Data Science newsletter – November 30, 2018

Newsletter features journalism, research papers, events, tools/software, and jobs for November 30, 2018

GROUP CURATION: N/A

 
 
Data Science News



How Understory builds better weather insights

Stacey Higginbotham, Stacey on IoT blog


from

Weather data and insights is a huge business. IBM paid an estimated $2 billion for The Weather Company in 2015. In 2013, in the agriculture world, Monsanto purchased Climate Corporation for $930 million to get better weather data for crop insurance. Meanwhile, there are dozens of startups trying to use connected sensors and advanced modeling to build better weather insights.

Understory, which just raised $7.5 million, is one of those startups. The Madison, Wisconsin-based startup was formed in 2012 and built its business around its own proprietary sensors.

The Understory sensors are built using a ball on the top that can sense raindrops, hail, and wind as they hit the sphere. The sensors can tell how much rain there is, the speed of the wind, and the force and size of the hail based on those hits. Alex Kubicek, CEO of Understory, says this mechanism works much better than traditional rain gauges or anemometers that measure wind. That’s because, over time, rain sensors can get clogged with debris, while anemometers can get broken easily, especially after ice storms or if they’re hit by chunks of hail.

Kubicek says Understory’s sensors are relatively cheap to build, are solar-powered, and come with their own cellular connection. In cities, Understory does deals with building owners to place the devices on roofs so it can establish networks in specific areas. For example, in Dallas-Fort Worth, Understory has a sensor placed every two miles so it can get granular data for insurance companies.


Open source AI voice assistant takes aim at Amazon and Google

Healthcare IT News, Diana Manos


from

Mycroft, the Kansas City-based voice platform company, announced an open source voice-activated private assistant, The Mark II, which the company claimed is an alternative to Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.


Dean at UC-Irvine Seeks to Solve Higher Ed’s Existential Crisis With Data — Lots of It

Chronicle of Higher Education, Steven Johnson


from

In 2011 the sociologist Richard Arum bemoaned the lack of rigor in American higher education.

In 2016 he critiqued the “inadequate and wrongheaded approaches,” especially those focusing on labor-market data, that drive most studies of student outcomes.

Now, as dean of the University of California at Irvine’s School of Education, he gets to design his own study, leading a new effort to track students’ academic, social, and personal behaviors to gauge their success.


UGA to offer undergraduate degree in data science for the first time

University of Georgia, The Red and Black student newspaper, Ashley Soriano


from

The University of Georgia saw a need for a new undergraduate degree, so it filled that void.

Approved at the September meeting of the Board of Regents, the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences is offering a new undergraduate degree in data science, making UGA the only campus in the University System of Georgia to offer such a degree.

In this program, students will learn about the interface of statistics and computer science “to meet the rapidly growing demand for data scientists,” according to a UGA press release.


Penn’s CIS Department faces ‘painfully high’ demand for courses, causing long waitlists | The Daily Pennsylvanian

The Daily Pennsylvanian, Ethan Randazzo


from

In the spring of 2018, there were 377 waitlist entries submitted for a Computer and Information Science elective course entitled, “Applied Machine Learning,” which caps enrollment at 150.

While machine learning is a popular subject now, high demand for CIS courses across the board has become problematic in recent years. CIS Undergraduate Curriculum Chair Andreas Haeberlen said he is “painfully aware of the high demand” for CIS classes this upcoming semester, adding that enrollment will only rise in many of these courses.

This high demand — which stems from CIS majors, CIS minors, and students taking CIS courses as electives — leaves some students struggling to satisfy major and minor requirements because they are stuck on waitlists for mandatory courses.


How Satellites and Big Data Are Predicting the Behavior of Hurricanes and Other Natural Disasters

Smithsonian.com, Nathan Hurst


from

On Friday afternoons, Caitlin Kontgis and some of the other scientists at Descartes Labs convene in their Santa Fe, New Mexico, office and get down to work on a grassroots project that’s not part of their jobs: watching hurricanes from above, and seeing if they can figure out what the storms will do.*

They acquire data from GOES, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite operated by NOAA and NASA, which records images of the Western Hemisphere every five minutes. That’s about how long it takes the team to process each image through a deep learning algorithm that detects the eye of a hurricane and centers the image processor over that. Then, they incorporate synthetic aperture data, which uses long-wave radar to see through clouds, and can discern water beneath based on reflectivity. That, in turn, can show almost real-time flooding, tracked over days, of cities in the path of hurricanes.

