found it so interesting that I started a PhD in data mining. This time, the field of application was civil engineering. Civil engineers put a lot of sensors on their structure in order to understand how they behave. With all these sensors they generate a lot of data. To interpret these data, I used data mining techniques such as feature selection and clustering. I started my blog, Data Mining Research, during my PhD, to share with other researchers.

I then started applying data mining in the stock market as my first job in industry. I realized the difference between image recognition, where 99% correct classification rate is state of the art, and stock market, where you’re happy with 55%. However, the company ambiance was not as good as I thought, so I moved to consulting. There, I applied data mining in behavioral targeting to increase click-through rates. When you compare the number of customers who click with the ones who don’t, then you really understand what class imbalance mean. A few months ago, I accepted a very good opportunity at SICPA. I’m looking forward to resolving new challenges there.

Ajay- Your blog is the top ranked blog for “data mining blog”. Could you share some tips on better blogging for analytics and technical people

Sandro- It’s always difficult to start a blog, since at the beginning you have no reader. Writing for nobody may seem stupid, but it is not. By writing my first posts during my PhD I was reorganizing my ideas. I was expressing concepts which were not always clear to me. I thus learned a lot and also improved my English level. Of course, it’s still not perfect, but I hope most people can understand me.

Next come the readers. A few dozen each week first. To increase this number, I then started to learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by reading books and blogs. I tested many techniques that increased Data Mining Research visibility in the blogosphere. I think SEO is interesting when you already have some content published (which means not at the very beginning of your blog). After a while, once your blog is nicely ranked, the main task is to work on the content of the blog. To be of interest, your content must be particular: original, informative or provocative for example. I also had the chance to have a good visibility thanks to well-known people in the field like Kevin Hillstrom, Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro, Will Dwinnell / Dean Abbott, Vincent Granville, Matthew Hurst and many others.

Ajay- Whats your favorite statistical software and what are the various softwares that you have worked with.
Could you compare and contrast these software as well.

Sandro- My favorite software at this point is SAS. I worked with it for two years. Once you know the language, you can perform ETL and data mining so easily. It’s also very fast compared to others. There are a lot of tools for data mining, but I cannot think of a tool that is as powerful as SAS and, in the same time, has a high-level programming language behind it.

I also worked with R and Matlab. R is very nice since you have all the up-to-date data mining algorithms implemented. However, working in the memory is not always a good choice, especially for ETL. Matlab is an excellent tool for prototyping. It’s not so fast and certainly not done for ETL, but the price is low regarding all the possibilities for data mining. According to me, SAS is the best choice for ETL and a good choice for data mining. Of course, there is the price.

Ajay- What are your favorite techniques and training resources for learning basics of data mining to say statisticians or business management graduates.

Sandro- I’m the kind of guy who likes to read books. I read data mining books one after the other. The fact that the same concepts are explained differently (and by different people) helps a lot in learning a topic like data mining. Of course, nothing replaces experience in the field. You can read hundreds of books, you will still not be a good practitioner until you really apply data mining in specific fields. My second choice after books is blogs. By reading data mining blogs, you will really see the issues and challenges in the field. It’s still not experience, but we are closer. Finally, web resources and networks such as KDnuggets of course, but also AnalyticBridge and LinkedIn.

Ajay- Describe your hobbies and how they help you ,if at all in your professional life.

Sandro- One of my hobbies is reading. I read a lot of books about data mining, SEO, Google as well as Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I’m a big fan of Asimov by the way. My other hobby is playing tennis. I think I simply use my hobbies as a way to find equilibrium in my life. I always try to find the best balance between work, family, friends and sport.

Ajay- What are your plans for your website for 2011-2012.

Sandro- I will continue to publish guest posts and interviews. I think it is important to let other people express themselves about data mining topics. I will not write about my current applications due to the policies of my current employer. But don’t worry, I still have a lot to write, whether it is technical or not. I will also emphasis more on my experience with data mining, advices for data miners, tips and tricks, and of course book reviews!

Standard Disclosure of Blogging- Sandro awarded me the Peoples Choice award for his blog for 2010 and carried out my interview. There is a lot of love between our respective wordpress blogs, but to reassure our puritan American readers- it is platonic and intellectual.

About Sandro S-



Sandro Saitta is a Data Mining Research Engineer at SICPA Security Solutions. He is also a blogger at Data Mining Research (www.dataminingblog.com). His interests include data mining, machine learning, search engine optimization and website marketing.

You can contact Mr Saitta at his Twitter address- 

https://twitter.com/#!/dataminingblog

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Google Storage for Developers goes into Enterprise Mode

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To help unify and uniform, collobrative work and data management and business models across the enterprise in secure SSL cloud environments- Google Storage has been rolling out some changes (read below)-this also gives you more options on the day Amazon goes ahem down (cough cough) because they didn’t think someone in their data environment could be sympathetic to free data.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

https://groups.google.com/group/gs-announce

And now to the actual update.

We’re making some changes to Google Storage for Developers to make team-based development easier. As part of this work, we are introducing the concept of a project. In preparation for this feature, we will be creating projects for every user and migrating their buckets to it.

What does this mean for you?

