NYU Data Science newsletter – July 6, 2015

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… Until now, wrangling was a job for experts; in the Big Data world, usually those with training in programming languages like Java or Python. And because the work is complex, time consuming, and often carried out by a person other than the one who ultimately wants to work with the data; the process can be slow, and require multiple iterations, before the ultimate user of the data actually gets to the point of being able to be productive with the data, and work to uncover those valuable insights.

Trifacta’s technology changes all that. It automates the often tedious, technical morass of data wrangling, using the latest advancements in human computer interaction, machine learning and data visualization, to present the data to users in an intuitive, visually engaging manner, allowing the user to find the not-so-obvious patterns and insights in a messy expanse of raw data.

Machine learning startup Startup.ML today unveiled a new website called Deep Learning News. It’s a place to go to find information online about deep learning, which is an increasingly trendy type of artificial intelligence.

The new site is in the style of Hacker News, a popular online water cooler for programmers from prominent Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator. It’s also similar to DataTau, a sort of Hacker News for data science that was formed in 2013.

Data Incubator, an East Coast fellowship program, is expanding to the West Coast with a new office in San Francisco. Its goal is to prepare highly qualified scientists and engineers for work as quants or data scientists.

The Bay Area campus has already accepted 10 fellows for its inaugural class.

… music doesn’t seem absolutely necessary to everyday survival – yet our musical self was forged deep in human history, in the crucible of evolution by the adaptive pressure of the natural world. That’s an insight that has inspired Chris Chafe, Director of Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (or CCRMA, stylishly pronounced karma).

In his intensive, data-driven endeavour, Chafe takes the unnoticed rhythms of the natural world and ‘sonifies’ them, turning them into music – all the better to see how nature resonates with the music inside us. By pulling music out of the strangest places – from tomato plants, economic stats, even dirty air – he enables listeners to perceive phenomena viscerally, adding a new dimension of understanding to otherwise barely noticeable aspects of the world.

After a career spanning 53 years and championing a mission deemed impossible for decades, William Borucki, the principal investigator of NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler mission, will retire from the agency on July 3.

Borucki’s civil service at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, culminated with the development and launch of NASA’s first mission to detect Earth-size planets around other stars in the habitable zone — the range of distances from the host star where liquid water might exist on the surface of an orbiting planet. Since its launch in March 2009, Kepler has made scientists and enthusiasts alike reimagine the possibilities for life in the galaxy.

Some years ago, Google’s chief economist Hal Varian blogged about the “democratization of data,” which he believed would make “information that once was available to only a select few…available to everyone.” This trend is one that “finally puts crucial business information in the hands of those who need it,” as Salesforce’s Robert Duffner put it recently.

But this particular democracy offers no guarantee that you’ll get to participate — suffrage is far from universal.

More than half of the world’s population currently lives in or around a city. By the year 2050, the United Nations projects another 2.5 billion people could be moving to metropolises. As urban populations increase, the number of data-generating sensors and Internet-connected devices will grow even faster. Experts say cities that capitalize on all the new urban data could become more efficient and more enjoyable places to live. The big question now is how to make that happen.

Until recently, this seemed to be as simple as choosing the right out-of-the-box smart city solution from a big multinational corporation. “The overhyped promises from the big technology companies have kind of blown away,” says Anthony Townsend, Senior Research Scientist at New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management. “Now you have city governments regrouping and developing comprehensive long-range visions of the role information technology will play in making their city better.”

The just-completed international Celtic Plus CoMoSeF project involved the development of data exchange between vehicles and infrastructure. The resulting communication system provides drivers with real time information on road weather, road conditions and incidents.

We discuss the critical success factor for open source projects, entrepreneurial lessons, advice, desired qualities in data scientists and more.