“The goal of these projects … is really to get data into the hands of first responders and people who are making decisions and can help,” says Kontgis, lead applied scientist at Descartes.


Researchers Successfully Train Computers to Identify Animals in Photos

University of Wyoming, News


from

A computer model developed at the University of Wyoming by UW researchers and others has demonstrated remarkable accuracy and efficiency in identifying images of wild animals from camera-trap photographs in North America.

The artificial-intelligence breakthrough, detailed in a paper published in the scientific journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, is described as a significant advancement in the study and conservation of wildlife. The computer model is now available in a software package for Program R, a widely used programming language and free software environment for statistical computing.

“The ability to rapidly identify millions of images from camera traps can fundamentally change the way ecologists design and implement wildlife studies,” says the paper, whose lead authors are recent UW Department of Zoology and Physiology Ph.D. graduate Michael Tabak and Ryan Miller, both of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Center for Epidemiology and Animal Health in Fort Collins, Colo.


Largest study of CRISPR-Cas9 mutations creates prediction tool for gene editing

Wellcome Sanger Institute


from

The largest study of CRISPR action to date has developed a method to predict the exact mutations CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing can introduce to a cell. Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute edited 40,000 different pieces of DNA and analysed a thousand million resulting DNA sequences to reveal the effects of the gene editing and develop a machine learning predictive tool of the outcomes. This will assist researchers who are using CRISPR-Cas9 to research disease mechanisms and drug targets.


YC alum Make School gains rare accreditation for 2-year applied CS bachelor’s degree

TechCrunch, Danny Crichton


from

That’s why the news today that Make School has received accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) is so interesting.

Make School is a project-based, product-focused program based in San Francisco founded by Ashu Desai and Jeremy Rossmann. The two founders centered the program’s curriculum around a bachelor’s in applied computer science, but rather than learning algorithms or data structures theoretically from a textbook, they reimagined the university from the bottom up by teaching skills through a progression of working software applications and products.

As I wrote in a profile of the company three years ago, “At the heart of the school’s approach is the belief that focusing on an actual project helps motivate students in ways that college never does.” Desai and Rossmann started by teaching game programming, but then saw that the enthusiasm of their students could be extended to other areas of software engineering and product design.


NASA’s InSight Mission Triumphantly Touches Down on Mars

Scientific American, Ian O'Neil


from

After enduring a high-tension descent from orbit, the spacecraft will now begin its quest to peel back the profound mysteries of the Red Planet’s interior


Open for who?

Medium, Memo (random), Jer Thorp


from

I bracketed September by attending two open data conferences: one for scientists working with satellites, and one for librarians and archivists. Sitting in the audience at both events, it occurred to me over and over again that we’re not all talking about the same thing when we say ‘open data’.

Indeed there seemed to be a kind of fractal misunderstanding about what the word ‘open’ means, or more specifically who the ‘open’ is for. Earth observers had a different idea than librarians: while scientists seemed to be focused on making their projects open to other scientists, the library people were mostly considering humanities researchers. But even within those groups there didn’t seem to be common ground; everyone who worked at the Library of Congress didn’t agree about who the audience for open was, nor did everyone in one department at the ESA. Honestly I’d be surprised if any two people at either of those events could agree on who they were being funded to be open their data to.


On Target: Rethinking the Retail Website

Harvard Business School, Working Knowledge, Dina Gerdeman


from

With more than 1,800 stores and a relatively new e-commerce site, Target was collecting reams of data about its online customers—products purchased, browsing habits, items abandoned in shopping carts—yet it wasn’t fully leveraging all that information. The company began to see this huge pile of e-commerce data as the needle-in-a-haystack key to driving higher sales, says Harvard Business School Professor Srikant M. Datar in a recent case study, Data Science at Target, co-written with research associate Caitlin N. Bowler.

“Target had to make this big shift from thinking only about retailing to also thinking about data. And to do that, data had to become the big asset they needed to develop to provide new opportunities,” Datar says. “Even today, not all retailers have embraced data fully to the point where they think of themselves as data companies, and it might be why many companies are suffering.”


Open Health launches PatientSphere feature for patients to monetize health data

MobiHealthNews, Laura Lovett


from

Users of the digital health platform Open Health Network are now getting a chance to cash in on their health data with the platform’s new feature, called PatientSphere.

The new feature employs blockchain technology to let patients monetize their health data. The idea is to connect companies or research institutions with folks who fit the criteria they need for different studies or analytics.

