Sunday data/statistics link roundup (6/16/13 - Father’s day edition!)

1. Datapalooza! I’m wondering where my invite is? I do health data stuff, pick me, pick me! Actually it does sound like a pretty good idea - in general giving a bunch of smart people access to interesting data and real science problems can produce some cool results (link via Dan S.)
2. This report on precision medicine from the Manhattan Institute is related to my post this week on personalized medicine. I like the idea that we should be focusing on developing new ideas for adaptive trials (my buddy Michael is all over that stuff). I did thing that it was a little pie-in-the-sky with plenty of buzzwords like Bayesian causal networks and pattern recognition. I think these ideas are certainly applicable, but the report, I think, overstates the current level of applicability of these methods. We need more funding and way more research to support this area before we should automatically adopt it - big data can be used to confuse when methods aren’t well understood (link via Rafa via Marginal Revolution).
3. rOpenSci wins a grant from the Sloan Foundation! Psyched to see this kind of innovative open software development get the support it deserves. My favorite rOpenSci package is rFigshare, what’s yours?
4. A k-means approach to detecting what will be trending on Twitter. It always gets me so pumped up to see the creative ways that methods that have been around forever can be adapted to solve real, interesting problems.
5. Finally, I thought this link was very appropriate for father’s day. I couldn’t agree more that the best kind of learning happens when you are just so in to something that you forget you are learning. Happy father’s day everyone!