Analytics Team » data mining

Data scientist

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:39:31 +0000

A question posed recently on Quora – How do I become a data scientist? has received tons of interesting and helpful feedback including some recommended steps. Also check out coverage on the topic over at O’Reilly Radar.

Facebook patents friend based search results

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:33:56 +0000

The search results we see most everywhere are based on the systematic estimation of the relevance of the page. What Facebook recent patent specs out is the ability to determine and display the search results based on what a person’s friends or friends of their friends found relevant. Very interesting. Check out the Inside Facebook article for more, including what the impacts to competitive offerings like Google Me could be.

SETI’s improved computing methods

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 03:03:37 +0000

SETI (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) is fairly well-known for their utilization of distributed computing. For decades, they have allowed the home computer user to donate time and computing resources to analyze radio signals hoping to identify signs of extra-terrestrials. This article from O’Reilly Radar details some of the changes SETI has made.

Twitter starts using algorithms for social graph

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 02:58:26 +0000

Amazon has been recommending products based on past purchase and browse data for some time. More recently, Facebook has been suggesting users who you may want to add as friends. Now twitter is adding a suggestions for you feature based on the people you follow. A few more details from Techcrunch.

Finding patterns in social data

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 05:06:58 +0000

Check out this GigaOm article talking about the challenges of finding patterns within the mass of social data being generated.

What is Palantir?

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 03:59:13 +0000

There are some analytics products that receive high degrees of notoriety. Palantir is not one of them. Primarily used by the government, their technology allows non-technical users to see relationships between disparate data. Until this Techcrunch article I hadn’t heard of them at all.

Data mining and the America’s Cup

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:51:08 +0000

Part of BMW Oracle’s upper hand in the most recent America’s Cup may have come from the use of data mining. The boat and all its sensors can generate 2,500 data points 10 times per second. Check out this article from the Oracle Data Mining and Analytics blog to read the rest.

Is the military mining data about our kids?

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:02:36 +0000

This Boing Boing article questions whether the US military may be gathering data from unsuspecting teens and using it for data mining exercises to improve recruiting.

Netflix announces a second contest

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 01:07:51 +0000

With the first Netflix Prize coming to a conclusion, Netflix has announced Netflix Prize 2. This one will be shorter than the first with prizes being awarded after 6 and 18 months. Here’s an article from O’Reilly with more info.

DM News data management survey

Sat, 09 May 2009 15:07:00 +0000

In the past, most executives have viewed data management as a necessary but boring cost they must tolerate. The newest DM News Data Management Survey indicates that this is starting to change.

Here’s the article. And here’s the full survey.