Husker Football Spring Red/White Game

First attempt at a Tableau data viz project. Will have to work on editing the annotations, so any input would be much appreciated. Click on the image to enlarge.

Thoughts on "The Third Wave" by Steve Case

The Third Wave: an entrepreneur's vision of the future is a new book by Steve Case, scheduled for release on April 5, 2016.

I tried to get an idea what topics would be discussed in this book with a Web search, but only came up with this article from Fortune entitled The Co-Founder of AOL Forecasts the Future of Tech (A version of this article appears in the April 1, 2016 issue of Fortune with the headline Steve Case Wants Tech to Love the Government). The interviewer's question:

The sectors you say are ripe for disruption—food, hospitals, transportation, education, financial services—are pretty ­fundamental. You’re ­talking about a huge shift in the way we live in the near future.

Case goes on to say that the Internet will become more a part of our lives. I would guess this is referencing IoT with applications to wearables, nearables and the whole quantified self movement toward behavioral change to a more healthy lifestyle. He cites the need for partnerships in this effort:

For example, if you really want to revolutionize health care, it’s not just about the app; it’s also about partnering with doctors and hospitals.

I would say that the healthcare sector has traditionally been reluctant to introduce broad-based tech initiatives. What reigns are proprietary solutions in the form of data silos that can ensure monetization. I think this will be the hardest prediction to see fruition.

Case cites the need to partner with Government:

Policy will also become a bigger deal because these are regulated businesses. In many cases, actually, the government is the largest customer, so a strategy of ­ignoring government—which is pretty common now—won’t work.

This is probably most likely to occur if it hasn't already with the various open data, social entrepreneurship programs enacted by the Obama administration such as The Opportunity Project.

My own impression is that we are beginning to appreciate the beginnings of what I consider Web 3.0.

The Rise of 2-Pizza Teams (increasing signal over noise)

Just to look back, Web 1.0 was about the dot com era with clicks or eyeballs being the main focus. This bubble burst, and Web 2.0 arrived with the advent of social media where content was considered king, especially when it could be generated free of charge thanks to user-generated media. Unfortunately, as more folks became involved, it became more about attracting attention, so that trolls with exaggerated rants and opinions became the noise that tends to quash any serious discussion.

Web 3.0 will bring about the acceptance of small groups of individuals, some say 2-pizza teams, Seth Godin calls tribes, who are dedicated to solving specific problems with domain knowledge matched with data science tools and methods.

Beyond this I don't want to make predictions. Social media is embracing more push than pull these days as we see the effort to eliminate chronological timelines in Twitter and Instagram, in order to support advertising.

What becomes of Facebook and Twitter? It might be the tribes that survive the nuclear meltdown.

Social entrepreneurship & open data: hot links

What I think are the most informative links for these topics:


B Corps: The 21st Century Standard for Business

University of Ghana advances to finals of $1million Hult prize competition

It Will Take a Village To Cut Food Waste, Says Roadmap

Social Enterprise Showcase and Pitch Competition

Social Impact Lab Berlin

The Most Important Impact Trend for Social Entrepreneurs in Health

Obama’s big data project targets community improvement

Epidemico

The Police Foundation’s Public Safety Open Data Portal

The White House Police Data Initiative

Socrata

The White House: source code policy

NBA's First Deaf Player Pivots To Social Entrepreneurship

Benefit Corporations Raising Capital

Open Opportunity Data: map for Philadelphia

Data Science: hot links

This is what I'm looking at for now:

Why an MIT PhD Says Big-Data Education Is Now 'Fundamentally Important'


TOP 10 BIG DATA AND DATA SCIENCE CONFERENCES IN 2016

Where do college graduates work?

New KDnuggets Tutorials Page: Learn R, Python, Data Visualization, Data Science, and more

Introducing the Chief Data Scientist

Does Open Data Build Trust?
A story of Demond, police data, and his grandmother’s recycling bin

The Definitive Guide to Do Data Science for Good

The Data Science Industry: Who Does What (Infographic)

Data and Medicine by Code.org

Predict Winds to Come with a Climate Data Visualization Tool

Gov't Open Data: Food Deserts

This online post from the American Nutrition Assoc. cites the USDA's definition of a "food desert": "[P]arts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers."

Above is the map they provide generated from data provided by the Dept. of Agriculture, Centers for Disease Control. 

This is a very important topic that is ideally portrayed by data visualization (dataviz) in map form.

The USDA Economic Research Service provides a Food Access Research Atlas where you can:

• Create maps showing food access indicators by census tract using different measures and indicators of supermarket accessibility;
• View indicators of food access for selected subpopulations; and
• Download census-tract-level data on food access measures.

They also have created a Food Environment Atlas with the following objectives:

• to assemble statistics on food environment indicators to stimulate research on the determinants of food choices and diet quality, and
• to provide a spatial overview of a community's ability to access healthy food and its success in doing so.

 Here in Omaha, the local news station reported on the plans of the Omaha Economic Development Corp. to bring fresh produce to North Omaha by constructing a grocery store using recycled shipping containers and starting a farmer's market. 

I was able to use the Food Access Research Atlas to do a quick map of the areas considered to be a food desert in North Omaha.

