Speakers

KEYNOTE SESSIONS

Thomas Lumley Professor, University of Washington R Core Development Group ---

What R can't do (or can it?).

R is well-known to be slow and able to handle only small data sets. At USAR2009, Thomas will be taking from his extensive experience in R to give examples showing that this is usually not true, and talk about how large data sets can be handled efficiently. R does have some challenges and limitations, and he will talk about some of these.

Thomas Lumley is a pre‑eminent expert in R and is a familiar contributor to the R-Help mailing list and well known for his insights into the workings of the R language. Thomas is Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Washington. He has been a member of the R Core team since 1997. His research interests include genomics, semiparametric models, and longitudinal data analysis. In 2008 he received the Gertude Cox award for significant contributions to statistical practice from the Washington Statistical Society and RTI. He maintains several R packages, including 'survey' and 'survival'.

Zubin Dowlaty Head of Decision Systems Mu-Sigma Inc

Doug Major Vice President and Director of Research XLSolutions Corporation

Just few months after R-PLUS 3.3 is released, USAR2009 attendees will be among the very first to hear how R-PLUS is designed to help in process automation with R

At UPS and as Vice President Decision Sciences Department for IHG, Zubin turned data assets and consumer insights into dollars. Present passions are in enterprise analytics automation, real time trading desks, applied predictive analytics, and applying statistical/machine methods to drive lift and incremental activity in organizations. Zubin will be joined by Doug Major, Vice President and Director of Research at XLSolutions Corporation. Zubin and Doug will pull back the "shroud of secrecy" that is associated with process automation in R/R-PLUS.
Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime session!

Bob Muenchen Manager Research Computing Support U of TN Office of Information Technology

R/R-PLUS software for data analysis and graphics are sending shockwaves through the software industry. Since R offers many more analytic methods than the proprietary software vendors such as SAS, SPSS and Stata, the vendors are scrambling for ways to address the challenge. Customers are looking at their six-figure software costs and planning ways to save.

The author of R for SAS and SPSS Users will discuss the strategies the industry is using to keep your business, and the options you have available to reduce your costs. These options range from merely extending what you currently use, through replacing individual add-on modules, to planning a full-scale migration. rplus@experience-rplus.com.

Sandra Smith Vice President Product Management XLSolutions Corporation.

David Henderson Rosetta Inpharmatics Merck

Even people who have been using R for years can be surprised at the breadth and depth of R-PLUS products and solutions offered by XLSolutions Corporation. XLSolutions Corporation has offerings from data collection technologies used by the top market research firms to leading-edge text and data mining capabilities to a deployment platform with an audit trail of model usage. All of this technology works together to help organizations achieve the tremendous benefits of data-driven decisions. The age of analytics has arrived— and it's essential to know exactly how that will impact your business.

In this presentation, you'll learn how the advent of analytics calls for a cooperative portfolio of solutions that empowers individuals to directly impact their organizational objectives. Users of all kinds—from survey creator to data analyst to business manager —must have a unified platform to capture data, predict the future, and deploy actionable results that drive significant value.

Exactly how would that look? Sandra will walk you through a real-world demonstration of how an analyst might apply these integrated technologies to attack a problem, create a business solution, and drive organizational (and career) growth. This presentation is a unique opportunity to get a 360-degree view of all that XLSolutions Corporation offers today, as well as what you can expect to see in the future.
David Henderson will join Sandra to discus the strategies XLSolutions is using to expand R-PLUS to Bioconductor.