“Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the Web like deer on a freeway.”
Geoffrey Moore, Author of Crossing the Chasm & Inside the Tornado.

This week has definitely seen a focus on the future of data science, and its impact on our lives. From how data could revolutionise education, to concerns around ethics and privacy, and the future of AI.

Here’s our pick of the rest of the key data science announcements you may have missed this week.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

Ethics, Privacy and Discrimination in the Age of Big Data

At Data Days 2014, one of the most compelling talks came from Lorena Jaume Palasi, a lecturer & PhD candidate at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her talk addressed intriguing questions about data ethics- do we need to create new ethical paradigms to deal with data? Where does the abstract right to privacy- and our fear of technological advancements which may impinge on this- stem from? Here is what she had to say.

The Data-Driven Future of Advertising

Gone are the days where advertising and sales were the sole remit of creative-thinking Mad Men types, who wildly conjectured who a product’s target audience might be, and constructed campaigns which may appeal to them. Today, advertising is a much more precise, data-driven field. Of course, creativity has a role to play, but so do audience targeting and automation. We sat down with Anna Cremers, Chief Data Scientist at nugg.ad, to discuss her work and the evolution of advertising.

Operational Intelligence: The Next-Generation of Business Intelligence

For years, companies have relied on business intelligence (BI) tools to drive strategy and identify opportunities based on historical data. However, in today’s fast-paced, data-driven economy, traditional BI often moves too slowly. Operational intelligence – the ability to analyze live, fast-changing data and provide immediate feedback – takes business intelligence to the next level and creates amazing new opportunities.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

Global BI Software Provider Deploys New Intuitive Embedded Dashboard – TIBCO Jaspersoft® 6                                                                                                

TIBCO, an infrastructure and business intelligence software innovator announced today the launch of TIBCO Jaspersoft® 6 which will arm developers to rapidly build and embed interactive dashboards for richer contextual analytics for users across their desktop and mobile devices.

Google Focusing R&D On “Artificial Intelligence for Data Science”

Google has been pouring its brain over an Artificial Intelligence project to automate the ‘making sense’ of data sets available across a spectrum of fields – to build an “artificial intelligence for data science”. The Automatic Statistician project has been brewing under Professor Zoubin Ghahramani and his team at the University of Cambridge who were awarded the Google Focused Research Award for support to their work, reports Kevin P. Murphy, Senior Research Scientist at Google through the Google Research Blog.

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon Read Harry Potter to Investigate Brain Activity Whilst Reading

At the Carnegie Mellon University’s Machine Learning Department, researchers have identified brain regions that encode words, grammar, character development by performing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans on subjects – while they read Harry Potter.

TOP UPCOMING EVENTS

10-11 December, 2014- Internet of Things Summit, San Francisco     

The Internet of Things Summit gathers together thought leaders working towards an interconnected world. Hear presentations on the most important topics influencing IoT development, including: Standardization & Partnerships, Business Models to Embrace IoT, Privacy & Security in the Consumer IoT, Interaction Between Devices, Diversity of Devices Available, Collecting & Analysing Data, Smart Homes, Smart Cities, Industrial Internet of Things

17 December 2014- Startupbootcamp’s Pitch 4 Coffee, Hamburg

Europe’s leading accelerator Startupbootcamp is coming to Hamburg for a Pitch day. We’re looking for startups with innovative ideas that improve cities & the way we live in them. Startupbootcamp has a brand new program for Smart City & Living startups. Make sure you don’t miss out on this opportunity to be amongst the first to make an impression on our hunting team!

TOP DATACONOMY JOBS

Pricing Manager / Analyst, Wayfair   

As an Analyst of Pricing you will be responsible for pricing every product that appears on the website. You will manage the daily operational pricing functions while continually seeking to optimize procedures and test strategies to increase gross profit. If you love diving into deep data sets to identify areas for improvement, and be even more enthusiastic about solving those problems then do not hesitate to apply!

Business Intelligence Analyst, CupoNation

We are currently looking for new talent to join our highly professional and dynamic Business Intelligence team. In your role you will be responsible to design end-to-end solutions that meet our company’s Business Intelligence requirements. This covers the definition and implementation of technical requirements for ETL jobs, creation of new data layers and the optimization and enhancement of the current data warehouse infrastructure.