With this map, the green area corresponds to low income and low access at 1 and 10 miles. (Original Food Desert measure)

Ejection fraction (EF) measurements from MRI: Data Science Bowl 2015

I was eagerly anticipating this next competition in the Booz Allen Hamilton Data Science Bowl series on Kaggle, in association with the NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

I have just finished a refresher course in statistics, and am now moving onto more serious analytics tools. I'm looking forward to this practical application of data science that utilizes my domain knowledge and experience in medicine, as well as my work in producing medical media.


Here's the task:

4-chamber Cine MRI

"The 2015 Data Science Bowl challenges you to create an algorithm to automatically measure end-systolic and end-diastolic volumes in cardiac MRIs."

The purpose of these measurements is to determine cardiac output (volume of blood pumped per minute) by way of the ejection fraction (EF). "EF is the percentage of blood ejected from the left ventricle with each heartbeat." The end-systolic and end-diastolic volumes are used to derive the EF, which quantifies the heart's ability to pump blood.

Cardiac Output and Ejection Fraction

When the competition was started yesterday morning, what immediately came to mind was my experience as a surgery resident. Patients were scheduled for elective procedures and it was my job to ensure that they were prep'ed and cleared for surgery.

A patient's primary care physician might note that he or she had a cardiac history that needed to be addressed given the stresses of general anesthesia. EF was necessary to be determined.

This required a cardiac consult, which would involve a MUGA (multigated acquistion) scan (now MRI video is used), for the cardiologist to determine the EF. It was the number the anesthesiologist would look for on the chart before the patient was brought to the OR.

The Cleveland Clinic Web site provides an excellent discussion of the role of ejection fraction in determining cardiac health.

Frank-Starling Mechanism and a rubber band (a closer look why cardiac output and ejection fraction are important)

I remember reading my physiology text in medical school seeing this rubber band analogy to explain the Frank-Starling mechanism for heart function.

The heart muscle, specifically the left ventricle that has the major task of pumping throughout the entire body, stretches as venous blood is returned to the heart. Think of this as a rubber band stretching. Then the muscle contracts. This is the rubber band being allowed to apply a force as it contracts.

In this way, the heart can produce more forceful contractions if more blood is being returned from its trip through the body's circulatory system.

Systole is when the heart chamber (in this case we're looking at the left ventricle) is completely contracted, and diastole is when the the chamber is stretched and about to apply the force of contraction. As you can see in the photos, diastole 1 is moderate filling of the chamber, and diastole 2 is a greater filling. With diastole 2 in this example, you see how the rubber band (representing the heart muscle fibers) is stretched more and will apply a greater force when it contracts then with diastole 1. In the heart, the more the filling, the greater to force of contraction and therefore greater cardiac output.

"It's the heart's intrinsic way of synchronizing cardiac output with an increased venous return," says the author of this YouTube video.

With a diseased heart, this mechanism breaks down and the blood returning to the heart is not being adequately pumped to supply the oxygen needs of the body.



Good luck to all those teams participating. I'll be participating under the team name "Heartland Data."

(#datascibowl on Twitter)

Make / Happen: A Conference for Doers in Omaha

I was attracted to this conference when I noticed the inclusion of Seth Godin as the keynoter. I've read a number of his books on marketing and personal branding strategy, and even spoke to him on the phone once about the mathematics of blackjack. (I think it was in the context of the book about the MIT students who were counting cards at the casinos around the country.)

He has a new book out "Poke the Box," and you can read and listen to it for free with Amazon's Kindle Unlimtied program.

This conference is hosted by the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce and will be held locally here in Omaha at the Holland Center on Oct. 8.

http://www.make-happen.com/

From their "About" page:

No offense to the "sit-back-and-watch-er," but we're really looking for doers

Business and community leaders ready to reach beyond the status quo, stir something up and create real plans of action to positively impact themselves, their business and the community. Together, we’ll explore new paths toward personal development, learn how to ignite innovation and practice taking intentional risks. 

Make / Happen is an unanswered question, an incomplete phrase, a _____ that you must fill in for yourself. Make "what" happen? That’s entirely up to you.

 Speaker list:

KEYNOTE: Seth Godin
Best-Selling Author and Entrepreneur

• GO – Make Something Happen!

Nicole M. Bianchi
Founder & President, Resolution Partners

• Big Problems = Big Opportunities
  Issues need courageous and inspired business leaders to build scalable solutions...build something you are passionate about! 

Fergus Hoban
CEO, Think Whole Person Healthcare

Kim Hoogeveen, Ph.D. 
CEO and Psychologist, MindSet LLC

• It's the Culture, Stupid!

Steve Martin
CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska

Othello Meadows
Executive Director, Seventy Five North Revitalization Corp.

• Risking Comfort for Excellence

Doug Lipp
CEO & President, G. Douglas Lipp & Associates, International Consultant and Best-Selling Author

• Creating Cultures of Significance – The Magic of Imagine: Unleashing Your Creativity. Innovation lessons from Disney U.
   
• Budgets are Tight, Creativity is Free. Prescription for a No Excuses Culture

Jorge M. Zuniga, Ph.D.
Creighton University

• Giving a Hand to Innovation and Creativity: The 3D Printing Prosthetics Revolution

Joseph Plumeri
Vice Chairman, First Data Board of Directors

• The Power of Being Yourself: A game plan for success by putting passion into your life and work.

W. Todd  Johnson
Global Channel Leader, Entrepreneurship and Job Creation, Gallup

• Intrapreneurship: Finding the Right Intrapreneurs to Execute Ideas