Category Archives: News

New event: Causal Inference Part I

We are pleased to announce our next event “Causal Inference – Part I” on November 25th, 19h at Movistar Centre. Doors will open at 18:45.

Machine learning models or A/B testing are useful methods to make business decisions. But sometimes they are not feasible or present some limitations. Moreover, in many cases, we need to address questions such as: what would have happened if instead of doing X we had done Y? Can we have an estimate of the effect of one variable into another? In these cases, causal inference becomes the best option. And unsurprisingly, companies such as Uber are using causal inference as part of their data science efforts.

We are organizing two events to properly discuss the potential of causal inference and when it makes sense to apply it. In this first session, Bartek Skorulski and Aleix Ruiz de Villa will show the whole spectrum of causality, from AB tests to causal inference. You can register here

Aleix Ruiz de Vila holds a Ph.D. in mathematics. He has been head of data science at LaVanguardia, SCRM – Lidl, and Onna. He’s a co-organizer of Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup and board member of Societat Catalana de Matemàtiques. He currently teaches at BData and Uoc and he is a data science consultant specialized in causal inference. Check https://medium.com/tag/casual-causal-inference/latest for an introduction to causal inference

Bartek Skorulski, Data Scientist and Ph.D. in Dynamical System. He works as a Senior Data Scientist, Recommender System Lead in Telefonica Innovation Alpha. Previously, he was working as Staff Insight Analyst in Schibsted, Data Science Team Lead in Lidl-SCRM and Data Scientist in King. Moreover, he has many years of experience as an academic researcher and teacher. Now he collaborates with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, University of Barcelona and Kschool teaching Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Data Management courses. He is also co-organizer of Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup.

This talk is co-organized with Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup.

This event could not be possible without the collaboration of Movistar Centre.

New team members

BcnAnalytics family keeps growing. In the last weeks two new people joined our core team.

First one to join BcnAnalytics was Didac Fortuny. He is data scientist at Holaluz, a company that connects people to green power. In his own words: “I have a PhD in Physics in which I used data analytics to study the impact of climate change to Mediterranean precipitation. I also teach in a MSc in renewable energy and energy sustainability”.

Last addition has been Alejandra Manrique, She has more than 20 years of expertise in data analytics helping companies to get the most value out of data. In her own words: “I have worked in multiple sectors, water and enviroment, telecommunications, retail, automotive and media. I have international experience in different countries in Europe, America and Australia”.

Let us welcome Didac and Alejandra.

Datathon about pollution in Barcelona

 

A few years ago, when we created Bcn Analytics our vision was Barcelona can become a European analytics hub. Our ambition was to foster that different members of community (business, academia, data professionals) could meet and share experiences and knowledge. Now, 3 years after, we feel proud of we accomplished. We have organised 10 meet-ups where fantastic speakers from great organisations have shared their expertise: we had guests from Google, New York University, King.com, La Caixa, Telefonica, Schibsted, Social Point, BBVA, IPSOS or Vistaprint, among others. We also had the chance to organise two Datathons with Social Point so data scientists could compete to win some prizes while having fun with data.

But when we created BcnAnalytics we also wanted to contribute to make Barcelona a better city. We truly believe data can also be for good. So, we are proud to announce we are co-organising the first “Barcelona Pollution Datathon”. What is the Datathon about? First let me share some data points. According to this article 95% of people in Barcelona are breathing more particle pollution than is recommended by World Health Organisation. If you think about, this is scary. In fact air pollution in Barcelona rises by 48% on public transport strike days, study reveals. We thought we could do something to raise awareness on pollution levels and also get data scientists involved. And we decided to co-organise an event with CCCB, BSC, Leitat and Eurecat. That was the spurn of this first “Barcelona Pollution Datathon”.

The Datathon is going to be part of the exhibition “After the End of the World” which is being organised by CCCBB. Participants of the datathon will have to build a prediction model on Barcelona pollution levels. We have more than 3.000€ in prizes thanks to our sponsors Social Point, Holaluz and Gauss & Neumann. We also have the support of Mobile World Congress.

