This Month In Data Science

March 31, 2015 Paul M. Davis

This month in data science - March 2015March saw many examples of data science in action, with its impact demonstrated in a great number of fields, including human behavior, politics, healthcare, economics, corporate boardrooms, and more. Here’s our roundup of the top data science news of the month, both from Pivotal and beyond.

Just How Nepotistic Are We?

With the 2016 Presidential election impending, and with it likely candidates from the Bush and Clinton dynasties, researchers utilized data science techniques to measure the impact of nepotism within government and society. They found that having a successful parent in many fields paves the way for successful children in the same field, with this effect playing an outsized role within politics.

Be the Hemingway of Data Science Storytelling

Data science is more than developing models and performing analytics. In order to effectively convey the insights revealed, data scientists must also be effective storytellers. This post from Tech Republic offers a number of tips for data scientists to make their presentations far more compelling and effective.

How One Non-profit Is Using Data Science To Transform Lives And Communities

Forbes profiles the efforts of San Francisco-based nonprofit Bayes Impact, which has collaborated with government institutions and other nonprofits to offer a data science-led approach to understanding societal issues such as criminal justice, education, and health.

As Big Data and AI Take Hold, What Will It Take to Be an Effective Executive?

What will be the impact of our increasingly intelligent machines on senior management positions? “As artificial intelligence takes hold, what will it take to be an effective executive?” asks a recent McKinsey article, “Manager and Machine: The New Leadership Equation.” What would it take for algorithms to take over the C-suite? And what will be senior leaders’ most important contributions if they do?

Microeconomics Powered by Data is Shaping Tech Firms

Macroeconomists enjoy an outsized influence on the field of economics, but after a decade of notorious failures and incorrect predictions, economics is going micro. As a result, microeconomists hone in on particular areas of expertise. They also take a fundamentally different approach to macroeconomists, using algorithms to spot patterns rather than develop theoretical models which they expect the data to adhere to.

The Promise and Challenge of Health Analytics

Irving Wladawsky-Berger reports back from a February 24th MIT workshop on the Future of Health Analytics. The researchers and practitioners in attendance discussed not only how Big Data analytics will upend the status quo, but also their long term impact of health care. According to speaker Dr. Dennis Ausiello, health analytics play a role in three concurrent revolutions in health care, which include the digital revolution of health sensors, the genetic revolution characterized by documentation of ever-growing number of genetic variations, and the data revolution arising from the ability to store and analyze all this information.

This Month in Pivotal Data Science

New Federation Business Data Lake Should Be Your Silver Bullet for Big Data Success

EMC announced a major milestone for companies looking to transform how they approach big data, namely a massive cross-company solution that is in many ways a one-stop-shop, best-of-breed, silver bullet CIOs have been looking for to help them succeed. Called the Federation Business Data Lake, this solution combines the hardware, software and all the connected engineering to give companies the foundation to fulfill their data and development needs.

Using Data Science to Predict TV Viewer Behavior and Formulate a Hit TV Show

In this post, Pivotal data scientists outline how machine learning, topic modeling, elastic net regression, and other similar approaches can provide media executives with a greater understanding of viewer behavior. The project, performed by Pivotal Data Labs, spanned an 8-week period and delivered a text analytics framework, in-database machine learning models, and an application to explore what-if scenarios. The data, approach, platform, and results are all covered in more detail.

Pivotal Releases GemFire 8.1 With Updates and New Features

Following the release of Pivotal GemFire 8 in September 2014, the first major release of the in-memory distributed database since it joined Pivotal’s portfolio of products, we’re announcing the release of Pivotal GemFire 8.1. Part of the Pivotal Big Data Suite, Pivotal GemFire enables developers to deploy their big data NoSQL apps upon a massive scale. In addition to incremental product improvements, 8.1 enhances GemFire’s availability and resilience within a distributed system, and improves upon its management and monitoring features.

Pivotal People—Mariann Micsinai the Job and Background of a Data Scientist

In this post, we get to know more about one of our senior data scientists, Mariann Micsinai. She is a great example of the type of people Pivotal likes to have on the team and is a modern big data wrangler who works in the trenches with subject matter experts and business line leaders alike. With a focus in financial services, her expertise crosses a number of areas and her interests, passions, and education bring the best of academia and real-world problem solving.

Trends: The Internet of Humans (not Things)—Sensors, Health, Fitness, & Healthcare

The Internet of Humans (IoH) is an epicenter of innovation—this article captures top statistics, shares the growth in health-related sensors and mobile apps, and lists 20 of the most innovative companies in the space. Many of these statistics, trends, and example companies show how sensors, applications, big data, and data science are all creating never-before-seen capabilities in consumer health and fitness as well as healthcare and bioinformatics.

A Peek Under the Hood of The Connected Car: What It Does & How It Applies to IoT Systems

Connected things are growing 5x in the next 5 years, and the connected car provides a functional and architectural pattern for all Internet of Things systems. This week at Mobile World Congress, Pivotal will give an under-the-hood demonstration of the sensors, mobile apps, big data, and data science behind a connected car dashboard, and this article explains the entire platform, each component, and how it can be applied to other industries.

Upcoming Events

ApacheCon—North America

Apr 13 – 17, 2015

Austin Conference Center, Austin TX ApacheCon brings together the open source community to learn about and collaborate on the technologies and projects driving the future of open source, big data and cloud computing.

Pivotal Big Data Roadshow

Join data technology experts from Pivotal to get the latest perspective on how big data analytics and applications are transforming organizations across industries.

Apr 14, 2015 – Toronto
Apr 16, 2015 – New York City
Apr 21, 2015 – Washington DC
Apr 23, 2015 – Atlanta, GA
Apr 28, 2015 – Denver, CO
Apr 30, 2015 – Dallas/Fort Worth, TX

Hadoop Summit Brussels 2015

Apr 15 – 16, 2015

Brussels Conference Center This two-day event will feature many of the Apache Hadoop® thought leaders who will showcase successful Hadoop use cases, share development and administration tips and tricks, and educate organizations on the benefits of Hadoop.

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