Tag: workshop

Geeks for Privacy: Play Color Cipher and Visual Cryptography

Maybe the guys in Anonymous or Wikileaks can now use visual cryptography while using Snapchat to fool the NSA or CIA

Personally I think a browser with inbuilt backdoors to Tor Relays and data transfer by Bit Torrrents could be worthy a project too.

Quit the bullshit, Google- you are as evil as The Russian Communist Empire

I was just reading up on my weekly to-read list and came across this interesting method. It is called Play Color Cipher-

Each Character ( Capital, Small letters, Numbers (0-9), Symbols on the keyboard ) in the plain text is substituted with a color block from the available 18 Decillions of colors in the world [11][12][13] and at the receiving end the cipher text block (in color) is decrypted in to plain text block. It overcomes the problems like “Meet in the middle attack, Birthday attack and Brute force attacks [1]”.
It also reduces the size of the plain text when it is encrypted in to cipher text by 4 times, with out any loss of content. Cipher text occupies very less buffer space; hence transmitting through channel is very fast. With this the transportation cost through channel comes down.

ColorCipherBlocks

Reference-

http://www.ijcaonline.org/journal/number28/pxc387832.pdf

Visual Cryptography is indeed an interesting topic-

Visual cryptography, an emerging cryptography technology, uses the characteristics of human vision to decrypt encrypted
images. It needs neither cryptography knowledge nor complex computation. For security concerns, it also ensures that hackers
cannot perceive any clues about a secret image from individual cover images. Since Naor and Shamir proposed the basic
model of visual cryptography, researchers have published many related studies.

Visual_crypto_animation_demo

Visual cryptography (VC) schemes hide the secret image into two or more images which are called
shares. The secret image can be recovered simply by stacking the shares together without any complex
computation involved. The shares are very safe because separately they reveal nothing about the secret image.

Visual Cryptography provides one of the secure ways to transfer images on the Internet. The advantage
of visual cryptography is that it exploits human eyes to decrypt secret images .

ESPECIALLY SEE |THIS AND THIS

http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/~dstinson/VCS-flag.html

and

http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/~dstinson/VCS-pi.html

Even more fun—– visual cryptography using a series of bar codes – leaving the man in middle guessing how many sub images are there and which if at all is the real message

 

vispixel

References-

Color Visual Cryptography Scheme Using Meaningful Shares

http://csis.bits-pilani.ac.in/faculty/murali/netsec-10/seminar/refs/muralikrishna4.pdf

Visual cryptography for color images

http://csis.bits-pilani.ac.in/faculty/murali/netsec-10/seminar/refs/muralikrishna3.pdf

Other Resources

  1. http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/visualcrypto.htm
  2. Visual Crypto – One-time Image Create two secure images from one by Robert Hansen
  3. Visual Crypto Java Applet at the University of Regensburg
  4. Visual Cryptography Kit Software to create image layers
  5. On-line Visual Crypto Applet by Leemon Baird
  6. Extended Visual Cryptography (pdf) by Mizuho Nakajima and Yasushi Yamaguchi
  7. Visual Cryptography Paper by Moni Noar and Adi Shamir
  8. Visual Crypto Talk (pdf) by Frederik Vercauteren ESAT Leuven
  9. http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/~dstinson/visual.html
  10. t the University of Salerno web page on visual cryptogrpahy.
  11. Visual Crypto Page by Doug Stinson
  12. Simple implementation of the visual cryptography scheme based on Moni Naor and Adi Shamir, Visual Cryptography, EUROCRYPT 1994, pp1–12. This technique allows visual information like pictures to be encrypted so that decryption can be done visually.The code outputs two files. Try printing them on two separate transparencies and putting them one on top of the other to see the hidden message. http://algorito.com/algorithm/visual-cryptography

Visual Cryptography 

—

Ajay- I think a combination of sharing and color ciphers would prove more helpful to secure Internet Communication than existing algorithms. It also levels the playing field from computationally rich players to creative coders.

Analytics 2012 Conference

from http://www.sas.com/events/analytics/us/index.html

Analytics 2012 Conference

SAS and more than 1,000 analytics experts gather at

Caesars Palace
Caesars Palace

Analytics 2012 Conference Details

Pre-Conference Workshops – Oct 7
Conference – Oct 8-9
Post-Conference Training – Oct 10-12
Caesars Palace, Las Vegas

Keynote Speakers

The following are confirmed keynote speakers for Analytics 2012. Jim Goodnight Since he co-founded SAS in 1976, Jim Goodnight has served as the company’s Chief Executive Officer.

