What I Learned at StrataConf 2012

Recently I went to StrataConf (http://strataconf.com/stratany2012) to learn more about this crazy world of data I'm slowly slipping further into. I made several mind maps that I've posted at the end of this blog post.
Key Take Aways
  1. Hadoop is huge in the data mining space. Like HUGE.
  2. Data scientists get overly fixated on playing with their data like programmers do on coding. It wasn't caught until the company was basically about to die. BOTH times. Three solutions: 
    1. Appoint a kind of "canary" who isn't emotionally involved. Listening to the canary becomes the next hard problem.
    2. Have a hypothesis before diving into data!
  3. Data scientists need to be "Scrappy". For coders "Hacker" is a synonym.
    1. Steps
      1. Analyze- Take the time to understand your model and look at the data. No black boxes.
      2. Anticipate- Build a data viewer and proactively look for bugs. Bugs are the enemy. STOP THEM.
      3. Improvise- "Don't indulge in any unnecessary, sophisticated moves..." -Bruce Lee
      4. Adapt- Error data is GREAT data. Don't just give up... Understand.
    2. What's a "Data Scientist"?
      1. The venn diagram: 

         
  4. Real time data- Event oriented queries via Esper. Your algorithms shouldn't require rerunning the whole calculation on new data.

And last but not least! Mind maps!