The weekly digest now has 6 sections: (1) Featured Articles and Case Studies, (2) Featured Resources and Technical Contributions, (3) From our Sponsors, (4) News, Events, Books, Training, Forum Questions, (5) Picture of the Week, and (6) Syndicated Content.

The full version is always published Monday. Starred articles are new additions or updated content, posted between Thursday and Sunday.…

Are you a data scientist or a decision scientist?  Interesting question recently raised by Deepinder Dhingra, head of products and strategy at Mu Sigma in his article ‘Data science’ misses half the equation: an argument for ‘decision…

The role of predictive analytics in business

Data is everywhere. We generate data when using an ATM, browsing the Internet, calling our friends, buying shoes in our favourite e-shop or posting on Facebook. Companies collect this data en masse in order to make more informed business decisions, such as:

• Which customers should participate in our promotional campaign…

The first one is about the difference between Data Science, Data Analysis, Big Data, Data Analytics, and Data Mining:

The source for this one is, according to a tweet, onthe.io. I could not find the article in question, though this website is very interesting, but anyway, I love the above picture, please…

Are you trying to overcome the challenges of taking your big data projects from pilot to production? Do you want to harness big data to increase customer loyalty, reduce fraud, and improve operational efficiency? Or are you using big data to solve some of the biggest challenges in your industry, whether that’s healthcare, financial services, insurance, retail, manufacturing, media and entertainment, or government services? Then Informatica can help. We are already working with customers…

I became a Data Science practitioner in probably the most peculiar, counter-intuitive way of becoming one. Before being confronted by the embroidered Python or R dilemma, before being exposed to Data Analytics Platforms, Math and Statistical theory; I concerned myself primarily with what I can best…

In todays data driven world people are figuring out how to use data for far more than just profit. Data can be used to help bring about change and encourage social good in our world. With so many new digital tools accessible for the blind and deaf we have mountains and mountains of new and important data on how this part of the population interacts with the digital world. In an ethical and safe way we can look at this information to help improve the lives of those facing such…

“Dad, can you help get more candy this Halloween?” Abdul Rehman, my 12 year old asked me a night before the last Halloween. His simple question got me thinking of how I, as a data scientist, could optimize his path for collecting candy.

I had to…

Of course each data scientist is different, so please take this criticism with a grain of salt. By a long stretch, they don't apply to all data scientists.

Reasons:

1. Data scientists are creative and bring disruptive IP (intellectual property), and this can cause havoc for their company. 
2. They can steal and…

Big Data jobs are definitely sexy – just as Google’s chief economist Hal Varian predicted they would be, back in 2009. In the increasing number of organizations where data science is valued, data scientists know they are working on the cutting edge solving problems in ways no one has thought of before. They generally command very decent salaries, too.…

Hadoop – the software framework which provides the necessary tools to carry out Big Data analysis – is widely used in industry and commerce for many Big Data related tasks.

It is open source, essentially meaning that it is free for anyone to use for any purpose, and can be modified for any use. While designed to be user-friendly, in its “raw” state it still needs considerable specialist knowledge to set up and run.

Because of this a large number of commercial versions have come…

As with any business initiative, a Big Data project involves an element of risk. Any project can fail for any number of reasons - bad management, under-budgeting or a lack of relevant skills. However Big Data projects, due to their nature, bring their own specific risks.

Due to the advanced technology often needed, and the relative newness of the skillsets required to truly “think Big” (or as I prefer to say, “…

Guest blog from David Lefkowich at FreeSight

Today’s world is split-second. Whether you’re pitching an idea, selling a product, or presenting last quarter’s results, if you don’t grab your audience’s attention in the first moment, you are beat.

The problem is that our focus on speed and split-second sound bites doesn’t allow us time to validate the…

There has been enough buzz about Big Data over the past year or two to create a very big data file.  It seems that if you do not have a strategy around big data, mining ecommerce and social media sites for new insights into your customers, using new data management software tools like Hadoop, you are at a serious disadvantage to your competitors who are all jumping on the big data bandwagon.

And - there is merit to this line of thought for some companies.  The increase in the…

Summary:  NIST weighs in on the Internet of Things to create a common vocabulary and development roadmap.

In July we wrote about the 7 volume Big Data Technology Roadmap being developed by the National Institute of…

There are a number of movies that I consider much more suitable for television than theatre: Alien Versus Predator; Doom; Snakes on a Plane; The Cave; The Colony. The stories of these movies play out in environmentally-limited sometimes enclosed settings. In the theatre, I considered Alien Versus Predator the worst movie I ever had to sit through in my entire life, second perhaps only to the original Tron. But at home on a 36-inch display, it has become one of my all-time favourites. On the…

I have written about R in the past, and it is one of the hottest tools for data analysis today. To further demonstrate the power of R, I found click-through rate data…

Search engines are now an integral part of people’s everyday lives. We are used to having access to information at the click of a button. However we rarely think how much work goes into this ability to search for information. Search engine software has become extremely advanced in recent years, now using complex algorithms to provide the most relevant information with predictive search and search suggestion capabilities. Many engines can do this in real-time, processing millions of…

Cloud computing vulnerabilities

Hello and Welcome back!

This series is my attempt to start cataloging all the interesting articles, industry reports, whitepapers, and news that I read every month, related to technology and data science. We are at Month 3 already.

1. Robots taking over?

Check out this article in the Financial Times written by the co-founder of Swiftkey. He says

“…