This book explores answers to the fundamental questions driving the research, innovation and practices of the latest revolution in scientific, technological and economic development: how does data science transform existing science, technology, industry, economy, profession and education? How does one remain competitive in the data science field? What is responsible for shaping the mindset and skillset of data scientists? Data Science Thinking paints a comprehensive picture of data science as a new scientific paradigm from the scientific evolution perspective, as data science thinking from the scientific-thinking perspective, as a trans-disciplinary science from the disciplinary perspective, and as a new profession and economy from the business perspective.

This work provides an innovative look at the use of open data for extracting information to detect and prevent crime, and also explores the link between terrorism and organized crime. In counter-terrorism and other forms of crime prevention, foresight about potential threats is vitally important and this information is increasingly available via electronic data sources such as social media communications. However, the amount and quality of these sources is varied, and researchers and law enforcement need guidance about when and how to extract useful information from them. The emergence of these crime threats, such as communication between organized crime networks and radicalization towards terrorism, is driven by a combination of political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors. The contributions to this volume represent a major step by researchers to systematically collect, filter, interpret, and use the information available. For the purposes of this book, the only data sources used are publicly available sources which can be accessed legally and ethically. This work will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly in police science, organized crime, counter-terrorism and crime science. It will also be of interest to those in related fields such as applications of computer science and data mining, public policy, and business intelligence.

In this book, we primarily focus on studies that provide objective, unobtrusive, and innovative measures (e.g., indirect measures, content analysis, or analysis of trace data) of SEL skills (e.g., collaboration, creativity, persistence), relying primarily on learning analytics methods and approaches that would potentially allow for expanding the assessment of SEL skills and competencies at scale. What makes the position of learning analytics pivotal in this endeavor to redefine measurement of SEL skills are constant changes and advancements in learning environments and the quality and quantity of data collected about learners and the process of learning. Contemporary learning environments that utilize virtual and augmented reality to enhance learning opportunities accommodate for designing tasks and activities that allow learners to elicit behaviors (either in face-to-face or online context) not being captured in traditional educational settings. Novel insights provided in the book span across diverse types of learning contexts and learner populations. Specifically, the book addresses relevant and emerging theories and frameworks (in various disciplines such as education, psychology, or workforce) that inform assessments of SEL skills and competencies. In so doing, the book maps the landscape of the novel learning analytics methods and approaches, along with their application in the SEL assessment for K-12 learners as well as adult learners. Critical to the notion of the SEL assessment are data sources. In that sense, the book outlines where and how data related to learners' 21st century skills and competencies can be measured and collected. Linking theory to data, the book further discusses tools and methods that are being used to operationalize SEL and link relevant skills and competencies with cognitive assessment. Finally, the book addresses aspects of generalizability and applicability, showing promising approaches for translating research findings into actionable insights that would inform various stakeholders (e.g., learners, instructors, administrators, policy makers).

Big data is a well-trafficked subject in recent IT discourse and does not lack for current research. In fact, there is such a surfeit of material related to big data-and so much of it of questionably reliability, thanks to the high-gloss efforts of savvy tech-marketing gurus-that it can, at times, be difficult for a serious academician to navigate. The Handbook of Research on Trends and Future Directions in Big Data and Web Intelligence cuts through the haze of glitz and pomp surrounding big data and offers a simple, straightforward reference-source of practical academic utility. Covering such topics as cloud computing, parallel computing, natural language processing, and personalized medicine, this volume presents an overview of current research, insight into recent advances, and gaps in the literature indicative of opportunities for future inquiry and is targeted toward a broad, interdisciplinary audience of students, academics, researchers, and professionals in fields of IT, networking, and data-analytics.