This week has been a week of conferences in the realm of big data. Our news roster has been dominated this week by a whole host of announcements from the Strata + Hadoop world conference. Highlights include a raft of new integrations on Microsoft’s Azure platform, Waterline announcing the release of their Waterline Data Inventory, and GraphLab making their signature product available to the public.

Here in Europe, the team behind disease monitoring app Infected Flight scooped the Grand Hackathon Prize at TechCrunch Disrupt London. This week also saw the Gartner BI Conference get underway in Munich; our correspondent on the ground Furhaad Shah has been enthusiastically tweeting all of the major announcements over on our Twitter channel. We also hosted the second installment of Big Data, Berlin event series this week. For readers who couldn’t make it this week, we have further events coming up in Munich, London and will be announcing a raft of other locations early next year- stay tuned!

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

6 Stumbling Blocks for Marketing With Data

Touted as a silver marketing bullet, data and scientific thinking will guide creativity in an evolving social and mobile universe. This is the rationale underlying the launch of OgilvyAmp, essentially an aggregation and rebranding of the data wonk’s buried among Ogilvy’s global offices.

Exasol: Building the Fastest Database in The World

Exasol was founded 14 years ago with a mission in mind: to build an ultra-fast, highly scalable database for analytics. We recently caught up with Graham Mossman, Exasol’s Senior Solutions Architect to discuss Exasol’s development and his upcoming talk at Data Enthusiasts London.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

ThoughtSpot Combine Enterprise-Class Features With Consumer-Class Usability on 1 BI Platform

As every industry becomes more data-driven, it becomes increasingly crucial that everyone in an organisation- from the Heads of IT to the least tech-savvy business person- has access to the key information. But of course, the requirements of these personel differ wildly, and there is yet to emerge a single technology which combines the enterprise-class infrastructure needed for big data analytics, with usability features that open the data to every person on the payroll. This is where ThoughtSpot come in.

84% of Businesses Think Big Data Analytics Will Change Their Competitive Landscapes

The Industrial Internet (A combination of Big Data analytics and the Internet of Things) holds great potential if executives in healthcare and industrial sectors are to be believed, reveals a research published by GE and Accenture. To put things in perspective with regards to the economic potential of Industrial Internet, an estimate of worldwide spending is predicted to be $500 billion by 2020, pointing to a mammoth global GDP of $15 trillion by 2030, according to Wikibon and GE.

The Fight Against Ebola May Have An Ally in Data Science, Believe Experts

Jai Vijayan while writing for Information Week explains its the unlikely channels are opening up to fight the spread. WHO’s predictions for this week, of 70% fatality rates and 1,000 new infections per week, comes from data about people who have died from or symptomatic, from facilities across Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and Nigeria, collated with data gathered from medical diagnostic facilities and burial grounds in the affected region.

Augmented Reality Development Gets Fuel as Google Leads Investment of Record $542M in Secretive Magic Leap

An augmented reality startup, Magic Leap, (whom everyone seems to find mysterious) has positively gained some more mystique quotient with the Google (and not Google Ventures) led $542 million Series B financing that it announced on Tuesday. There was participation from Qualcomm Ventures, Legendary Entertainment, including a personal investment from CEO Thomas Tull, KKR, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Andreessen Horowitz, Obvious Ventures, and other investors.

Upcoming Events

27-28 October, 2014- Chief Data Officer European Leadership Forum, London

In recent years, there has been a significant rise in the appointments of Chief Data Officers (CDOs), in both the public and private sector. This is a result of data becoming an increasingly important strategic asset to businesses and public authorities.

Data Science Day Wants to Hear from You!
The 7th Data Science Day is hitting Berlin on the 30th October, hosted by Zalando and The Unbelievable Machine Company. The event is entitled “What´s next in Data Science? – or: just a bunch of really hot stuff!!!” If that amount of exclamation marks isn’t enough to get you excited, I don’t what is.

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More funding rounds, announcements and big data articles this week — and it’s just as good as ever! The week started off with a pretty big announcement as Hazlecast picked up $11 Million in funding, spearheaded by Earlybird Venture Capital. The funding stories poured in throughout the week as we leant that Code Climate scooped up $2 million, Radius $54.7 million, and Numerify $15M. Perhaps the biggest funding story of the week, however, was Context Relevant, which secured $13.5 million in Series B-1 funding from Goldman Sachs and Bank of America only 4 months after receiving $21 million.

