R Project in Google Summer of Code 2010

R Project, the open source statistical and mathematical computing environment, is going to be a part of the Google Summer of Code 2010. There is a an R Wiki page devoted to topics and projects within the R Project for the Google Summer of Code. The assortment of projects range from mathematical and statistical research oriented to computer API and interface.

The Google Summer of Code is a student internship program that provides stipends to develop free and open source software around the globe. The GSOC has been in existence since 2005 and has allowed thousands of students to work on hundreds of computing projects of interest. For a complete list of the GSOC open source organizations can be found on their project site.

10 Linux Productivity Tools

For anyone who reads this blog it is no mystery that I am an Open Source and Free Software advocate. I have my reasons, which are many, I have previously posted on the IEOR Tools blog. That being said I like to find software for my favorite free operating system Linux. I know, Linux by itself is not an operating system but the kernel. I'm just referring to the "flavor" of the operating system which uses Linux.

There are some great productivity tools for Linux that can help any Analyst or Engineer. Linux.com does a great job of reviewing some of the best available productivity tools for Linux. I am a big fan of Kontact, Ocular, and Kivio. I've mentioned before that Kivio is a great free software diagramming tool.

These applications can help improve productivity in the Linux environment. Often times folks feel the Windows corners the market on these types of applications but that is not often the case.

Predictive Modeling/Recommendation Challenges

The absence of the Netflix Prize may leave a gaping hole in some of our leisure activities. Well maybe not that big of a hole but at least some of our thought provoking lapses of time. If you are an avid modeler and really want to stretch your data mining and predictive modeling skills to the limit than there are other ways to get that accomplished.

Here are some other notable predictive modeling contests available compliments of KDnuggets.

http://www.kdnuggets.com/datasets/competitions.html

A notable competition is the Analytics X Prize which aims at solving social problems within our world. The current prize is predicting homicide rates in Philadelphia. A bit morbid but may prove useful to municipalities across the world.

Also Yahoo has a collaborative learning or recommendation prize of their own. Yahoo Learning to Rank Challenge allows modelers to benchmark their ranking algorithms against the world. Must act quick because the challenge ends in June 2010.

Netflix scraps Netflix Prize II in lieu of lawsuit

Unfortunately for the prediction and mathematical modeling community Netflix has decided to scrap the sequel to the Netflix Prize. The matter came to a conclusion after a lawsuit was filed against Netflix about the public access to its member's ratings data. For the original Netflix prize the member ratings data was made anonymous. Yet the lawsuit is claiming that the ratings are so good that (from the article)

improvements made to the recommendation engine made it easier to identify people through supposedly anonymous information.

I guess the modeling community gets a +1 for great improvements.

I was a big fan of the Netflix Prize even if it only brought marginal improvements to the actual recommendation system. The shared knowledge and collaborative spirit was impressive. It doesn't sound like Netflix is going to go out on a limb and suggest a new contest. So it looks like this might be the end of the contest. This is very unfortunate because I was hoping this would spark a lot of companies trying these types of contests.

This also brings up a good point about making data anonymous. There are lots of ways to get this done. Please share ways that you're modeling for business, academic, or clientele that required making data anonymous.

Free e-books on Mathematics

Thanks to Jeromy Anglim on his blog he found a great link for free e-books on mathematics from e-bookdirectory.com. There are quite a few e-books in this link which can be a great resource for rehashing and learning some new methods.

Some noted e-books in mathematics that I found to be interesting

Algorithms by Ian Craw, John Pulham
An Introduction to R by W. N. Venables, D. M. Smith
Engineering Mathematics by Ian Craw, Stuart Dagger, John Pulham
Statistics for Business and Economics by Marcelo Fernandes


Jeromy Anglim's blog is a very interesting resource for statistics, data mining, and R. Be sure to read it for its wonderful insights.

Gnumeric 1.10 released

OStatic.com has a review of the new Gnumeric 1.10 release. For those that don't know Gnumeric is an open source spreadsheet application built specifically for the GNOME desktop environment. Gnome can use a wide variety of spreadsheet formats including Microsoft Excel files, Lotus 1-2-3, Applix, Sylk, XBase, Open Office, Quattro Pro, Dif, Plan Perfect, and Oleo. Gnumeric's files is based on the Open Document Format.

The new 1.10 release removes the 65000 line restriction that was so common to many spreadsheet programs. From the Ostatic review...

The rest is all good news, though. Users will find plenty of improvements in Gnumeric 1.10, including better graphs with new plot types, about 40 new functions, and performance improvements for larger spreadsheets.

Gnumeric can be a great alternative to other spreadsheet programs.

R Project named in Intelligent Enterprise 2010 Editor's Choice Awards

News from Revolutions blog says that R Project was named to the Intelligent Enterprise 2010 Editor's Choice Awards. They also state that the R Project is also one of the twelve companies to watch in Business Intelligence. For those that use R it should come as no surprise the increased notoriety that R is receiving.

Other Open Source selections from the Intelligent Enterprise 2010 Editor's Choice Awards include Apache (open source web server), Jaspersoft (open source business intelligence), and Eclipse Foundation (open source software development).