William Hakes Dr. William Hakes is the CEO and co-founder of Link Analytics, an analytical technology company focused on mobile, energy and government verticals.

Tim Rey Tim Rey  has written over 100 internal papers, published 21 external papers, and delivered numerous keynote presentations and technical talks at various quantitative methods forums. Recently he has co-chaired both forecasting and data mining conferences. He is currently in the process of co-writing a book, Applied Data Mining for Forecasting.

http://www.sas.com/events/analytics/us/train.html

Pre-Conference

Plan to come to Analytics 2012 a day early and participate in one of the pre-conference workshops or take a SAS Certification exam. Prices for all of the preconference workshops, except for SAS Sentiment Analysis Studio: Introduction to Building Models and the Business Analytics Consulting Workshops, are included in the conference package pricing. You will be prompted to select your pre-conference training options when you register.

Sunday Morning Workshop

SAS Sentiment Analysis Studio: Introduction to Building Models

This course provides an introduction to SAS Sentiment Analysis Studio. It is designed for system designers, developers, analytical consultants and managers who want to understand techniques and approaches for identifying sentiment in textual documents.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7, 8:30a.m.-12p.m. – $250

Sunday Afternoon Workshops

Business Analytics Consulting Workshops

This workshop is designed for the analyst, statistician, or executive who wants to discuss best-practice approaches to solving specific business problems, in the context of analytics. The two-hour workshop will be customized to discuss your specific analytical needs and will be designed as a one-on-one session for you, including up to five individuals within your company sharing your analytical goal. This workshop is specifically geared for an expert tasked with solving a critical business problem who needs consultation for developing the analytical approach required. The workshop can be customized to meet your needs, from a deep-dive into modeling methods to a strategic plan for analytic initiatives. In addition to the two hours at the conference location, this workshop includes some advanced consulting time over the phone, making it a valuable investment at a bargain price.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7; 1-3 p.m. or 3:30-5:30 p.m. – $200

Demand-Driven Forecasting: Sensing Demand Signals, Shaping and Predicting Demand

This half-day lecture teaches students how to integrate demand-driven forecasting into the consensus forecasting process and how to make the current demand forecasting process more demand-driven.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7; 1-5 p.m.

Forecast Value Added Analysis

Forecast Value Added (FVA) is the change in a forecasting performance metric (such as MAPE or bias) that can be attributed to a particular step or participant in the forecasting process. FVA analysis is used to identify those process activities that are failing to make the forecast any better (or might even be making it worse). This course provides step-by-step guidelines for conducting FVA analysis – to identify and eliminate the waste, inefficiency, and worst practices from your forecasting process. The result can be better forecasts, with fewer resources and less management time spent on forecasting.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7; 1-5 p.m.

SAS Enterprise Content Categorization: An Introduction

This course gives an introduction to methods of unstructured data analysis, document classification and document content identification. The course also uses examples as the basis for constructing parse expressions and resulting entities.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7; 1-5 p.m.

Introduction to Data Mining and SAS Enterprise Miner

This course serves as an introduction to data mining and SAS Enterprise Miner for Desktop software. It is designed for data analysts and qualitative experts as well as those with less of a technical background who want a general understanding of data mining.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7, 1-5 p.m.

Modeling Trend, Cycles, and Seasonality in Time Series Data Using PROC UCM

This half-day lecture teaches students how to model, interpret, and predict time series data using UCMs. The UCM procedure analyzes and forecasts equally spaced univariate time series data using the unobserved components models (UCM). This course is designed for business analysts who want to analyze time series data to uncover patterns such as trend, seasonal effects, and cycles using the latest techniques.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7, 1-5 p.m.

SAS Rapid Predictive Modeler

This seminar will provide a brief introduction to the use of SAS Enterprise Guide for graphical and data analysis. However, the focus will be on using SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Enterprise Miner along with the Rapid Predictive Modeling component to build predictive models. Predictive modeling will be introduced using the SEMMA process developed with the introduction of SAS Enterprise Miner. Several examples will be used to illustrate the use of the Rapid Predictive Modeling component, and interpretations of the model results will be provided.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7, 1-5 p.m

RCOMM 2012 goes live in August

An awesome conference by an awesome software Rapid Miner remains one of the leading enterprise grade open source software , that can help you do a lot of things including flow driven data modeling ,web mining ,web crawling etc which even other software cant.