In other news, we learnt that data breaches are on a rise this year, that Europe is catching up on its utilisation of Big Data and that 50% of our search queries will be on speech or images according to Andrew Ng. In sum, a busy week! Hope you enjoy our selection below of top stories around Big Data.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

10 Online Big Data Courses

If you already have the skill set to enter the world’s sexiest profession, it’s a great time to be alive. For those with enough money and expendable time, there’s always the option to go back to school. But for the rest of us, hope is not lost; thanks the rise of the internet, we can begin exploring data science from the comfort of our own homes, and for a fraction of the cost of academia or retraining.

Mastering Data Management: MDM, SOA, ESB, and Other Three Letter Words

“Data management isn’t really analogous to anything, given its size, scope, complexity, and the different systems and departments involved. Data management is like data management, and that’s pretty much it. When you ask most industry technology strategists what the big fuss with data management is about, they invariably respond with something to the effect of “companies must leverage data in order to be better informed for decision support, which will lead to higher profitability.” That’s why they are strategists and not CEOs; they can’t speak English coherently.”

The Future of Business Intelligence

“At some point in the near future BI analysis will simply be another routine aspect of the job for business professionals looking to maximize the use of what will be viewed as a standard resource.”

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

In 5 Years, 50% of Our Search Queries Will Be on Speech or Images According to Andrew Ng

“In five years, we think 50 percent of queries will be on speech or images,” Ng told a packed audience at the Gigaom meetup, on his area of expertise, deep learning.

Udacity’s Bid to “Democratize Education” Gets $35m Strong Impetus, Attracts Industry Attention with “Nanodegrees”

Online educational startup (and one of our Top 10 big data online learning resources) Udacity has closed a financing round of $35 million with investors worldwide, such as Drive Capital leading the round.

Gridgain Unveil In-Memory Data Fabric to Speed Up and Simplify Big Data Applications

Open source in-memory powerhouse Gridgain have unveiled their latest innovation for real-time insights; the Gridgain In-Memory Data Fabric. The technology accomodates high-performance transaction, real-time streaming and lightning-fast analytics to help enterprises get the answers they need when they need them.

Upcoming Big Data Events

8th October, 2014- Careers@Singapore, Munich

The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), established in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is looking to further expand the existing faculty for its Information Systems Technology and Design (ISTD) pillar for the 2014-15 academic year. Candidates with expertise in the areas of cyber security, algorithms and big data are encouraged to apply. Applicants must have a PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or a related area, and must have a record of outstanding research in the specific areas mentioned above. All applications will be reviewed for tenure track or tenure appointments. Event details can be found here.

6th-9th October, 2014- Splunk .conf2014, Las Vegas

The fifth annual Splunk Worldwide Users’ Conference will feature more than 70 customer presentations, including Autodesk, British Sky Broadcasting Group, Cars.com, Cisco, Duke University, Expedia, The Hershey Company, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Tableau. These Splunk customers will take a deep dive into their data adventures to show how they leverage Splunk software for Operational Intelligence to directly impact the success of their organizations. Click here for a full list of .conf2014 sessions and register for .conf2014.

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(Image Credit: Colleen Galvin)

This week, we have a special line up of interesting big data news and articles. Alexandre Passant,  the co-founder of Music & Data Geeks, looks at the Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and runs some “API-based data-science” to see what insights we can derive from this top-500. We also learnt about Spotify’s plans to use deep learning to improve it’s recommender system, a new data science course in London introduced by Rackspace, and news of Berlin’s first big data industry event!

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

Sex and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll: Analysing the Lyrics of The Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All Time

The word “love” appears a staggering 48 times more often in The Rolling Stone’s Greatest 500 Songs than the words “sex”, “drugs”, “rock’n’roll” combined. Compelling statistical evidence that widely-acclaimed artists are a bunch of soppy fools.

Dynamic Data Integration Part II

Dynamic data integration incorporating data quality and master data management (MDM) assures consistency and reliability for upstream analytics and information sharing. A pragmatic approach that treats all of a company’s data as big data will facilitate integration efforts. In Part I, we stressed the importance of data quality. In this post, we focus on MDM and the connection between the two as part of data governance strategy.

What Is Google Cloud Dataflow?