This book provides an overview of data mining methods demonstrated by software. Knowledge management involves application of human knowledge (epistemology) with the technological advances of our current society (computer systems) and big data, both in terms of collecting data and in analyzing it. We see three types of analytic tools. Descriptive analytics focus on reports of what has happened. Predictive analytics extend statistical and/or artificial intelligence to provide forecasting capability. It also includes classification modeling. Diagnostic analytics can apply analysis to sensor input to direct control systems automatically. Prescriptive analytics applies quantitative models to optimize systems, or at least to identify improved systems. Data mining includes descriptive and predictive modeling. Operations research includes all three. This book focuses on descriptive analytics. The book seeks to provide simple explanations and demonstration of some descriptive tools. This second edition provides more examples of big data impact, updates the content on visualization, clarifies some points, and expands coverage of association rules and cluster analysis. Chapter 1 gives an overview in the context of knowledge management. Chapter 2 discusses some basic software support to data visualization. Chapter 3 covers fundamentals of market basket analysis, and Chapter 4 provides demonstration of RFM modeling, a basic marketing data mining tool. Chapter 5 demonstrates association rule mining. Chapter 6 is a more in-depth coverage of cluster analysis. Chapter 7 discusses link analysis. Models are demonstrated using business related data. The style of the book is intended to be descriptive, seeking to explain how methods work, with some citations, but without deep scholarly reference. The data sets and software are all selected for widespread availability and access by any reader with computer links.

In ancient games such as chess or go, the most brilliant players can improve by studying the strategies produced by a machine. Robotic systems practice their own movements. In arcade games, agents capable of learning reach superhuman levels within a few hours. How do these spectacular reinforcement learning algorithms work? With easy-to-understand explanations and clear examples in Java and Greenfoot, you can acquire the principles of reinforcement learning and apply them in your own intelligent agents. Greenfoot (M.Koelling, King's College London) and the hamster model (D. Bohles, University of Oldenburg) are simple but also powerful didactic tools that were developed to convey basic programming concepts. The result is an accessible introduction into machine learning that concentrates on reinforcement learning. Taking the reader through the steps of developing intelligent agents, from the very basics to advanced aspects, touching on a variety of machine learning algorithms along the way, one is allowed to play along, experiment, and add their own ideas and experiments.

What happens when a researcher and a practitioner spend hours crammed in a Fiat discussing data visualization? Beyond creating beautiful charts, they found greater richness in the craft as an integrated whole. Drawing from their unconventional backgrounds, these two women take readers through a journey around perception, semantics, and intent as the triad that influences visualization. This visually engaging book blends ideas from theory, academia, and practice to craft beautiful, yet meaningful visualizations and dashboards. How do you take your visualization skills to the next level? The book is perfect for analysts, research and data scientists, journalists, and business professionals. Functional Aesthetics for Data Visualization is also an indispensable resource for just about anyone curious about seeing and understanding data. Think of it as a coffee book for the data geek in you. https: //www.functionalaestheticsbook.com

This textbook grew out of notes for the ECE143 Programming for Data Analysis class that the author has been teaching at University of California, San Diego, which is a requirement for both graduate and undergraduate degrees in Machine Learning and Data Science. This book is ideal for readers with some Python programming experience. The book covers key language concepts that must be understood to program effectively, especially for data analysis applications. Certain low-level language features are discussed in detail, especially Python memory management and data structures. Using Python effectively means taking advantage of its vast ecosystem. The book discusses Python package management and how to use third-party modules as well as how to structure your own Python modules. The section on object-oriented programming explains features of the language that facilitate common programming patterns. After developing the key Python language features, the book moves on to third-party modules that are foundational for effective data analysis, starting with Numpy. The book develops key Numpy concepts and discusses internal Numpy array data structures and memory usage. Then, the author moves onto Pandas and details its many features for data processing and alignment. Because strong visualizations are important for communicating data analysis, key modules such as Matplotlib are developed in detail, along with web-based options such as Bokeh, Holoviews, Altair, and Plotly. The text is sprinkled with many tricks-of-the-trade that help avoid common pitfalls. The author explains the internal logic embodied in the Python language so that readers can get into the Python mindset and make better design choices in their codes, which is especially helpful for newcomers to both Python and data analysis. To get the most out of this book, open a Python interpreter and type along with the many code samples.

