R Prominent at Predictive Analytics World

The new Predictive Analytics World conference focuses on data mining and predictive models to predict customer behavior in business environments, so it was gratifying to see R mentioned prominently in many talks. Keynote speaker John Elder included R in a list of data analysis tools he uses. Natasha Balac described how she uses R to fit models to detect fraud in Medicaid claims. Dean Abbott mentioned it was possible to use R to fit ensemble models. (An aside: ensemble models in general are a hot topic in this crowd.) Anne Milley, in the sponsored presentation from SAS, even took the time to mention the New York TImes article on R and the fact that integration to R is now available from SAS/IML. (It's pleasing to see SAS is warming to R: Anne also mentioned there are plans to extend integration to base SAS and JMP, too.) There may well have been more mentions -- I couldn't go to all of the parallel-track sessions, and I expect R will feature in more talks on the second day of the conference.

In fact, R was highly visible right from the outset. The Bay Area UseR! Group meeting was a prominent part of the agenda during the opening remarks from Eric Siegel, and was held in the same venue as PAW directly after the evening reception. The UseR! group itself was a great success, with more than 60 attendees and outstanding case studies and discussion from Bo Cowgill of Google and Itamar Rosenn from Facebook on their use of R.  Jim Porzak also gave a great overview of R itself.  My thanks go out to Jim and Mike Driscoll for inviting me to be such of a great panel. The panel discussion itself was taped and should be available online soon -- I'll link to it when it is.