Statistics Brings the Big Data
Big Data is the estimated 2.5 quintillion bytes of data that we create per day from conducting our daily lives; posting on social media, using rewards cards at stores, making insurance claims, surfing the internet, etc.
On March 28, the UCF Statistics Department hosted its sixth annual Big Data Analytics Symposium. During the symposium, professionals within the statistics field spoke to students about analytics, statistics and much more.
The symposium is held every year to give students the opportunity to meet local business partners. Students have the chance to find full-time jobs and summer internships during these meetings.
Michael Johnson, Ph.D., Dean of the UCF College of Sciences, kicked of the symposium with welcome remarks to students and guests. After Dean Johnson welcomed the board members and business partners, three data mining professionals spoke about different topics regarding Big Data.
Bruce D. Caulkins, Ph.D., Research Associate at the Institute for Simulation & Training (IST) at UCF, spoke about “Cybersercuity Challenges in a Big Data World.” The second speaker, Jerry L. Oglesby, Ph.D., is the Senior Director of Global Academic Programs at the SAS institute. He spoke about “Data Science and Advance Analytic: Challenges and Opportunities.”
The last speaker was Jutta Williams, M.S. She is the Corporate Information Assurance Officer (CIAO) and Chief Compliance Officer (COO) from Health First. She spoke about “Healthcare Data Sharing: Security and Regulatory Challenges and Opportunities.”
Over 20 business partners were in attendance at this year’s symposium: Florida Blue, EverBank, CitiGroup, JISC Inc., ICube, SAS, Johnson & Johnson, Orange County Public Schools, Acer Innovation, Adventist Health System, Convergence Consulting Group, Electronic Arts, Equifax, Kemper Co., Optum, Quadrant 4 System Co., Sodexo, JM Family, Disney, HealthFirst, Darden, UCF Library, Universal Studios, QuantGroup, UnitedHealth Group, Valencia College, and Florida Atlantic University.
Statistics professor and director of Data Mining at UCF, Morgan Wang, Ph.D., was in charge of organizing the event. According to Dr. Wang, the symposium went very smoothly and there were even a few prizes handed out to students.
Aaron Smith, Ph.D., mathematics lecturer and data mining student, won the fourth annual EverBank Cup Contest for his study titled “Using Word Stems to Categorize Websites.” This is a statewide data analysis contest and for the fourth year in a row, a UCF student has placed first.