Chronicles from “Stat 4 Business” conference

Dear R users,
Just a brief post to tell you something about the Stat 4 Business conference here in Padua, organized by some guys from the Department of Statistics of the University of Padua.

Me and my Quantide‘s colleagues Enrico Pegoraro and Veronica Giro came here to Palazzo del Bo at 9 for registration. After two brief presentations of the event by Giuseppe Zaccaria, Head of the University of Padua, and by Alessandra Salvan, Head of the Department of Statistics, the first session was held by Margherita Santoni, a statistician who works for Nunatac. She presented an application on survival analysis for a business case. After a first break there was a speech by Piercesare Secchi, from Politecnico di Milano. He discussed about some very interesting stories on spatial and temporal big data.

Before lunch there was the speed session, where almost 20 people in an hour (!) briefly introduced their works and / or statistical experiences. These works were then shown in the poster session during lunch.

In the afternoon, Steve Scott from Google presented an example of bayesian application to very big data problems, typical of big firms like the one where he works…
The last talk of the conference was a discussion among experts about the role of statistics in modern business.

Tonight after the conference there will be Stats under the stars, a kind of statistical competition: 25 teams of about 100 statisticians (both academics and professionals) will face with a tricky data mining problem all night long! I will be there with my team too: may the best win!