Do What Matters

This is my pet project. Looking for 3 highly motivated MS grad students to work on this project:

MS Project Ideas for Fall 2013 1. Webapp to provide statistics on which US college(university) is attracting most foreign students and why? This project requires data collection, analysis and visualization. Room for statistical and predictive modelling using R as well. Discuss with me in detail if interested.  2. plotR - SaaS based data visualization using R This is a cloud based offering for analyzing and visualizing data using R model. A data scientists can plugin his R script and pick different plotting function to generate visualization. Multiple data files are supported including rdbms, nosql and csv files.  Requires: db, data mining and java script skills. 3. CollageTime - Preparing for college is a big planning and effort for both parents and students. It includes financial preparation, college selection, preparing students with entrance tests and volunteer work etc.. inspired by  http://www.closingti.me/ 4. WrapupTime - similar idea as above f...

Automotive Domain - Dataium Credit/Finacial - BigData Scoring   /   ZestFinance Food Industry - FoodGenius Marketing / Advertising  - BlueKai   /   Metamarkets Retail - RetailNext Healthcare - Apixio Machine Learning - SumoLogic Sales / Marketing - Lattice-Engines Real time Pricing - QuickLizard

1. Know - What is Data Science? The best definition I found for data science or data scientist is by Josh Wills, Director of Data Science at Cloudera: "Person who is better at statistics than any software engineer and better at software engineering than any statistician" You should view this presentation by Carlos Somohano founder of Data Science London  to understand the big picture: Big Data [sorry] & Data Science: What Does a Data Scientist Do? from Data Science London 2. Learn - R (basics and beyond) If you did not ignore step#1 and absorbed the slides and links above then you probably know what R can do for you . The easiest way to learn R is to start programming with R. I recommend installing R studio on your laptop. This IDE comes with R help, console, workspace and editor all in one. Before you install R studio, install R first from this link . If you are organized person, you start with official R tutorial. If you are impatient and want to b...

Here are some more project ideas for Students: Small business advertisement channel - What is the best and most profitable advertising medium for a mom and pop business like coffee & donuts shop, a neighborhood dry cleaner, or a sushi restaurant? small businesses have least amount of money for advertising so it has to be extremely effective. The app needs to figure out based on location, demography, business domain  and sales data, which is the most optimized channel for advertising? is it local news paper ad, google ads, facebook, penny saver or something else? This project requires building statistical model /or use R with social data analysis  2. An Android / iPhone app for matching household handyman jobs to contractors. - People need help post the job. contractors bid on them, customer chooses the right bidder (may not be lowest) you need to have a star rating system based on their past work and reviews (elance like system) Job seekers can s...

Its time again  for students to find innovative projects. I am bombarded with emails from my students on this subject so here I am posting some of my ideas again. Feel free to discuss any with me. I also posted few in my last Post on the subject . Some of them may have been chosen by my past students. Project#1 - Measure productivity of your employees It has been found that within few years: workers will collaborate 80% of their time work will flow seamlessly, fluidly, across fully connected and visible processes agility will become key performance metrics workers will evolve to be more client focused pro-active capabilities will be strengthend with predictive capabilities work will not be centered on an organization but on a community of people  batch processing will be forgotten, real time will be the norm Create a tool/portal for employers to use various mathematical models to prduce some of the metrics discussed aove, so that employer can maximize produc...

"BigData" buzz will reach its pinnacle in 2013. Predictive analytics will become part of all applications, small or big. Small biz customer centric app will embrace these technology for their competitive advantages in big way. For IT professionals like us acquiring statistical and predictive modelling skills will be the key. Low power computing will emerge winner. The unprecedented success of tiny Raspberry pi (close to 1 million units sold)   is teaching kids all over the world fundamentals of computer sciences. Everybody should take a bite. I took a bite too. This was my Christmas treat to myself. ARM based computing is already giving powerhouse Intel run for their money.  Free online professional classes (Udacity/Coursera etc..) will go Freemium model. They might start offering a group of related courses as part of certificate programs and might tie up with local community colleges for classroom engagement to make them more effective. In any case, this m...