I’m currently at Denver, Colorado, for the 10th International Conference on
Precision Agriculture. So far, it’s been quite interesting to see lots of talks
on what’s (for me) data analysis problems. It’s also nice to see that basic
linear regression is usually the tool which is being used as the most advanced
tool for any kind of prediction tasks. I’ll have too see whether throwing more
advanced data mining stuff at the existing problems is doing any good.

Presenting my talk at the ICPA 2010

My talk on the hierarchical spatial clustering I’ve developed for the purpose
of management zone delineation worked out okay. I think that I did a good job
on adapting my talk to this totally different audience, judging from the
feedback I received after the talk. It was really nice not having to explain
too much details on the data I have because the audience just knew those
attributes. I might even have gotten the point across about what the advantages
of my clustering are in comparison to existing approaches. The presentation slides
are here: russ2010icpa-slides.pdf

Some miscellaneous stuff: As usual (for the US, that is), the temperatures in
the convention center are around 18 degrees Celsius, with a light breeze from
the airconditioning. Although I love A/C and really don’t have any issues with
getting sick of those temperatures, it felt a bit chilly after half a day,
especially compared to outside temperatures of around 35-38 degrees celsius. On
top of that, there’s lots of icy water to drink from. Along the same lines I
tested the fridge in my apartment which has a range of 2 degrees to -5 degrees
(min to max) — right, that’s a fridge, not a freezer. It’s just strange. RTD
light rail is also A/C, which is really convenient to travel in.

I’ll grab the best graduate student paper award later today, nice.