This book presents the complex topic of using computational intelligence for pattern recognition in a straightforward and applicable way, using Matlab to illustrate topics and concepts. The author covers computational intelligence tools like particle swarm optimization, bacterial foraging, simulated annealing, genetic algorithm, and artificial neural networks. The Matlab based illustrations along with the code are given for every topic. Readers get a quick basic understanding of various pattern recognition techniques using only the required depth in math. The Matlab program and algorithm are given along with the running text, providing clarity and usefulness of the various techniques. Presents pattern recognition and the computational intelligence using Matlab; Includes mixtures of theory, math, and algorithms, letting readers understand the concepts quickly; Outlines an array of classifiers, various regression models, statistical tests and the techniques for pattern recognition using computational intelligence.

The last decade has witnessed the rise of big data in game development as the increasing proliferation of Internet-enabled gaming devices has made it easier than ever before to collect large amounts of player-related data. At the same time, the emergence of new business models and the diversification of the player base have exposed a broader potential audience, which attaches great importance to being able to tailor game experiences to a wide range of preferences and skill levels. This, in turn, has led to a growing interest in data mining techniques, as they offer new opportunities for deriving actionable insights to inform game design, to ensure customer satisfaction, to maximize revenues, and to drive technical innovation. By now, data mining and analytics have become vital components of game development. The amount of work being done in this area nowadays makes this an ideal time to put together a book on this subject. Data Analytics Applications in Gaming and Entertainment seeks to provide a cross section of current data analytics applications in game production. It is intended as a companion for practitioners, academic researchers, and students seeking knowledge on the latest practices in game data mining. The chapters have been chosen in such a way as to cover a wide range of topics and to provide readers with a glimpse at the variety of applications of data mining in gaming. A total of 25 authors from industry and academia have contributed 12 chapters covering topics such as player profiling, approaches for analyzing player communities and their social structures, matchmaking, churn prediction and customer lifetime value estimation, communication of analytical results, and visual approaches to game analytics. This book's perspectives and concepts will spark heightened interest in game analytics and foment innovative ideas that will advance the exciting field of online gaming and entertainment.

This book studies mathematical theories of machine learning. The first part of the book explores the optimality and adaptivity of choosing step sizes of gradient descent for escaping strict saddle points in non-convex optimization problems. In the second part, the authors propose algorithms to find local minima in nonconvex optimization and to obtain global minima in some degree from the Newton Second Law without friction. In the third part, the authors study the problem of subspace clustering with noisy and missing data, which is a problem well-motivated by practical applications data subject to stochastic Gaussian noise and/or incomplete data with uniformly missing entries. In the last part, the authors introduce an novel VAR model with Elastic-Net regularization and its equivalent Bayesian model allowing for both a stable sparsity and a group selection.

Learn how to apply the principles of machine learning to time series modeling with this indispensable resource Machine Learning for Time Series Forecasting with Python is an incisive and straightforward examination of one of the most crucial elements of decision-making in finance, marketing, education, and healthcare: time series modeling. Despite the centrality of time series forecasting, few business analysts are familiar with the power or utility of applying machine learning to time series modeling. Author Francesca Lazzeri, a distinguished machine learning scientist and economist, corrects that deficiency by providing readers with comprehensive and approachable explanation and treatment of the application of machine learning to time series forecasting. Written for readers who have little to no experience in time series forecasting or machine learning, the book comprehensively covers all the topics necessary to: Understand time series forecasting concepts, such as stationarity, horizon, trend, and seasonality Prepare time series data for modeling Evaluate time series forecasting models' performance and accuracy Understand when to use neural networks instead of traditional time series models in time series forecasting Machine Learning for Time Series Forecasting with Python is full real-world examples, resources and concrete strategies to help readers explore and transform data and develop usable, practical time series forecasts. Perfect for entry-level data scientists, business analysts, developers, and researchers, this book is an invaluable and indispensable guide to the fundamental and advanced concepts of machine learning applied to time series modeling.