In Q2, Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure revenue grew by 164%; Google lagged at only 47%. But Google have a secret weapon in their cloud portfolio, whose release may sky-rocket their market share- Google Cloud Dataflow.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

Analytics Blogger Tyler Dellow Hired by Edmonton Oilers: Stroke of Genius or Waste of Time?

Advanced analytics has been disrupting sports for a number of years, and now it’s extending its influence into Hockey. Earlier this week, Tyler Dellow, a blogger famous for his statistical analysis of hockey players and teams, was hired by the Edmonton Oilers to consult with hockey operations.

Splunk Announces 33% Price Cut, Guarantees 100% Uptime

Splunk have just announced a 33% price cut on their cloud-based operational intelligence offering, as well as guaranteeing 100% uptime. They’re also offering a free online sandbox for customers who want to try out Splunk’s cloud services, and plans which can up to 5TB of processing power a day.

Will Microsoft Beat Amazon and Google to Build Data Centre in India?

According to a recent article in The Economic Times, Microsoft is assessing the possibility of building its first data centre in India. If the software giants’ plans come to fruition, it will be the first data centre built by a multinational in the country.

Enterprise Software Specialist Dev Ittycheria Becomes MongoDB CEO

MongoDB, the billion-dollar NoSQL database startup, yesterday announced the appointment of Dev Ittycheria as the new President and CEO, starting September 3. Ittycheria will replace Max Schireson, who has been CEO for 18 months and will now act as vice chairman.

This Model Can Predict 7 out 10 Supreme Court Rulings

It is widely believed that predicting natural elements- the spread of wildfire, or disease, for example- is entirely possible. Yet when it comes to modelling human behaviour, many like to think there’s a certain unique, unpredictable character to humanity that cannot be pinned down by algorithms. Yet three scholars- South Texas College of Law’s Josh Blackman, Michigan State’s Daniel Martin Katz, and Bommarito Consulting’s Michael Bommarito- have built a predictive model which can determine how US Supreme Court judges will vote, with nearly 70% accuracy.

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(Image Credit: Rolling Stone)

This week, data security has taken centre stage with a variety of acquisitions, data breaches, new guidelines and funding rounds being reported. Elsewhere, Fujitsu announced a partnership with the National Cheng Kung University to nature talent in computational sciences, Snapchat could be sold to Alibaba Group that could value the company at $10 billion, and Tata Consultancy Services reported that 62 percent of businesses are planning to gather data from wearable digital devices by 2020.

Below, we’ve selected our top picks for the Week in Big Data.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

OkCupid’s User Experiment: A Call-to-Arms for Data Transparency?

Doomed love affairs, shallow personalities and an unknown woman clutching some driftwood- OkCupid’s latest reports on their user experiments threw up some interesting findings, but also left many alarmed about how much they could meddle without user’s knowledge or express consent. We discuss the findings from OkCupid’s experiments, where we draw the line with user experimentation, and why we need greater data transparency.

Dynamic Data Integration

Dynamic data integration for distributed architectures with more fragmented data sets need data quality and master data management to bridge existing enterprise infrastructure to newer apps developed for cloud and mobility. But in order to succeed, firms need to first establish and commit to an ongoing data governance program with clear objectives endorsed by senior management.

Big Data Technology Series – Part 2

Max Kanaskar takes us through the evolution of big data, helping us understand some of the characteristics, needs and current technology trends in big data management in greater detail.

TOP DATACONOMY INTERVIEW

Pindrop Security: Looking to Save Banks $19 Billion by Improving Authentication

We interviewed Matt Anthony (VP of Marketing) and Raj Bandyopadhyay (Principal Data Scientist) at Pindrop Security to learn more about how the company. Pindrop Security provides solutions to protect enterprise call centers and phone users, where it combines authentication and anti-fraud detection technology to verify legitimate callers while detecting malicious callers.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

IBM Adds to Security Portfolio with CrossIdeas Acquisition

IBM announced yesterday that it has acquired Rome-based cyber security firm CrossIdeas. The addition of CrossIdeas extends IBM’s market share leading portfolio of identity and access management capabilities. IBM said that the CrossIdeas team will work with IBM immediately, operating as an IBM company.

Twitter Transparency Report Shows 46% Increase in Government Requests for User Information

Twitter has just released the biannual transparency report. Among the most significant findings is a 46% increase in government requests for user information, revealing how governments are increasingly relying on social media to uncover the activities of their citizens.