Presentations include:

  • Mining Machine 2 Machine Data (Katharina Morik, TU Dortmund University)
  • Handling Big Data (Andras Benczur, MTA SZTAKI)
  • Introduction of RapidAnalytics at Telenor (Telenor and United Consult)
  • and more

Here is a list of complete program

 

Program

 

Time
Slot
Tuesday
Training / Workshop 1
Wednesday
Conference 1
Thursday
Conference 2
Friday
Training / Workshop 2
09:00 – 10:30
 Introductory Speech
Ingo Mierswa (Rapid-I)Resource-aware Data Mining or M2M Mining (Invited Talk)

Katharina Morik (TU Dortmund University)

More information

 

Data Analysis

 

NeurophRM: Integration of the Neuroph framework into RapidMiner
Miloš Jovanović, Jelena Stojanović, Milan Vukićević, Vera Stojanović, Boris Delibašić (University of Belgrade)

 To be announced (Invited Talk)
Andras Benczur 

Recommender Systems

 

Extending RapidMiner with Recommender Systems Algorithms
Matej Mihelčić, Nino Antulov-Fantulin, Matko Bošnjak, Tomislav Šmuc (Ruđer Bošković Institute)

Implementation of User Based Collaborative Filtering in RapidMiner
Sérgio Morais, Carlos Soares (Universidade do Porto)

 Parallel Training / Workshop Session

Advanced Data Mining and Data Transformations

or

Development Workshop Part 2
10:30 – 11:00
Coffee Break
Coffee Break
Coffee Break
11:00 – 12:30
 Data Analysis

Nearest-Neighbor and Clustering based Anomaly Detection Algorithms for RapidMiner
Mennatallah Amer, Markus Goldstein (DFKI)

Customers’ LifeStyle Targeting on Big Data using Rapid Miner
Maksim Drobyshev (LifeStyle Marketing Ltd)

Robust GPGPU Plugin Development for RapidMiner
Andor Kovács, Zoltán Prekopcsák (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

 Extensions

 

Optimization Plugin For RapidMiner
Venkatesh Umaashankar, Sangkyun Lee (TU Dortmund University; presented by Hendrik Blom)

 

Image Mining Extension – Year After
Radim Burget, Václav Uher, Jan Mašek (Brno University of Technology)

Incorporating R Plots into RapidMiner Reports
Peter Jeszenszky (University of Debrecen)
12:30 – 13:30
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
13:30 – 15:30
 Parallel Training / Workshop Session

Basic Data Mining and Data Transformations

or

Development Workshop Part 1

 Applications

 

Introduction of RapidAnalyticy Enterprise Edition at Telenor Hungary
t.b.a. (Telenor Hungary and United Consult)

 

Application of RapidMiner in Steel Industry Research and Development
Bengt-Henning Maas, Hakan Koc, Martin Bretschneider (Salzgitter Mannesmann Forschung)

A Comparison of Data-driven Models for Forecast River Flow
Milan Cisty, Juraj Bezak (Slovak University of Technology)

Portfolio Optimization Using Local Linear Regression Ensembles in Rapid Miner
Gábor Nagy, Tamás Henk, Gergő Barta (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

 Extensions

 

An Octave Extension for RapidMiner
Sylvain Marié (Schneider Electric)

 

Unstructured Data

 

Processing Data Streams with the RapidMiner Streams-Plugin
Christian Bockermann, Hendrik Blom (TU Dortmund)

Automated Creation of Corpuses for the Needs of Sentiment Analysis
Peter Koncz, Jan Paralic (Technical University of Kosice)

 

Demonstration: News from the Rapid-I Labs
Simon Fischer; Rapid-I

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
15:30 – 16:00
Coffee Break
Coffee Break
Coffee Break
16:00 – 18:00
 Book Presentation and Game Show

Data Mining for the Masses: A New Textbook on Data Mining for Everyone
Matthew North (Washington & Jefferson College)

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
Did you miss last years’ game show “Who wants to be a data miner?”? Use RapidMiner for problems it was never created for and beat the time and other contestants!

 User Support

Get some Coffee for free – Writing Operators with RapidMiner Beans
Christian Bockermann, Hendrik Blom (TU Dortmund)

Meta-Modeling Execution Times of RapidMiner operators
Matija Piškorec, Matko Bošnjak, Tomislav Šmuc (Ruđer Bošković Institute)

Conference day ends at ca. 17:00.
19:30
Social Event (Conference Dinner)
Social Event (Visit of Bar District)

 

and you should have a look at https://rapid-i.com/rcomm2012f/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65

Conference is in Budapest, Hungary,Europe.

( Disclaimer- Rapid Miner is an advertising sponsor of Decisionstats.com in case you didnot notice the two banner sized ads.)

