Reviewers Needed For Visual Analytics Science And Technology (VAST) 2011 Challenge (PNNL)

The National Visualization and Analytics Center at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in coordination with the IEEE sponsors a visual analytics challenge each year at the IEEE conference for students and researchers.  

 

In order to judge the output from the participants, the challenge organizers asks for analysts to participate as reviewers of the submissions.  Kris Cook, who is on the contest committee, has asked me to put the word out that the contest needs reviewers for this year’s challenge.  

 

This is an unpaid, all volunteer effort to assist a non-profit sponsored contest.  Kris’ note to me is reproduced below with additional links.  If you are interested in participating or have any additional questions, please contact her directly.  

 

For what it is worth, taking a look at the VAST entries is a very interesting and rewarding way to learn what is happening in the world of visual analytics.

Begin Text of Note: 

Once again, we are in need of analysts to help us review submissions to the Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) Challenge.  The goal of the VAST Challenge is for teams to design intuitive new visualizations that support analysis of complex data sets.

We are soliciting reviewers for three mini-challenges and a Grand Challenge.
•    Mini-Challenge 1 challenges participants to develop tools to characterize the spread of an epidemic using the geospatial and micro-blogging data provided
•    Mini-Challenge 2 challenges participants to create cyber security situational awareness visualizations to identify events of interest in a collection of computer network logs
•    Mini-Challenge 3 challenges participants to create visual analytics tools to support investigation into criminal activity.
•    The Grand Challenge asks participants to look across all Mini-Challenge data to provide visual insights into an over-arching scenario.
More specific information about the tasks may be found at http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/localphp/hcil/vast11/index.php/.

As a reviewer you would be responsible for viewing 3-4 submissions. Each submission consists of:
•    Documents of several pages in length describing the software and how it was used in solving the mini challenge.
•    Screen shots of the software in use on the data
•    Video showing an example of the analytic process used by the team.  
Submissions will be available for review by July 2nd and reviews must be returned no later than COB July 15th.  All review materials will be accessible over the internet. Reviews will be conducted using the Precision Conference web-based reviewing system. Reviewers will be registered in the Precision Conference system and will submit their reviews using Precision Conference web pages.

If you are interested in reviewing please send e-mail to kris.cook at pnnl.gov no later than June 22nd.  Please indicate which mini challenge you would be most interested in reviewing.

Thank you for your time and consideration!

Contest: What's Wrong With This Article?

(Note:  I intend, over the next year or so, to sponsor a number of contests designed to encourage students (and anyone else) to improve their analytic skills.  Today's contest has to do with critical reading skills.

The rules are simple:  The first person to post the correct answer in the comments wins an incredibly valuable, gold-plated Mercyhurst College Institute of Intelligence Studies T-shirt.  OK, so it's not gold-plated.  It is still incredibly valuable...

Obviously, anonymous answers won't count.)

Assume for a minute that the portion of the article copied below is important to some analysis you are working on.  There is something here that may be wrong or it may be right but it is definitely worth checking out (Hint:  It is not the obvious stuff).  What is it it and why (correct answers must include both)?

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -- Argentina have become the bookies' favourite to win the first World Cup on African soil, after two clear wins in their opening matches while their closest competitors have failed to impress.

Bookmaker William Hill said England's lacklustre goalless draw with Algeria on Friday was one of the most profitable matches involving the national team ever as fans lost money on bets for them to win in Cape Town.

"The game against Algeria was probably the biggest winning match involving England for us ever -- we made an absolute fortune," said William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe.

"On that match I estimate that the British bookmaking industry made $14.8 million," he added.

Sharpe said the overall turnover may be affected if England, who meet Slovenia on Wednesday in their last group match, do not qualify for the second round.

"What will happen is that overall turnover will go down," he said. "British punters will lost interest in the World Cup if England go out."

You can read the rest of the article here but I am only interested in the portion copied above.  In addition, you should not need to do any additional research to answer this challenge.

Good luck!