This book presents the proceedings of the Conference on Algorithms and Applications (ALAP 2018), which focuses on various areas of computing, like distributed systems and security, big data and analytics and very-large-scale integration (VLSI) design. The book provides solutions to a broad class of problems in diverse areas of algorithms in our daily lives in a world designed for, and increasingly controlled by algorithms. Written by eminent personalities from academia and industry, the papers included offer insights from a number of perspectives, providing an overview of the state of the art in the field. The book consists of invited talks by respected speakers, papers presented in technical sessions, and tutorials to offer ideas, results, work-in-progress and experiences of various algorithmic aspects of computational science and engineering.

The need for both organizations and government agencies to generate, collect, and utilize data in public and private sector activities is rapidly increasing, placing importance on the growth of data mining applications and tools. Data Mining in Public and Private Sectors: Organizational and Government Applications explores the manifestation of data mining and how it can be enhanced at various levels of management. This innovative publication provides relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings useful to governmental agencies, practicing managers, and academicians.

Addressing a broad range of big data analytics in cross-disciplinary applications, this essential handbook focuses on the statistical prospects offered by recent developments in this field. To do so, it covers statistical methods for high-dimensional problems, algorithmic designs, computation tools, analysis flows and the software-hardware co-designs that are needed to support insightful discoveries from big data. The book is primarily intended for statisticians, computer experts, engineers and application developers interested in using big data analytics with statistics. Readers should have a solid background in statistics and computer science.

Sustainable development is based on the idea that societies should advance without compromising their future development requirements. This book explores how the application of data analytics and digital technologies can ensure that development changes are executed on the basis of factual data and information. It addresses how innovations that rely on digital technologies can support sustainable development across all sectors and all social, economic, and environmental aspects and help us achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The book also highlights techniques, processes, models, tools, and practices used to achieve sustainable development through data analysis. The various topics covered in this book are critically evaluated, not only theoretically, but also from an application perspective. It will be of interest to researchers and students, especially those in the fields of applied data analytics, business intelligence and knowledge management.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to rough set-based feature selection. Rough set theory, first proposed by Zdzislaw Pawlak in 1982, continues to evolve. Concerned with the classification and analysis of imprecise or uncertain information and knowledge, it has become a prominent tool for data analysis, and enables the reader to systematically study all topics in rough set theory (RST) including preliminaries, advanced concepts, and feature selection using RST. The book is supplemented with an RST-based API library that can be used to implement several RST concepts and RST-based feature selection algorithms. The book provides an essential reference guide for students, researchers, and developers working in the areas of feature selection, knowledge discovery, and reasoning with uncertainty, especially those who are working in RST and granular computing. The primary audience of this book is the research community using rough set theory (RST) to perform feature selection (FS) on large-scale datasets in various domains. However, any community interested in feature selection such as medical, banking, and finance can also benefit from the book. This second edition also covers the dominance-based rough set approach and fuzzy rough sets. The dominance-based rough set approach (DRSA) is an extension of the conventional rough set approach and supports the preference order using the dominance principle. In turn, fuzzy rough sets are fuzzy generalizations of rough sets. An API library for the DRSA is also provided with the second edition of the book.

The book proposes a systematic approach to big data collection, documentation and development of analytic procedures that foster collaboration on a large scale. This approach, designated as "data factoring" emphasizes the need to think of each individual dataset developed by an individual project as part of a broader data ecosystem, easily accessible and exploitable by parties not directly involved with data collection and documentation. Furthermore, data factoring uses and encourages pre-analytic operations that add value to big data sets, especially recombining and repurposing. The book proposes a research-development agenda that can undergird an ideal data factory approach. Several programmatic chapters discuss specialized issues involved in data factoring (documentation, meta-data specification, building flexible, yet comprehensive data ontologies, usability issues involved in collaborative tools, etc.). The book also presents case studies for data factoring and processing that can lead to building better scientific collaboration and data sharing strategies and tools. Finally, the book presents the teaching utility of data factoring and the ethical and privacy concerns related to it. Chapter 9 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

Activity recognition has emerged as a challenging and high-impact research field, as over the past years smaller and more powerful sensors have been introduced in wide-spread consumer devices. Validation of techniques and algorithms requires large-scale human activity corpuses and improved methods to recognize activities and the contexts in which they occur. This book deals with the challenges of designing valid and reproducible experiments, running large-scale dataset collection campaigns, designing activity and context recognition methods that are robust and adaptive, and evaluating activity recognition systems in the real world with real users.

