An article recently published in Nature reinforces the fact that the real challenge in data science is not mastery of the technical tools, but the ability to understand and define the problem. Researchers posed the question of whether the color of a soccer player's skin is a factor in how many red cards (serious reprimands) he receives. Seems like a pretty straightforward analysis. The authors … [Read more...]
Analyzing an Isle of Man TT legend
The BBC has an article on using a sensor array to determine what makes 23-time Isle of Man TT winner John McGuinness so quick. Motorcycle riders have been tackling the 38-mile street circuit for over a hundred years. As it's run on (closed) public roads, it's an incredibly dangerous race. Riders average 212kph (132mpg) round the course---often coming within inches of stone walls and … [Read more...]
F# for Scala Developers
Scala has gained prominence in the data science community due to the rapid growth of Spark. Functional languages are well-suited to data science work so, if you find Scala productive, you might be interested in looking at F#. There's a project devoted to promoting F# as an effective data science language---FsLab. Those with Scala experience who wish to dip a toe into the F# waters should have a … [Read more...]
Spark 1.5.0 released
Spark 1.5.0 has now been released---and it's a significant one for the data science community. Databricks, in their announcement blog post, state Another major theme of this release is data science: Spark 1.5 ships several new machine learning algorithms and utilities, and extends Spark's new R API. Improvements of note include better coverage for the pipeline API and an MLlib API for … [Read more...]
Apple steps up recruitment of machine learning experts
Apple is looking to recruit another 86 artificial intelligence experts, according to an article on VentureBeat. The recruitment drive is due to concerns that they are falling behind Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft in the area of machine learning. Competitors seem to be stealing a march on Apple by developing services that can anticipate users' requirements---services that rely on … [Read more...]