Steve Brewer, Director, Text Mining Solutions said: “In making best use of the power of text mining three key elements need to be combined: collecting, processing and visualising text data. The first two elements are addressed by a structured approach to searching and storing of data, but it is the third element – visualisation – which brings the results to life. By being awarded a Technology Strategy Board Innovation Voucher, we have been able to collaborate with the University of Sheffield to develop this new visualisation programme which we are now ready to take to market.” 

This spring, Johns Hopkins’ data science specialization gets underway. It’s nine classes, the first of which begins April 7 (repeat sessions are also offered during the next few months). Students can earn an optional "Verified Certificate," which costs $49 for each of the nine courses. Those who complete all nine courses plus a final capstone project — and pay for a certificate for each — will earn a Specialization Certificate from Johns Hopkins.

But — to reiterate — any of the nine courses can be taken for free if you don’t mind skipping the certificates.

The professors for Johns Hopkins’ data science specialization include: Brian Caffo, professor in the department of biostatistics; Roger Peng, associate professor of biostatistics; and Jeff Leek, assistant professor of biostatistics.

Although big data is in the spotlight now — thanks in large part to the volume and variety of data gushing out of social media channels — getting non-IT business executives to pay attention to data isn’t a new problem, said Carla Gentry, a 20-year industry veteran and founder of consultancy Analytical-Solution.

But Gentry is dubious that a two-day seminar will make a difference to business leaders who continue to fly by instinct.

"Do we need to get rid of the prima donnas who think they know better than the data? Yes," she said in a phone interview.

It’s easy to collect information and look at information,” says Scott Crumpler, the South Florida field manager for Diplomas Now. “But what you do with that information is the key element and key component of our program.”

Develop your breadth of knowledge and make it a point to engage your team in conversations about history, geography, politics, and sometimes obscure topics like archeology or ontology. Challenge yourself to draw correlations between world events and something more relevant to their work. For instance, how is the recent posturing by Russia similar to the dynamics in some of our work streams? How does a jetliner just disappear from sight, and how is that similar to our information monitoring risks?

While HR professionals can find broadly qualified technologists and network administrators, highly specialized skills such as cloud computing, DevOps software development, NoSQL databases and big-data analytics are often beyond HR’s ability to evaluate.

In the Sherlock Holmes stories, his sidekick, Dr. Watson, describes their adventures as a “half-sporting, half-intellectual pleasure.” I like to say data science is a “half-scientific, half-engineering pleasure.” There is the unknown a-ha or eureka factor of scientific investigation paired with the constructive design satisfaction of engineering code to perform the analysis and deal with large size and large dimensionality data sets.