Datathon will be on January 20th and 21st and registration is now open through this link https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf6cMswcosinjbC6-VS13Ih4fIYUPaC3LYV5VcOGxLIiK8-IQ/viewform .

Do not miss it and let people know they can make a difference and also have access to great prizes.

Note: this blog entry has been written by Manuel Bruscas, co-founder of BcnAnalytics.  The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own

Save your date! Barcelona Data Science Meeting

Join Barcelona GSE for the first edition of the Barcelona Data Science Meeting, taking placeMarch 21-22, 2016 at UPF’s Ciutadella Campus.

Organized by the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics with participation of the Ramón Areces Foundation, this two-day meeting will bring together international Data Science experts from academia and industry:

DAY 1: RESEARCH IN DATA SCIENCE
Alberto Cavallo (MIT)
“The Billion Prices Project: Using Online Data for Inflation Measurement and Research”
Costantinos Daskalakis (MIT)
“Testing and Learning Distributions in Sublinear Time”
Andrew Gelman (Columbia University)
“Little Data: How Traditional Statistical Ideas Remain Relevant in a Big-Data World; or, The Statistical Crisis in Science; or, Open Problems in Bayesian Data Analysis”
Alexandros Karatzoglou (Telefonica)
“Deep Learning”
Modesto Orozco (IRB)
“Flops and Bytes in Biology”

DAY 2: DATA SCIENCE APPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS AND INSTITUTIONS
Speakers from companies will be announced shortly.
The conference aims to create an open environment for debate and exchange of knowledge, ideas, and views among researchers, professional experts, and students. We hope you will join us for the inaugural edition!

REGISTRATION AND MEETING DETAILS
Registration deadline: March 14, 2016

Video and highlights of the event From Customer to Revenue

From Customer to Revenue, the theme of our third event, brought together two speakers from industry to address challenges in revenue management.

We started the evening with a series of updates: 1) The BCNanalytics job board is a success and can be found on our homepage. 2) On 14th and 15th of November we will organize a Hackathon in collaboration with Social Point, further details can be found here. 3) We supported an intern named Enrico Kunz in analyzing twitter feeds to identify deals from tweets. Finally, our two industry speakers,  Sharon Biggar from Social Point and Francesc Paloma from Vueling, took the stage to share their experiences in revenue management.

Sharon from Social Point

Sharon started by explaining Social Point’s business model of free to play and how their games should not be seen as finalized products, but rather their games are continuously updated with content and feature updates. She went over various examples of how analytics helped Social Point identify points of improvement in their games. Analysing at which point in the gaming experience users drop out. Examining correlations between high transactions and high use of game features. Understanding the best use of bundled offers of in-game purchases to help convince users to make their first transaction. A general good rule of thumb that has shown to work well in Social Point’s free-to-play approach is “If the game is fun, the money will come”.

Francesc from Vueling

Francesc explained how Vueling has evolved in being data-driven since 2007. At Vueling it is important to identify periods that will result in a high number of bookings early on and have ticket prices that correspond to high demand. This means accounting for the different holiday periods in different countries, but also special events such as the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. In recent years, however, revenue management for airlines has mainly developed in the area of ancillary revenues, or revenues from non-ticket sources, such as seat reservation or on-board food services. Francesc gave several examples on how data helped in deciding on the pricing strategy such as fixing a ticket price for 24 hours before booking or using a dynamic price system for seat reservations.

Sharon and Francesc

After the presentations the audience got the opportunity to ask questions, allowing the speakers to address some further details of their approaches. The session closed with drinks and a chance for visitors to do some networking and discuss the topics presented.

Data driven personalisation: Gilt’s personalised flash sales

I am writing this post today on how Gilt (A leading American flash sales site) is leveraging further the power behind analytics to provide an improved customer experience. Gilt is starting to serve personlised daily offers based on an algorithm that takes into account factors like purchase data and past browsing behavior and combines it with direct customer preferences and feedback. They see it as a core element of their strategy to differentiate and get customer’s attention in a very competitive environment. In a recent interview with Tamara Guzbarg, senior director of analytics and research at Gilt, she stresses the importance of having a consolidated view of the customer across channels and devices to be able to provide real personalisation.
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