 

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
Slot
Tuesday
Training / Workshop 1
Wednesday
Conference 1
Thursday
Conference 2
Friday
Training / Workshop 2
09:00 – 10:30
 Introductory Speech
Ingo Mierswa; Rapid-I 

Data Analysis

 

NeurophRM: Integration of the Neuroph framework into RapidMiner
Miloš Jovanović, Jelena Stojanović, Milan Vukićević, Vera Stojanović, Boris Delibašić (University of Belgrade)

 To be announced (Invited Talk)
To be announced

 

Recommender Systems

 

Extending RapidMiner with Recommender Systems Algorithms
Matej Mihelčić, Nino Antulov-Fantulin, Matko Bošnjak, Tomislav Šmuc (Ruđer Bošković Institute)

Implementation of User Based Collaborative Filtering in RapidMiner
Sérgio Morais, Carlos Soares (Universidade do Porto)

 Parallel Training / Workshop Session

Advanced Data Mining and Data Transformations

or

Development Workshop Part 2
10:30 – 12:30
 Data Analysis

Nearest-Neighbor and Clustering based Anomaly Detection Algorithms for RapidMiner
Mennatallah Amer, Markus Goldstein (DFKI)

Customers’ LifeStyle Targeting on Big Data using Rapid Miner
Maksim Drobyshev (LifeStyle Marketing Ltd)

Robust GPGPU Plugin Development for RapidMiner
Andor Kovács, Zoltán Prekopcsák (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

 Extensions

Image Mining Extension – Year After
Radim Burget, Václav Uher, Jan Mašek (Brno University of Technology)

Incorporating R Plots into RapidMiner Reports
Peter Jeszenszky (University of Debrecen)

An Octave Extension for RapidMiner
Sylvain Marié (Schneider Electric)
12:30 – 13:30
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
13:30 – 15:00
 Parallel Training / Workshop Session

Basic Data Mining and Data Transformations

or

Development Workshop Part 1

 Applications

Application of RapidMiner in Steel Industry Research and Development
Bengt-Henning Maas, Hakan Koc, Martin Bretschneider (Salzgitter Mannesmann Forschung)

A Comparison of Data-driven Models for Forecast River Flow
Milan Cisty, Juraj Bezak (Slovak University of Technology)

Portfolio Optimization Using Local Linear Regression Ensembles in Rapid Miner
Gábor Nagy, Tamás Henk, Gergő Barta (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

 Unstructured Data


Processing Data Streams with the RapidMiner Streams-Plugin
Christian Bockermann, Hendrik Blom (TU Dortmund)

Automated Creation of Corpuses for the Needs of Sentiment Analysis
Peter Koncz, Jan Paralic (Technical University of Kosice)

 

Demonstration

 

News from the Rapid-I Labs
Simon Fischer; Rapid-I

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 (Washington & Jefferson College)

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
Did you miss last years’ game show “Who wants to be a data miner?”? Use RapidMiner for problems it was never created for and beat the time and other contestants!

 User Support

Get some Coffee for free – Writing Operators with RapidMiner Beans
Christian Bockermann, Hendrik Blom (TU Dortmund)

Meta-Modeling Execution Times of RapidMiner operators
Matija Piškorec, Matko Bošnjak, Tomislav Šmuc (Ruđer Bošković Institute) 
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.

Analytics 2012 Conference

A nice conference from the grand old institution of Analytics,  SAS  Institute’s annual analytic pow-wow.

I especially like some of the trainings- and wonder if they could be stored as e-learning modules for students/academics to review

in SAS’s extensive and generous Online Education Program.

Sunday Morning Workshop

SAS Sentiment Analysis Studio: Introduction to Building Models

This course provides an introduction to SAS Sentiment Analysis Studio. It is designed for system designers, developers, analytical consultants and managers who want to understand techniques and approaches for identifying sentiment in textual documents.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7, 8:30a.m.-12p.m. – $250

Sunday Afternoon Workshops

Business Analytics Consulting Workshops

This workshop is designed for the analyst, statistician, or executive who wants to discuss best-practice approaches to solving specific business problems, in the context of analytics. The two-hour workshop will be customized to discuss your specific analytical needs and will be designed as a one-on-one session for you, including up to five individuals within your company sharing your analytical goal. This workshop is specifically geared for an expert tasked with solving a critical business problem who needs consultation for developing the analytical approach required. The workshop can be customized to meet your needs, from a deep-dive into modeling methods to a strategic plan for analytic initiatives. In addition to the two hours at the conference location, this workshop includes some advanced consulting time over the phone, making it a valuable investment at a bargain price.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7; 1-3 p.m. or 3:30-5:30 p.m. – $200

Demand-Driven Forecasting: Sensing Demand Signals, Shaping and Predicting Demand

This half-day lecture teaches students how to integrate demand-driven forecasting into the consensus forecasting process and how to make the current demand forecasting process more demand-driven.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7; 1-5 p.m.

