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SAS Academic Program Research Newsletter Winter 2007 Edition
Text Mining Advances Educational Research and Undergraduate Learning
When Dr. Tasha Inniss of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia tells her undergraduate students to dig in, she means it. Her students dig into data and learn the basics of data and text mining for a series of research projects that will be presented at Spelman's Annual Research Day in April 2007. The lessons learned will become the foundation of a data mining course. Additionally, Inniss plans to offer a six-week summer research program in introductory data and text mining for select Spelman sophomore mathematics majors. In 2006, Inniss received a SAS course development software mini-grant, which provided SAS Enterprise Miner and SAS Text Miner for six months to develop these learning activities for her students. Inniss has also used text mining techniques in her research. With a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Grant for Exploratory Research, she and educational researcher Dr. Karen King of New York University are discovering key concepts or opinions in student interview data. Their paper has been accepted to the American Education Research Association Annual Meeting to be held April 2007. They hope to expand their research by mining tutoring sessions to ascertain whether a particular mathematical concept is being learned over time and to explore the use of concept links to address an NSF focus area called "visual analytics."
Using SAS® Text Miner to Analyze Open Source Software Development Given the increasing corporate use of open source software development, there is a need for evaluation models of these projects. Dr. Uzma Raja has taken on this task. As a 2006 SAS Student Ambassador from Texas A&M University Raja's work won Best Contributed Paper in the Data Mining track at SAS Users Group International in San Francisco. In her paper , she used logistic regression, decision trees and neural networks to investigate success in open source software development. In August Raja became an Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems at the Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration at the University of Alabama. In October, she presented a paper titled "Exploring Open Source Software Development and Maintenance Using Data Mining and Text Mining" at M2006 as an invited speaker.
Students Use SAS® Text Miner to Analyze French Education Market
EISTI, a French engineering school, offers students hands-on experience in business intelligence architecture as well as a dual-degree with Grenoble Ecole de Management. Students study the entire SAS business intelligence platform, including ETL, data warehousing, OLAP, business reporting, statistics and data mining, and then they apply their learning to business cases. A recent example analyzed French higher education, which is undergoing change to facilitate integration with the broader European system. Students used text mining techniques to analyze existing postgraduate programs' curricula, which were posted on a higher-education Web site. Applying the %tmfilter SAS macro, they reviewed all the links on a specified page and all the links from the linked pages, drilling down across three levels. The result was a large, free database of programs in management, marketing, finance, computer science and economics. The programs clustered into two groups, not by the type of skills taught but by the maturity of the curriculum. New programs describe the content of the courses: topics, percentage of lecturers from industry and expertise. More mature programs focus on positions attained by former students after graduation: the type of job, the recruiting companies and salary.
Applying Text Mining in BioinformaticsDr. Tasha Inniss from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, led a six-person team in using SAS Text Miner to determine a common vocabulary for describing age-related macular degeneration. The team included fellow professors from Spelman, the University of Iowa and the University of Chicago, as well as colleagues from industry. Their paper was accepted to the First International Workshop on Text Mining in Bioinformatics, published in the conference proceedings and presented in November 2006.Read More
Students and Professors Put SAS® Text Miner to WorkAt the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder, SAS Text Miner is in use for a number of teaching and research projects. All undergraduates in operations and information systems learn SAS Text Miner, along with SAS Enterprise Miner, and then apply their knowledge to in-class projects done for industry partners. For example, last year the class delivered analysis and recommendations to Wild Oats Marketplace, Lifepics, and Spectralink. SAS Text Miner is also used for research projects as diverse as understanding the relationship between newspaper coverage and executive compensation in S&P 1500 businesses to mapping the structure of business school research across nine academic disciplines (e.g. accounting, marketing, finance, information systems). Professors have also used SAS Text Miner to develop a novel approach to conducting literature reviews. And the Leeds team is collaborating to improve approaches to naming text clusters by comparing the SAS approach to two approaches from academic literature as well as two approaches developed at Leeds.
Text Mining Reveals Hidden Value and Competitive AdvantagesI remember my fourth-grade math teacher telling me that it's impossible to add apples and oranges. She was wrong. Now there's a way to throw apples and oranges into an equation without making a mess. The newest text mining technology enables decision makers to crunch words and numbers at the same time, yielding practical knowledge that can be leveraged for business growth. An article from the Dec. 6, 2006 edition of DM Review by SAS' Mary Crissey explains.Read More
Report from SAS Asia Pacific Academic User Conference This year's conference was held Oct. 5 at the Saroj Sadan, Alkesh Dinesh Mody Institute of Financial and Management Studies at the Indian University of Mumbai on its Kalina Campus. The event began with the traditional lighting of the lamp by Professor A.D. Sawant, Pro-Vice Chancellor of the host, the University of Mumbai, and a welcome address from Mr. Sudipta K. Sen, the CEO and Managing Director of SAS India. Keynote speakers for the opening session were Dr. Deepak B. Phatak, Head of the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology; Professor Subash Sarnikar, Chairman of the ICFAI Group; and Dr. M. Rammohan Rao, Dean of the Indian School of Business, who shared their insights on innovation in education and the importance of preparing students with practical skills to be competitive in the business world. Mr. Prasar Sharma, Chief Manager of the Technology Management Group for ICICI Bank, spoke about the corporate demand for SAS skills. Sun Microsystems was the event sponsor. Additional information about the conference and abstracts are available.Read More
Forthcoming Book from SAS® Press to Include Chapter on Text Mining
In his new book titled CRM Segmentation and Clustering Using SAS® Enterprise MinerTM, Randy Collica uses SAS Enterprise Miner and other commonly available techniques for customer relationship management (CRM). The book includes a chapter on segmenting textual data. Examples clearly demonstrate the concepts of segmentation and clustering in the context of CRM, and several chapters also contain additional exercises. The text is also well-suited for use in a business data mining analytics course in a college MBA program or course of study. The anticipated publication date is March 2007. Read More
Data Mining for Educators To Be Offered in Three Locations in 2007SAS' Higher Education Consulting Group will hold its sixth annual Summer Institutes in Data Mining in 2007. The program consists of SAS Enterprise Miner training and discussions about using data mining in the university environment. The training is free of charge; however, attendees are responsible for providing their own transportation, meals (other than lunch), and lodging. This summer three sessions will be held, including the first outside of the US. They will be at SAS world headquarters in Cary, North Carolina (Aug. 5-10), California State University at Long Beach (July 15-20), and the Universidad Anáhuac in México (May 21-26). A new course (Applied Analytics Using SAS® Enterprise MinerTM 5) will be offered in all three locations, and both US locations will include an advanced track. Attendance is by invitation only, and all dates are tentative. If you are interested in learning more, please send mail to Susan.Walsh@sas.com.
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