The San Francisco 49ers Harness Big Data to Boost Fan Engagement

The 49ers have announced a fan engagement programme, which offers fans exclusive incentives like tickets to sold-out games and lunch with the players in exchange for one thing- their personal data.

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This week saw the Dataconomy team concluding our “History of BI” series, trying to predict the value of virtual currency with neural networks, and re-evaluating data privacy in the wake of the European Central Bank scare. See our pick of the week in big data below.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

Bitcoin and Big Data: Can We Predict the Future Value of Virtual Currency?

Is there a way to combine the value streams of Bitcoin and big data? Can we use data science to alleviate the risk and harness the potential of virtual currency? Can we, in essence, use big data to predict the future value of Bitcoin?

The History of BI: The 2000′s and Now

In this edition of The History of BI, we will take a brief look at how BI transitioned from a tool based, IT-centric activity, to one that is now accessible to technical and non-technical users alike.

How Utilities Are Wrestling with Big Data… And Winning

The amount of data that is being collected by smart meters and other consumer-oriented electric monitoring devices has increased the amount of data collected by up to 180x. Utilities are facing the challenges of the big data deluge, but the opportunities and challenges that they face are fascinating to consider.

TOP DATACONOMY INTERVIEW

Cloudera on Why Hadoop Projects Fail

We recently caught up with Mark Lewis, Cloudera’s Senior Marketing Director, to discuss the Enterprise Data Hub, the evolving discipline of data science and why Hadoop projects fail.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

European Central Bank Hit by Data Theft

The European Central Bank admitted this week that hackers have broken into its database and stolen personal information. The ECB said that email addresses and contact data has been taken from its database for conferences, leaving street addresses, telephone numbers and 20,000 email addresses held by the bank compromised by theft.

San Francisco Blazes Trail Towards Data Transparency

San Francisco unveiled their open data strategy plan, which outlines the city’s 6-year plan for open data- including, crucially, the creation of “process for accessing your individual data.”

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Another eventful week in big data: we have finished our “Understanding Big Data” series; read about the ever growing penetration of data science university courses; and seen a historic partnership announced between IBM and Apple. Below are some of our favourite picks of the week.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

Understanding Big Data: Open Source

In this installment of Understanding Big Data, we’ll be looking at some of the leading open source providers – and how much you can actually get for free.

Does Privacy Still Exist?

We met with Dr Joss Wright at the Oxford Internet Institute to talk about data privacy. The article touches upon some of the key issues surrounding privacy and where it might be heading.

TOP DATACONOMY INTERVIEW

Qualities of a Data Scientist, with Adam Drake

We met with Adam Drake to hear his thoughts on Data Science and the qualities a Data Scientist should have. Adam is currently the Chief Data Scientist and Director of Engineering for Zanox

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

KPMG and Imperial College Aim to Harness the Power of Big Data

KPMG and Imperial College London this week announced the launch of a new initiative that aims to meet the excess demand for data scientists.

PredictionIO Announce $2.5 Million Funding- and Grand Designs for the Future

PredictionIO, a company aiming to become the “MySQL of prediction”, raised $2.5 million in seed funding this week to open source machine learning, and allow developers to build predictive applications with just a few lines of code.

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This week we reported on more fall-out from the Facebook “mood manipulation” experiment revelation, some expert advice from Big Data legend Doug Laney, and continued our coverage of Big Data’s use in the World Cup:

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

Understanding Big Data: Cross Infrastructure & Analytics

In this edition, we’ll be examining the big data offerings of household names and global leaders, most of whom offer an end-to-end solution for storing, processing, analysing and visualising data.

Doug Laney’s Advice for Big Data Adoption

We recently discussed the pitfalls of big data with Gartner’s Research VP, creator of the 3 V’s and all-round big data legend Doug Laney, and formulated some don’ts of big data to steer your big data dreams in the right direction.

How Spotify and Shazam Predict Music’s Next Big Talent

Over the past few years, music subscription services have seen incredible growth, with revenues up by 51 percent in 2013 and the $1 billion threshold crossed. In contrast to that, over a decade of stagnation has seen Europe’s overall record sales grow by just 4.3 percent.