Forecast Value Added Analysis

Forecast Value Added (FVA) is the change in a forecasting performance metric (such as MAPE or bias) that can be attributed to a particular step or participant in the forecasting process. FVA analysis is used to identify those process activities that are failing to make the forecast any better (or might even be making it worse). This course provides step-by-step guidelines for conducting FVA analysis – to identify and eliminate the waste, inefficiency, and worst practices from your forecasting process. The result can be better forecasts, with fewer resources and less management time spent on forecasting.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7; 1-5 p.m.

SAS Enterprise Content Categorization: An Introduction

This course gives an introduction to methods of unstructured data analysis, document classification and document content identification. The course also uses examples as the basis for constructing parse expressions and resulting entities.
View outline
Sunday, Oct. 7; 1-5 p.m.

 

 
You can see more on this yourself at –

http://www.sas.com/events/analytics/us/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

R for Predictive Modeling- PAW Toronto

A nice workshop on using R for Predictive Modeling by Max Kuhn Director, Nonclinical Statistics, Pfizer is on at PAW Toronto.

Workshop

Monday, April 23, 2012 in Toronto
Full-day: 9:00am – 4:30pm

R for Predictive Modeling:
A Hands-On Introduction

Intended Audience: Practitioners who wish to learn how to execute on predictive analytics by way of the R language; anyone who wants “to turn ideas into software, quickly and faithfully.”

Knowledge Level: Either hands-on experience with predictive modeling (without R) or hands-on familiarity with any programming language (other than R) is sufficient background and preparation to participate in this workshop.

What prior attendees have exclaimed

Workshop Description

This one-day session provides a hands-on introduction to R, the well-known open-source platform for data analysis. Real examples are employed in order to methodically expose attendees to best practices driving R and its rich set of predictive modeling packages, providing hands-on experience and know-how. R is compared to other data analysis platforms, and common pitfalls in using R are addressed.

The instructor, a leading R developer and the creator of CARET, a core R package that streamlines the process for creating predictive models, will guide attendees on hands-on execution with R, covering:

  • A working knowledge of the R system
  • The strengths and limitations of the R language
  • Preparing data with R, including splitting, resampling and variable creation
  • Developing predictive models with R, including decision trees, support vector machines and ensemble methods
  • Visualization: Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA), and tools that persuade
  • Evaluating predictive models, including viewing lift curves, variable importance and avoiding overfitting

Hardware: Bring Your Own Laptop
Each workshop participant is required to bring their own laptop running Windows or OS X. The software used during this training program, R, is free and readily available for download.

Attendees receive an electronic copy of the course materials and related R code at the conclusion of the workshop.

Schedule

  • Workshop starts at 9:00am
  • Morning Coffee Break at 10:30am – 11:00am
  • Lunch provided at 12:30 – 1:15pm
  • Afternoon Coffee Break at 2:30pm – 3:00pm
  • End of the Workshop: 4:30pm

Instructor

Max Kuhn, Director, Nonclinical Statistics, Pfizer

Max Kuhn is a Director of Nonclinical Statistics at Pfizer Global R&D in Connecticut. He has been applying models in the pharmaceutical industries for over 15 years.

He is a leading R developer and the author of several R packages including the CARET package that provides a simple and consistent interface to over 100 predictive models available in R.

Mr. Kuhn has taught courses on modeling within Pfizer and externally, including a class for the India Ministry of Information Technology.

Source-

http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/toronto/2012/r_for_predictive_modeling.php

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- Analytics is impacting sports organizations on both the sport and business side.
On the Sport side, teams are using analytics, including advanced data management, predictive anlaytics, and information systems to gain a competitive edge. The use of analytics results in more accurate player valuations and projections, as well as determining effective strategies against specific opponents.
On the business side, teams are using the tools of analytics to increase revenue in a variety of ways including dynamic ticket pricing and optimizing of the placement of concession stands.
Ajay-  What are the ways analytics is used in specific sports that you have been part of?

Benjamin- A very typical first step for a team is to utilize the tools of predictive analytics to help inform their draft decisions.

Ajay- What are some of the tools, techniques and software that analytics in sports uses?
Benjamin- The tools of sports analytics do not differ much from the tools of business analytics. Regression analysis is fairly common as are other forms of data mining. In terms of software, R is a popular tool as is Excel and many of the other standard analysis tools.
Ajay- Describe your career journey and how you became involved in sports management. What are some of the tips you want to tell young students who wish to enter this field?

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

Benjamin Alamar

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

All level tracks 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