In education today, technology alone doesn't always lead to immediate success for students or institutions. In order to gauge the efficacy of educational technology, we need ways to measure the efficacy of educational practices in their own right. Through a better understanding of how learning takes place, we may work toward establishing best practices for students, educators, and institutions. These goals can be accomplished with learning analytics.

"Learning Analytics: From Research to Practice "updates this emerging field with the latest in theories, findings, strategies, and tools from across education and technological disciplines. Guiding readers through preparation, design, and examples of implementation, this pioneering reference clarifies LA methods as not mere data collection but sophisticated, systems-based analysis with practical applicability inside the classroom and in the larger world.

Case studies illustrate applications of LA throughout academic settings (e.g., intervention, advisement, technology design), and their resulting impact on pedagogy and learning. The goal is to bring greater efficiency and deeper engagement to individual students, learning communities, and educators, as chapters show diverse uses of learning analytics to:

Enhance student and faculty performance.Improve student understanding of course material.Assess and attend to the needs of struggling learners.Improve accuracy in grading.Allow instructors to assess and develop their own strengths.Encourage more efficient use of resources at the institutional level.

Researchers and practitioners in educational technology, IT, and the learning sciences will hail the information in "Learning Analytics: From Research to Practice "as a springboard to new levels of student, instructor, and institutional success.

In this book, Helen Kennedy argues that as social media data mining becomes more and more ordinary, as we post, mine and repeat, new data relations emerge. These new data relations are characterised by a widespread desire for numbers and the troubling consequences of this desire, and also by the possibility of doing good with data and resisting data power, by new and old concerns, and by instability and contradiction. Drawing on action research with public sector organisations, interviews with commercial social insights companies and their clients, focus groups with social media users and other research, Kennedy provides a fascinating and detailed account of living with social media data mining inside the organisations that make up the fabric of everyday life.

This book focuses on applications of social network analysis in predictive policing. Data science is used to identify potential criminal activity by analyzing the relationships between offenders to fully understand criminal collaboration patterns. Co-offending networks-networks of offenders who have committed crimes together-have long been recognized by law enforcement and intelligence agencies as a major factor in the design of crime prevention and intervention strategies. Despite the importance of co-offending network analysis for public safety, computational methods for analyzing large-scale criminal networks are rather premature. This book extensively and systematically studies co-offending network analysis as effective tool for predictive policing. The formal representation of criminological concepts presented here allow computer scientists to think about algorithmic and computational solutions to problems long discussed in the criminology literature. For each of the studied problems, we start with well-founded concepts and theories in criminology, then propose a computational method and finally provide a thorough experimental evaluation, along with a discussion of the results. In this way, the reader will be able to study the complete process of solving real-world multidisciplinary problems.

This book offers a selection of the best papers presented at the 13th International Symposium on Location Based Services (LBS 2016), which was held in Vienna (Austria) from November 14 to 16, 2016. It provides an overview of recent research in the field, including the latest advances in outdoor/indoor positioning, smart environment, spatial modeling, personalization and context awareness, cartographic communication, novel user interfaces, crowd sourcing, social media, big data analysis, usability and privacy.

"Bayesian Networks and Influence Diagrams: A Guide to Construction and Analysis, Second Edition, "provides a comprehensive guide for practitioners who wish to understand, construct, and analyze intelligent systems for decision support based on probabilistic networks. This new edition contains six new sections, in addition to fully-updated examples, tables, figures, and a revised appendix. Intended primarily for practitioners, this book does not require sophisticated mathematical skills or deep understanding of the underlying theory and methods nor does it discuss alternative technologies for reasoning under uncertainty. The theory and methods presented are illustrated through more than 140 examples, and exercises are included for the reader to check his or her level of understanding. The techniques and methods presented for knowledge elicitation, model construction and verification, modeling techniques and tricks, learning models from data, and analyses of models have all been developed and refined on the basis of numerous courses that the authors have held for practitioners worldwide. "