TOP DATACONOMY INTERVIEW

What You Don’t Know About Apache Lucene

We caught up with Robert at Berlin Buzzwords to discuss his work, how people are using Lucene and what we can expect from Lucene in the future- sadly, there was no talk of ghosts.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

US Senator Writes Letter of Complaint to FDC Regarding Facebook Mood Experiment

Facebook is again under attack, this time by U.S Senator Mark R. Warner, who is asking the Federal Trade Commission to inspect the social network’s use of big data. The cause of this is a controversial experiment conducted by Facebook on a share of its users.

Germany vs. Brazil – An Impressive Success for Big Data in the World Cup

Earlier in the month we reported on Germany’s national team working with IT giant SAP for the current World Cup to add data to their training. Typically a strong team, it wasn’t until Tuesday that they really showed the force of their preparation.

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This week we saw IBM take further steps into the culinary world, having already perfected their own BBQ sauce. Google Capital placed MapR on the frontline of Enterprise Hadoop, with Cloudera and Hortonworks, by leading a hefty funding round. Editors Furhaad Shah and Eileen McNulty each took a dive into their subject areas, with introductions to SQL vs NoSQL and a look at the history of BI.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

The History of BI: The 1980′s and 90′s

In part 2 of ‘The History of Business Intelligence’ we look at the 1980’s and 90’s. This period was revolutionary for many aspects for BI, and ultimately transformed the way businesses extracted value from their data.

4 Rules for Knowing When to Invest in Big Data

For every story about accelerated financial performance from adopting Big Data technologies, we can point to ten that talk about mismanaged investments and a loss of interest by leadership in Big Data. Guest writer Khawaja outlines four rules for when you should consider investing.

SQL vs. NoSQL- What You Need to Know

In this article, Eileen McNulty outlines the differences between SQL and NoSQL, the vast array of differences within NoSQL technologies themselves, and discuss if Relational Database Management Systems really are a thing of the past.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

IBM’s Chef Watson: Using Data to Delight Your Tastebuds

On Monday, IBM announced that it has partnered with Bon Appetit to build a cooking app that will combine Watson’s data capabilities (or, “Chef Watson,” as it has been dubbed for this endeavor) with the magazine’s almost fifty years of food publishing.

Google Capital Backs MapR, Affirms Hadoop Commitment

In the past few months, Hadoop vendors Hortonworks and Cloudera have seen big funding rounds, with many commentators suggesting that MapR was falling behind. Today, however, it was announced that MapR has raised $110 million in combined equity and debt financing.

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It has been an eventful week for big data. We’ve seen funding records broken, the announcement of collaboration between Dell, Cloudera and Intel, and the implementation of sensors in lamp posts to collect big data. For this weeks round up, we have selected our most popular pieces for your perusal.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

Wimbledon & Big Data: Predictive or Missing the Mark?

This year we have seen some interesting use cases in the application of big data analytics in sports. IBM recently announced that it will be using cloud technology and big data to enhance user engagement during the Wimbledon Championships in July.

Understanding Big Data: Machine Learning

In this edition of “Understanding Big Data“, we’ll be taking a more in-depth look at the term and its many different forms and applications. When many people hear the term “machine learning”, they conjure up mental images of robots who walk, climb or clean houses. In reality, machine learning starts alot closer to home.

Recommender Systems- Past, Present and Future

Recommender systems are among the most fun and profitable applications of data science in the big data world. Training data (corresponding to the historical search, browse, purchase, and customer feedback patterns of your customers) can be converted into golden opportunities for ROI (i.e., Return On Innovation and Investment).

TOP DATACONOMY INTERVIEWS

Cassandra 2.1 and the Future of Datastax – Interview with Jonathan Ellis

Jonathan Ellis is the Project Chair of Apache Cassandra and one of the co-founders of Datastax, the leading enterprise Cassandra solution. We sat down with Jonathan at the Cassandra Berlin Buzzwords meetup to talk about the new features in Cassandra 2.1, when to expect a release date and Datastax’s plans for the future.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

Kreditech Raises $40 Million at $190 Million Valuation

The big data finance company Kreditech has closed a Series B round that raised 40 million USD in primary investment from new and existing global investors. This is the largest funding round ever for a German financial services technology company and one of the largest rounds in Germany in 2014.

