Data Science Weekly - Issue 12
Issue #12 February 13 2014
Editor Picks
DataKind: Data Science for the Common Good Featured in the interview video below, Jake Porway is a machine learning and technology enthusiast who loves nothing more than seeing good values in data. He founded DataKind in the hopes of creating a world in which every social organization has access to data capacity to better serve humanity...
Machine Learning & Energy Efficiency: Optimum Energy/Data Guild Interview We recently caught up with Kari Hensien - Sr Director Product Development at Optimum Energy and Cameron Turner - Data Scientist at The Data Guild. We were keen to learn more about their recent collaborations, bringing data science and machine learning to the world of energy efficiency...
Distributed Neural Networks with GPUs in the AWS Cloud At Netflix we are constantly innovating by looking for better ways to find the best movies and TV shows for our members. When a new algorithmic technique such as Deep Learning shows promising results in other domains (e.g. Image Recognition, Neuro-imaging, Language Models, and Speech Recognition), it should not come as a surprise that we would try to figure out how to apply such techniques to improve our product. In this post, we will focus on what we have learned while building infrastructure for experimenting with these approaches at Netflix...
Data Science Articles & Videos
Why New York Times hired a Biology Researcher as its Chief Data Scientist
To help make sense of the massive troves of data produced by people clicking around its website, the Times made a (very) non-traditional hire – Chris Wiggins, a Biology researcher with a PhD in Theoretical Physics. If you can map the human genome, maybe you can even fix journalism...
Off The Charts: An Interview with John Foreman (MailChimp)
Interview with Mailchimp's Chief Data Scientist on his background, work at Mailchimp and the inspiration behind his new book "Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight"...
Why Deep Learning Will Go the Way of Symbolic AI
Deep learning is a machine learning and pattern representation and recognition technique based on multi-layered, statistical neural networks...Big corporations like Google, Facebook and others are spending billions to set up labs and acquire experts and companies with experience in the technology. In this article, I argue that the current approach to deep learning will not lead to human-like intelligence because this is not the way the brain does it...
Artificial Intelligence: Examining the interface between Brain and Machine
Artificial intelligence may seem the preserve of science fiction books and films, but how close are we to genuine artificial intelligence, and will it look as we expect it to? From mind uploading to self-replicating machines, Dr Anders Sandberg explores what artificial intelligence will mean for humanity, and how we can navigate the inevitable risks it will bring...
DataBall
With an ocean of new statistical information available, the NBA could be on the verge of understanding the value of every single movement on the court. Welcome to the era of EPV...
Why Human-Computer Teams Hold the Most Promise for the Future
Computer systems that run programs capable of learning (either from their own mistakes or from relationships established by analyzing vast amounts of data) are part of the growing field called cognitive computing. Although some people are worried that intelligent computers will develop into autonomous networks, like the infamous Skynet in the “Terminator” movies, and take over the world, Anup Varier believes that future belongs to teams of humans and computers working together...
Live and Learn: How Big Data and Machine Learning Power the Internet
Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google and former Head of NASA Ames's Computational Sciences Division, provides a qualitative overview of the different ways in which data enables machine algorithms to classify, learn, and discover information, allowing advances in fields such as Natural Language Understanding, machine translation, computer vision, etc...
Deep Learning in Python with Pylearn2 and Amazon EC2
In working on a Kaggle competition, I wanted to start working with neural networks. There are a few libraries to do this, but I decided to use Pylearn2...
Jobs
Sr. Analyst, Data Scientist, Comcast, Philadelphia PA Do you have a passion for solving complex business challenges leveraging your quantitative background? Comcast has several opportunities for Statisticians, Data Scientists, and Quants to join the rapidly growing Advanced Analytics organization within the Business Intelligence Group. Recognizing the power of technology, data, and computational science to transform the business, Comcast has formed the BI group and Advanced Analytics team consisting of world class business minds and scientists to drive transformational change through evidence-based decision making at the company...
Training & Resources
Stanford Scientists put Free Text Analysis Tool on the Web Ever wondered whether a certain TV show had a slant in favor of a political candidate? Stanford computer scientists have created a website that gives anyone who can cut and paste the ability to answer such questions, systematically and for free. The website is known as etcML, short for Easy Text Classification with Machine Learning...
DeepDive - Analyze Data in Depth with Trained Machine Learning Systems DeepDive is a new type of system that enables developers to analyze data on a deeper level than ever before. DeepDive is a trained system, which means that it uses machine learning techniques to incorporate domain-specific knowledge and user feedback to improve the quality of its analysis. DeepDive is different from traditional systems in several ways:...
Introducing Text Analysis API
The Text API consists of eight distinct Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, and Machine Learning APIs which, when combined, allow developers to extract meaning and insight from any document with ease. Here’s how we do it...
An Introduction to Data Mining
An introduction and classification of all things Data Mining...
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