12 Inspiring Women In Data Science, Big Data

Pivotal kills its own Hadoop distribution. Google uses machine learning to help you reach your goals. Dell updates Statistica to make it easier for so-called citizen data scientists. Workday enhances its analytics -- and more in this week's Big Data Roundup.

This time let's start with Workday. This cloud-based HR software application provider -- or human capital management (HCR) as it's called today -- this week announced a new set of enhancements to its analytics capabilities. The company unveiled new finance and workforce-related scorecards and dashboards that enable customers to gain insight into real-time transactional data and predictive analytics, the company said in a statement announcing the news.

Specifically, Workday said, the new dashboards and scorecards will let customers predict and manage their customer collections. For instance, organizations can use the predictive capabilities to determine the likelihood of an invoice being paid on time. Workday said this can help revenue managers address accounts receivable issues and do a more accurate job of forecasting revenue.

The executive workforce scorecard lets business leaders look at key workforce metrics such as headcount, turnover, diversity, and percentage of contingent workers.

Google Calendar

Think you can collapse into your bed after a long day of creating models? Think again.

For those overachievers who claim they have no time for their other goals, Google Calendar can now offers some help with an assist from machine learning, according to the company. Google Calendar users can set up their app with certain goals, such as working out at the gym three times a week or reading a new book every month, and Google will find the empty slots on their calendars to fill in tasks that will help them achieve their goals. If those slots of time get manually filled by the user with other things, Google will find new places on their calendars to slot in those goal-related tasks. So forget about that nap, unless you set it as one of your goals.

Pivotal Hadoop Nixed

The cloud and big data spin out of VMware and EMC this week took a step back from offering its own distribution of Hadoop. Instead, Pivotal said, it will standardize on Pivotal HDP, a distribution stack of Hadoop and other big data technologies that is 100% identical to the one distributed by Hortonworks under the brand Hortonworks HDP.

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It's part of a deal under which Pivotal will distribute the Hortonworks stack and Hortonworks will offer Pivotal's HDB Hadoop-native database as an add-on to its own Hortonworks HDP stack. Both companies are members of the ODPI non-profit organization (ODPI), a consortium of companies promoting open source big data solutions. IBM is also a member of ODPI but Hadoop's other main distributors, Cloudera and MapR, are not members.

Dell Statistica

Looking to address the issue that there are just not enough data scientists to fill the demand for them in today's workforce, Dell's newest version of Statistica is designed to open the platform to use by more users, from "citizen data scientists," to business analysts, to line-of-business users. The update adds several features to make the advanced analytics platform more open to more users, including an improved user interface and an easier way for data scientists to create reusable models for other people within the business to leverage. The new version also includes updates for edge analytics to address growing interest in data around the Internet of Things (IoT) and more.

Women in Data Science, Big Data

One of the many great sessions at the recent Strata + Hadoop World conference last month in San Jose was certainly the Women in Big Data lunch. After being completely inspired by the panel, InformationWeek put together a slideshow of 12 Inspiring Women in Big Data and Data Science.

Big Data-as-a-Service

While plenty of organizations are investing in their own in-house big data organizations, the market for outsourcing big data looks like it will be robust, too. Research and Markets in a new report says this market is expected to grow at 60.9% between 2016 and 2020. The market size information was not available in the statement announcing the report but is available in the full report. Big players will be HPE, IBM, and SAP, according to the market research firm.

Emoji Research

Finally, GroupLens, an organization doing social computing research at the University of Minnesota, has released a new report on how emojis are rendered on different mobile devices with different mobile operating systems. You may have thought you were sending a toothy grin face to your friend, but actually, depending on the device your friend uses, you may have actually been sending a clenched-teeth grimace face. It's all part of the post "Investigating the Potential for Miscommunication Using Emoji." You may just want to stick to words alone if your friend is on Android and you use an iPhone. Or better yet, meet them in person.