Chicago: Improving City Life with Big Data

A report from The Chicago Council on Global Affairs was released this month aiming to tackle the question of how big data can be used in municipal and government decision-making. Using specific examples from the City of Chicago, the report suggests that officials will have to turn to big data analytics in order to keep pace with infrastructure and services.

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The list of big data applications is never-ending. This week, we reported on how big data is being used to save California’s farms; empower Taiwan’s SME’s; sell wine and spirits in Asia and give better coverage during this year’s Wimbledon tournament. Here are some other highlights of the week in data science:

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

The History of BI: The 1960′s and 70′s

This is the first edition to a three part series and gives a brief overview of the history of business intelligence. Starting in the 1960’s and 70’s, the article looks at the advancements made in data storage, database management systems, and companies that were pioneering BI from the early stages.

The Big Three for 2014 — Cloud, Mobile and Big Data

In this weeks post, Jamal Khawaja, a senior manager at Wipro, suggests three spaces that enterprise-class organizations should invest in over this year: cloud, mobile and bigdata. For those that are late, Jamal tells us, there will be a “bloody and agonizing conflict between those that catch-up and those that fall to the wayside.”

Understanding Big Data: Analytics

As a continuation of our popular “Understanding Big Data” series, this week we examined the different analytics platforms — how they work, what opportunities they offer enterprises, and how they differentiate themselves from their competitors.

TOP DATACONOMY INTERVIEWS

Interview with Brian Gentile, CEO of Jaspersoft

We spoke with Brian Gentile, the CEO of Jaspersoft, ahead of the new release of TIBCO Jaspersoft’s 5.6 Platform. Version 5.6 of the Jaspersoft BI platform is designed to help more business users become capably analytic, with advances in key areas such as Big Data connectivity, platform performance, analytics and reporting.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

Oracle Gearing Up For $6 Billion Purchase

The enterprise software giant Oracle is nearing a $6 billion deal with hospitality software maker Micros Systems, according a report from Bloomberg.

ThoughtSpot: Looking to Make BI “Google Easy”

ThoughtSpot, a business analytics company aiming to revolutionise the way organisations do business intelligence, announced $30 million in Series B funding yesterday.

IBM Powering Wimbledon With Better Engagement

The All England Lawn and Tennis Club (AELTC) and IBM have announced that big data and the cloud will be leveraged in this years Wimbledon tournament to offer fans better and more advanced coverage over the two-week period.

How Airbnb Used Data to Secure its $10 Billion Valuation

The growth of Airbnb has received a lot of attention over the past few years, especially since it’s $10 billion valuation. In a recent interview, the company’s head of data science, Riley Newman, explained how data was at the core of its tremendous success.

TIBCO: Big Data is ‘Irrelevant’, Fast Data is What You Need

Big data has been a focus for many companies in the past few years and the market is expected to grow further at a compound annual growth rate of 32 percent in the next four years.

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See our pick of the week’s findings below.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

Understanding Big Data: Infrastructure

In this edition, we’ll be closely examining infrastructural approaches- what they are, how they work and what each approach is best used for. In previous editions we covered the 7 V’s of Big Data, and the Big Data Ecosystem.

Uber: Mapping Prostitution and “The Walk of Shame”

With the recent furore among cab drivers about the growing prominence of Uber in London, Paris, Milan, Madrid and Berlin, we thought it would be interesting to see how the mobile-app, car-for-hire company uses big data to better its services.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

Germany’s Bringing Data to The World Cup

Germany’s manager Oliver Bierhoff announced that the National Team has been collaborating with SAP and the German Football Association to apply big data, through SAP’s Match Insights software, to assess the performance and training of the team in preparation for the world cup.

How Netflix is Using Data to Improve Quality of Experience

In a recent blog post, Netflix highlight the ways in which the company is using big data behind the scenes to enrich its service. They’re putting the data to work largely to improve Quality of Experience (QoE) – the experience the user has after they hit play.

Chinese Search Giant Turns to Big Data to Forecast Flu Outbreaks

The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention will be working with online search giant Baidu to use its large user database to help forecast flu outbreaks.

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This week we looked at Big Data’s influence around the world: How it is being used by scientists attempting to predict the winner of the 2014 world cup in Brazil, how it is spreading throughout Africa by way of foreign investment, and how it has been used in the US to refine election boundaries. All together, another exciting week in a field that is penetrating the lives of people everywhere.

