most cost-effective opportunities for
increasing their sustainability.
IBM: “A SMS text classification system
for UNICEF Uganda”
Authors: Prem Melville, Vijil Chenthamarakshan, Rick Lawrence, Solomon Assefa, Machine Learning Group,
IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, N.Y.;
James Powell, Sharad Sapra, UNICEF
Uganda; Rajesh Anandan, US Fund for
UNICEF, New York, N.Y.
Presenting author: Rick Lawrence
Abstract: U-report is an opensource SMS platform operated by
UNICEF Uganda, designed to give
community members a voice on issues that impact them. Data received
by the system are either SMS responses to a poll conducted by UNICEF or
unsolicited reports of problems occurring anywhere within Uganda. There
are currently more than 200,000 Ureport participants, and they send up
to 10,000 unsolicited text messages a
week. The objective of the program in
Uganda is to understand the data in
real time and have issues addressed
by the appropriate department in
UNICEF in a timely manner. Given
the high volume and velocity of the
data streams, manual inspection of all
messages is no longer sustainable.
This talk describes an automated
A NA L Y T I C S
message understanding and routing
system deployed my IBM at UNICEF.
We employ recent advances in data
mining to get the most out of labeled
training data, while incorporating domain knowledge from experts. We
discuss the tradeoffs, design choices
and challenges in applying such techniques in a real-world deployment. We
conclude with a discussion of the societal impact that U-report is already
driving in Uganda and discuss plans
for future deployment.
Fiserv: “Price & revenue optimization
for one of the largest acquiring banks
in South America”
Authors: Suman Kumar Singh, Aditya
Khandekar, Tarang Goyal, Fiserv
Abstract: The Merchant Acquirer had
about a million merchants in mass market. An opportunity existed to selectively
optimize price for merchants based on
certain attributes. A statistical segmentation was developed following which nonlinear differential price elasticity function
was built. For each segment, price elasticity along with an optimization algorithm
with complex constraints was developed
to optimize price and achieve optimal
revenue.
– Pooja Dewan (committee chair of
the Innovative Applications in Analytics
Award)
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 014
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