Everything will continue to work as it always has. However, you will notice that if you perform a get-acl operation on any of your buckets, you will see extra ACL entries. These entries correspond to project groups. Each group has only one member – the person who owned the buckets before the bucket migration;  no additional rights have been granted to any of your buckets or objects. You should preserve these new ACL grants if you modify bucket ACLs.

An example entry for a modified ACL would look like this:

We’ll be rolling out these changes over the next few days,

http://blog.cloudberrylab.com/2011/04/cloudberry-explorer-for-google-storage.html

Detailed Note on GS-

https://code.google.com/apis/storage/

Google Storage for Developers is a RESTful service for storing and accessing your data on Google’s infrastructure. The service combines the performance and scalability of Google’s cloud with advanced security and sharing capabilities. Highlights include:

Fast, scalable, highly available object store

  • All data replicated to multiple U.S. data centers
  • Read-your-writes data consistency
  • Objects of hundreds of gigabytes in size per request with range-get support
  • Domain-scoped bucket namespace

Easy, flexible authentication and sharing

  • Key-based authentication
  • Authenticated downloads from a web browser
  • Individual- and group-level access controls

In addition, Google Storage for Developers offers a web-based interface for managing your storage and GSUtil, an open source command line tool and library. The service is also compatible with many existing cloud storage tools and libraries. With pay-as-you-go pricing, it’s easy to get started and scale as your needs grow.

Google Storage for Developers is currently only available to a limited number of developers. Please sign up to join the waiting list.

Mash Hash Smash

Mash Hash Smash
To all the Larries of the world
the Joes, the Jims, the Steves
A shout out, much respect, you have unfurled.
datagandhi
Mash
First create a mash, an aggregated stash
Cross Domain platforms , the blurring of silo edges,
Intra department rivalries have no place in Klaatus world
Create a mash-up , shut up and draw
Do not swallow your own FUD in AAker’s brand indentity trap
Cognitive Bias leads to agency conflict
Ignore the little guys who bond in dorms at your peril,
Statistically the young still have more time than the boomers
to adapt , to change, to nurture the trees that stood for 300 million years

Hash
Congratulations, you got some money
Enjoy the lunch, the San  Fransisco strip pubs, attention
Working furiously as the launch date approaches
Dont leave your prototype when you schmooze
remember your hommies and bro
Nice people last nice products have faltered
Everyone hates pompous software marketing
Create a hash tag in your blog
make title tag both tweet optimized  and web search crawl able
If you are good to the search engine
It being fair will reward you well
On the internet phonies don’t last except in bubbles

Smash
When the economy is down is a good time to hire top talent at negotiable rates
When the economy is up is a good time to move from naive sales forecast models
The ego of the CEO is less valuable than the death of an elephant
Elephants dont dance but peacocks do
Use Fear Doubt Uncertainty selectively
Karma revolves FUD PIE on your face
be generous to schools you didnt study in
The poor have a right to college in India and China
Your medicine costs 1/10 th in Asia
Outsource but dont betray your nation
Outsource everything except your pride
Enjoy the show, welcome to the ride

How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing:Tableau

Tired of everyone calling everyone else a social media expert. What seperates the social media men from the fakes.

the grain from the chaff.

Data.

Heres a webcast you may want to think of social media tickles your curiosity on how  to leverage these strange new marketing tools.

https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/schedule/display.do?udc=xu40u1ex8tj8

Notice the form and fields below the screenshot-

is every field required – is each one required to measure

Have they optimized web registration forms yet.

Continue reading “How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing:Tableau”

Google releases V1.2 of Google Prediction API

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To join the preview group, go to the APIs Console and click the Prediction API slider to “ON,” and then sign up for a Google Storage account.

For the past several months, I have been member of a semi-public beta test/group/forum – that is headed by Travis Green of the Google Prediction API Team (not the hockey player). Basically in helping the Google guys more feedback on the feature list for model building via cloud computing. I couldn’t talk about it much , because it was all NDA hush hush.

Anyways- as of today the version 1.2 of Google Prediction API has been launched. What does this do to the ordinary Joe Modeler? Well it helps gives your models -thats right your plain vanilla logistic regression,arima, arimax, models an added ensemble option of using Google’s Machine Learning Continue reading “Google releases V1.2 of Google Prediction API”

Broad Guidelines for Graphs

Here are some broad guidelines for Graphs from EIA.gov , so you can say these are the official graphical guidelines of USA Gov

They can be really useful for sites planning to get into the Tableau Software/NYT /Guardian Infographic mode- or even for communities of blogs that have recurrent needs to display graphical plots- particularly since communication, statistical and design specialists are different areas/expertise/people.

Energy Information Administration Standard

Broad Guidelines for Graphs-I am reproducing an example from EIA ‘s guidelines for graphs-
http://www.eia.gov/about/eia_standards.cfm#Standard25

Energy Information Administration Standard 2009-25

Title: Statistical Graphs
Superseded Version: Standard 2002-25
Purpose: To ensure the utility (usefulness to intended users) and objectivity (accuracy, clarity, completeness, and lack of bias) of energy information presented in statistical graphs.
Applicability: All EIA information products.
Required Actions:

  1. Graphs should be used to show and compare changes, trends and/or relationships, and to assist users in visualizing the conclusions drawn from the data represented.
  2. A graph should contain sufficient Continue reading “Broad Guidelines for Graphs”