See our pick of the week’s findings below.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

A Land of Disparity: Revisiting Africa’s “Technology Boom”

Only a decade ago, to speak of Africa and technology would have seemed nonsensical. Today, it is part of a growing global conversation.

Predicting the World Cup with Big Data

This time next week, we will be in the throes of World Cup fever. As we speak, beers are being readied, projection screens are being mounted, and unrealistic levels of national pride and aspiration are mounting.

Understanding Big Data: The Ecosystem

For the uninitiated, the Big Data landscape can be daunting. The vast proliferation of technologies in this competitive market mean there’s no single go-to solution when you begin to build your Big Data architecture.

TOP DATACONOMY INTERVIEWS

Vizzuality: Making Visualisations Accessible to All

We met up with Vizzuality at the Code_N contest in CeBIT, Hannover. Vizzuality, as the name might suggest, deal in visualisations, and using data to tell stories, gain insights and fuel decisions.

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Data Improving Democracy

Gerrymandering in the US is a serious issue. The Washington Post estimates that as a result of gerrymandering, the Democrats under-represented by about 18 seats in the House, relative to their vote share in the 2012 election.

Netflix’s Vision for the Future: Personalising Channels, Not Shows

Last week, CEO Reed Hastings and and Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt talked about the future of Netflix, and how they’re going to harness their vast oceans of data to stay at the pinnacle of the market.

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We’ve learnt a lot about Big Data this week. As well as more and more universities committing to training the data scientists of tomorrow, we’ve learnt the answers to questions such as: what does a sauce designed by a robot taste like? What do Fight Club and Big Data have in common? And, does a car that drives itself look as ridiculous as it sounds?
See our pick of the week’s findings below.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

Exploring Complex Relationships in Data for Scientific Discovery

Big Data influencer Kirk Borne takes us through the capabilities of analytics tools for high-dimensional data, both big and small.

Big Data’s Potential for Abuse

“Is an endless sea of information that can be used for the forces of good or the forces of evil”- big data commentator Jamal Khawaja discusses the dark side of data collection within big companies.

TOP DATACONOMY INTERVIEWS

The Unbelievable Machine Company talks with Dataconomy

Dataconomy caught up with Klaas Bollhoefer, whose unbelievable Machine Company help companies find undiscovered secrets in their data.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

IBM Branches Out Into Condiments

IBM’s Watson, the powerful cognitive technology that processes information more like a human than a computer, is pushing the boundaries of what a machine can accomplish given the right programming — by creating its first ever barbeque sauce.

Google Using Machine Learning to Boost Efficiency in Data Centres

Not content with owning some of the most efficient data centres on the planet, Google are now using machine learning to gain a greater understanding of their server farms.

Hadoop Market Expected to Grow 25x by 2020

In 2013, the global Hadoop market accounted for approximately $2 billion in revenues and is estimated to increase by $48.2 billion over the next 7 years.

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This has been a big week for Big Data. We’ve learned how it saves the lives of blood cancer victims, wins elections, rescues internationally renowned companies, and makes fast food even faster. It’s no surprise that it was named the most influential technology for the future.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

The First Prime Minister to Use Big Data

Veteran blogger Furhaad Shah delved into Narendra Modi’s use of Big Data in the recent Indian election, with a fascinating map showing election activity around the globe.

Understanding Big Data: The Seven V’s 

Eileen introduced us to “The Seven V’s of Big Data”, laying out the fundamentals of Big Data in a slightly more comprehensive manner than the traditional three V’s.

Democratizing Data Assets: Learning From Data, Big and Small

Big Data legend Kirk Borne stopped by last week to share an incredibly interesting post about Machine Learning, how we both discover and learn from our data.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

IBM and FujiFilm Break World Record for Data Storage

IBM and FujiFilm announced on Monday that their researchers have broken the world record in the amount of data that can be stored per square inch on Linear Tape-Open (LTO) cartridge.

Big Data Saving Lives: Pioneering Blood Cancer Research

Researchers at the University of Leeds have pioneered a data mining system for individualising blood cancer treatment, which could revolutionise all cancer care.

Big Data Analytics Named Most Influential Technology for the Future

Big data analytics has a topped a survey on which disruptive technologies will have the biggest influence in three years time. The ‘Internet of Things’ and ‘Dynamic Visualisation’ came in second and third respectively.