NYU Data Science newsletter – December 16, 2015

GROUP CURATION: N/A

Visual Genome is a dataset, a knowledge base, an ongoing effort to connect structured image concepts to language.

One of the greatest minds in 20th Century statistics was not a scholar. He brewed beer.

Guinness brewer William S. Gosset’s work is responsible for inspiring the concept of statistical significance, industrial quality control, efficient design of experiments and, not least of all, consistently great tasting beer.

With the explosion of cloud computing, machine learning and other data-intensive projects throughout the tech field, companies are struggling to find enough data scientists to fill open jobs. A new master’s program from the University of Washington aims to fill that gap.

The new Master of Science in Data Science program was designed by faculty from six UW departments, but the university says it also took into account what companies are actually looking for in their next hire.

This Viewpoint discusses whether a broad genetic testing program for BRCA1/2 is realistic in terms of the relative value and costs of such a program.

Of the 233?000 breast cancers diagnosed annually in the United States, 5% to 10% are attributable to mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes.1 Breast cancers in BRCA mutation carriers are characterized by younger age at onset, bilateral occurrence, and more aggressive subtypes, such as “triple-negative.”1 Female mutation carriers face a 45% to 65% breast cancer risk by age 70 years, and an ovarian cancer risk ranging from 10% to 17% (BRCA2) to 39% (BRCA1). Women found to be BRCA mutation carriers—either through genetic screening or following a cancer diagnosis—may choose to undergo bilateral risk-reducing mastectomy (RRM) and/or salpingo-oophorectomy (RRSO) as an alternative to increased surveillance or chemoprevention. Knowledge of a genetic mutation may have a further impact on fertility decisions, including oocyte retrieval and genetic testing prior to cryopreservation or embryo implantation.

… Recently, researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) released a working paper — titled, “Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?” — that puts Planck’s principle to the test.

Sifting through citations in the PubMed database, they found evidence that when a prominent researcher suddenly dies in an academic subfield, a period of new ideas and innovation follow.

Attention-focusing brain networks interact more weakly than usual in kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, new Stanford research shows.

The research, published online today in Biological Psychiatry, is part of an ongoing effort to figure out how the brain differs from normal in people with ADHD.

It isn’t always good to know what other investors are thinking.

In recent years, a branch of scientists known as neuroeconomists have discovered a connection between a person’s ability to recognize what others are thinking and how well that same person’s investment portfolio will likely perform in the next market crash. And the connection is not a positive one.

The ability to make inferences about someone else’s mind is normally seen as a crucial mental talent. It facilitates social interactions and empathy. But in a 2013 paper published in the scientific journal Neuron by Benedetto De Martino and colleagues, then at the California Institute of Technology, the authors uncovered a surprising downside to this most human skill.

You may consider yourself a paid search marketer, but columnist Josh Dreller explains why “data scientist” may well be a fitting label.

Laurie Skelly, AM’09, PhD’12, had dreamed of a career in neuroscience since age 15. But when she reached the end of her graduate training in psychology at the University of Chicago, she faced what she calls “a crisis of motivation.”

Skelly knew it was time to look for a job outside the academy, even if she wasn’t quite sure how. “There’s a sea of people doing cool stuff, and I should go find a place in it,” she told herself.

After several months of networking events and what she jokingly describes as “basically stalking,” Skelly found a position as a data scientist with the consulting firm Datascope Analytics—a job she saw as a perfect fit.

“The crime that shames us all” is a 32 billion USD industry, benefitting from 21 million people. And 33 percent are children. As technology has progressed, it has come to play a pivotal role in the human trafficking industry.

Let’s do some basic math about Yahoo since Marissa Mayer took the helm over three years ago.

She paid about $3 billion for acquisitions of companies you’ve mostly never heard of, like Aviate, Polyvore and Distill (and one company you may have heard of, Tumblr). She spent $9.4 billion on stock buybacks; over the last two years, when the stock was trading higher, the buybacks have been a $2.5 billion money-losing trade. About $365 million of compensation went to Ms. Mayer herself, assuming she stays for an additional year and a half. And $109 million to an executive she hired to be her chief operating officer, who was then summarily fired 15 months later. An estimated $450 million on free food for the staff. And, depending on whom you believe, double-digit millions of dollars on parties and events, including a “Great Gatsby”-themed holiday party several weeks ago that was held with no apparent irony.

We invite contributions focused on all aspects of mathematical, algorithmic, and computational techniques in network science. The workshop will feature three formats for contributed presentations: 25-minute talks, 5-minute lightning talks in the “Ignite” format (5 minutes, 20 slides, 15-second auto-advance), and posters.

Submission Deadline: Thursday, February 25, 2016

Enter the Data Science Bowl, co-sponsored by Kaggle and Booz Allen in partnership with The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health. The challenge? Develop an algorithm to empower doctors to more easily diagnose dangerous heart conditions, and help advance the science of heart disease treatment. We’ll award $200,000 to those able to observe the right patterns, ask the right questions, and in turn, help people live longer and spend more time with those that they love.

Competition ends on Monday, March 14, 2016

Recently, Atefeh Riazi, the Chief Information Technology Officer for the U.N. issued a public appeal. “I invite the global community of data scientists to partner with the United Nations in our mandate to harness the power of data analytics and visualization to uncover new knowledge about U.N.-related topics such as human rights, environmental issues, and political affairs,” she wrote. To that end, the organization mounted a series of challenges, including one aimed at helping observers track the progress that countries have made in meeting Millennium Development Goals and another seeking ways in which to organize and highlight global humanitarian priorities.

Challenges were open to visualization experts from around the world and competition was exceptionally strong. It was thus particularly noteworthy that two of the winning entries came from a single institution—the NYU Tandon School of Engineering—and a single research group—headed by Assistant Professor Enrico Bertini.