Anyone interested in a good RUG?

R User Groups are popping up around the country. In Dallas there is a new R User Group as told by David at the REvolutions blog. If the Larry in the article sounds familiar than you are right! Here is where you can sign up for the RUG in Dallas.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Dallas_RUG/

Also in Chicago they are getting things going with their own R User Group. REvolutions blog chimes in as well in an announcement for the windy city R users.

For those that don't know, R Project is a statistical computing environment very similar to S+ and SAS. It is free and open source and contains hundreds of free libraries and packages for statistical, optimization, predictive analytics, and data mining computing.

If you would like to get more interested in R in your region take a look at the REvolutions blog. REvolutions lists R User Groups all around the world. And if one is not in your area go ahead and get one started. It is a great way to network with professionals in your discipline.

DataMiningTools.com devoted to sharing data mining resources

DataMiningTools.com is an up and coming website devoted to all things data mining. There is a lot of tutorials, videos, reviews, and recommendations for quality tools of the data mining trade. There is even a feature for Open Source tools which definitely gets my attention.

DataMiningTools.com seems to be to data mining what IEOR Tools is to Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. I really like the presentation of the content. The links are tagged really well and are easy to find relevant resources for data mining. In the future I hope to feature some of the tutorials from this website.

One area you may to look at is the R Project tutorials which has my interest as of late.

New IEOR Tools contributor - developer of OpenOpt

I would like to welcome Dmitrey, developer of the open source optimization software suite, OpenOpt and maintainer of OpenOpt.org. Dmitrey will contribute from time to time about OpenOpt and software releases.

When I started the IEOR Tools blog I wanted it to be a forum for discussion, evaluation, and peer review of the tools available to the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research community. I believe that the best opportunity for continued development and research of tools of the trade is in the Open Source community. I hope that this blog can be a conduit for continued development and opportunity.

I'm excited for the contributions that Dmitrey will provide with OpenOpt and other open source developments.

Timetric, startup grearing up for a new statistics presentation platform

Techcrunch is reporting that Timetric has closed seed funding for an innovative way to present statistics online. From the article, the money is going to be used to help get their statistical platform rolled out. Timetric's claim is that it will be able to present statistics in a more "useful" manner. Timetric already is working with online gurus such as Guardian and United Business Media.

It seems to me that this may be competing with the Wolphram Alphra platform. Another way to present public data on the internet. Yet this is also showing an increased trend in the importance of data visualization. I'm encouraged to see there is competitors in the data visualization market. It definitely shows that there is a need for that data management and presenting it in a meaningful way. Sounds a lot like Operations Research to me!

I really like the layout of the website. Any website that focuses on visualization should be sharp and refined. Curious to see how Timetric proves out in the future.

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.