Data Mashups

Turning Data Exhaust into Insights

May 12, 2011Data Scientist SummitPete SkomorochLinkedIn@peteskomoroch

We have an explosion of data

•DataWrangling

• InfoChimps

•Data.gov

• Factual

• SimpleGeo

And the tools to make sense of it

•Hadoop

•NoSQL

•R

•Python

•Mechanical Turk

Diverse datasets = better signal

Find a meaningful problem

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aloshbennett/

• Identify pain points

•Work on stuff that matters

• Focus on underutilized data

Trendingtopics.org @hourlytrends

LinkedIn Skills

The best mashups are actionable

•Reveal patterns

•Enable predictions

•Recommendations

Mashup: Skills & Cities

Yuba City, California: 21.3% Unemployment

Ames, Iowa: 4.7% Unemployment

Make data mashups work for you

•Open Data = powerful mashups

•Mashup > sum of its parts

• Focus on meaningful problems

•Actionable mashups are better