Users can upload medical data from their EHR, health apps, wearables and programs like Apple HealthKit and Google Fit. In addition to getting paid, the platform is also a way for patients to share their data with their own providers and health insurers.


University pilots new data science course

University of Illinois, The Daily Illini


from

The gap between data science and computer programming is becoming even smaller. At the University, a new introductory course is being developed to encourage beginners to take an interest in these fields.

The pilot launch for a new data science course, STAT 107: Data Science Discovery, is set to take place in the Spring 2019 semester. It will be co-taught by statistics instructor, Karle Flanagan, and computer science teaching assistant professor, Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider.


New methods help identify what drives sensitive or socially unacceptable behaviors

Colorado State University, Warner College of Natural Resources


from

Conservation scientists and statisticians at Colorado State University have teamed up to solve a key problem for the study of sensitive behaviors like poaching, harassment, bribery, and drug use.

Sensitive behaviors – defined as socially unacceptable or not compliant with rules and regulations – are notoriously hard to study, researchers say, because people often do not want to answer direct questions about them.

To overcome this challenge, scientists have developed indirect questioning approaches that protect responders’ identities. However, these methods also make it difficult to predict which sectors of a population are more likely to participate in sensitive behaviors, and which factors, such as knowledge of laws, education, or income, influence the probability that an individual will engage in a sensitive behavior.

 
Deadlines



ACM FAT* – DC Call for submissions

Atlanta, GA January 29-31, 2019, at Georgia Tech. “The second annual ACM FAT* Conference 2019 invites PhD students to apply for the first FAT* Doctoral Consortium.” Deadline for submissions is December 7.

OR What? INFORMS Student Video Competition

“The INFORMS Student Affairs Committee is excited to announce a new student video contest to promote ORMS and Analytics to undergraduate students.” Best video wins $1500. Deadline to enter is December 14.

ICML 2019: Some Changes and Call for Papers

“The ICML 2019 Conference will be held from June 10-15 in Long Beach, CA — about a month earlier than last year. To encourage reproducibility as well as high quality submissions, this year we have three major changes in place.”

“There is an abstract submission deadline on Jan 18, 2019. Only submissions with proper abstracts will be allowed to submit a full paper, and placeholder abstracts will be removed. The full paper submission deadline is Jan 23, 2019.”

 
Tools & Resources



RinteRface

RinteRface


from

“a collection of open-source HTML templates for #shiny and more”


WBO — Online collaborative whiteboard

Ophir LOJKINE


from

Online collaborative Whiteboard in node.js


Curiosity-Driven Data Science

Harvard Business Review, Eric Colson


from

Data scientists are a curious bunch, especially the good ones. They work towards clear goals, and they are focused on and accountable for achieving certain performance metrics. But they are also easily distracted, in a good way. In the course of doing their work they stumble on various patterns, phenomenon, and anomalies that are unearthed during their data sleuthing. This goads the data scientist’s curiosity: “Is there a better way that we can characterize a client’s style?” “If we modeled clothing fit as a distance measure could we improve client feedback?” “Can successful features from existing styles be re-combined to create better ones?” To answer these questions, the data scientist turns to the historical data and starts tinkering. They don’t ask permission. In some cases, explanations can be found quickly, in only a few hours or so. Other times, it takes longer because each answer evokes new questions and hypotheses, leading to more testing and learning.

Are they wasting their time? No.


A Cure for Platform Paralysis: Agile Data Science

insideBIGDATA, Isaias Sudit


from

In this special guest feature, Isaias Sudit, Founder at TROVE Predictive Data Science, proposes that an Agile Data Science platform is right for the enterprise. Agile Data Science is a collaborative process that helps clients identify the best use cases for predictive data science, i.e., those that will deliver the most value. Isaias has spent the last 20 years creating and building high growth companies.

 
Careers


Postdocs

Postdoctoral Research Position – Wearable Technology



University of Calgary, Running Injury Clinic; Calgary, AL, Canada

Research Fellows In Epilepsy And Brain Computer Interfaces (3)



Melbourne School of Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering; Melbourne, Australia
Tenured and tenure track faculty positions

UMD Sociotechnical Approaches to Cybersecurity Search



University of Maryland, College of Information Studies; College Park, MD
Full-time positions outside academia

Principal Data Scientist



iRobot; Bedford, MA

Data Scientist



iRobot; Bedford, MA

Software Engineer



US Soccer Federation; Chicago, IL

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.