Issue 46
— In the News —
Hadley Wickham, the Man Who Revolutionized R
Hadley Wickham is well-known for his prolific development of R packages. What motivates him? "Fundamentally learning about the world through data is really, really cool." This is an inspiring profile of someone who's had a huge impact on the world of data analysis and visualization. Highly recommended.
Using Algorithms to Determine Character
A new generation of companies is applying mathematical models to determine if you will pay back a loan or stay in a job. Do they judge you more fairly than people do?
Deep Neural Nets Can Now Recognize Your Face in Thermal Images
Matching an infrared image of a face to its visible light counterpart is a hard, unsolved problem. Infrared emissions vary according to the temperature of the air and the temperature of the skin, which in turn depends on the person’s activity levels, whether the person has a fever, and so on. Here's a good overview of the problems and how a group of researchers in Germany is finding success.
— Tools and Techniques —
How Google Translate Squeezes Deep Learning onto a Phone
Google's free translation app translates printed text via your phone's camera. Until recently, this trick required a connection to the Internet and translations occurred in Google data centers. With the latest release, however, translations occur directly on the device using a deep neural net within the app. It's amazing engineering and this post on the Google Research Blog offers a great overview of the challenges and how they made it work.
A Visual Introduction to Machine Learning
Awesome interactive visualization that demonstrates the basics of machine learning. This is a MUST PLAY-WITH article!
Learning Seattle's Work Habits from Bicycle Counts
Nice tutorial by Jake Vanderplas that shows how to explore a dataset using unsupervised machine learning with Python. This is very well done and is easy to follow.
Dat Goes Beta
Dat is a data collaboration tool that simplifies the process of downloading datasets and enables users to fork, collaborate on, and publish new datasets. The goal is specifically to help users work with open government data and through collaboration, datasets will become cleaner, better annotated, and better understood along the way. This is an interesting project that's worth paying attention to.
— Sponsored Link —
Free Workbook: How to Create The App Analytics Reports You Need
If you either have or are thinking about an app of your own, definitely check out this interactive workbook by Localytics. It's free and will help you identify, track, and optimize your app success metrics.
— Resources —
Data Science University Programs Around the the World
This is more than just a list of data science programs. The interactive map offers a variety of filters and the sortable table view makes it easy to zero in on programs that match specific interests. There are over 100 programs here and many offer online options.
— Data Viz —
Awesome Data Viz
Curated collection of data visualizations frameworks, libraries and software. It's new this week and is growing fast.
15 Questions All R Users Have About Plots
This R plotting FAQ by DataCamp includes detailed explanations, code snippets, and screenshots.
— Upcoming Conferences —
PAPIs '15 - The 2nd International Conference for Predictive APIs and Apps
The 2nd International Conference for Predictive APIs and Apps is coming up on August 6 & 7 at the Menzies Hotel in Sydney, Australia! Click the link above for information and definitely check out the video. It looks like a great conference!
— About —
Data Elixir is curated and maintained by @lonriesberg. If you find this newsletter worthwhile, please help spread the word! Forward to your colleagues or use the links below to share to your favorite network: Thanks!
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