Big Data and Visual Analytics-Springer(2017).pdf

The editors of this book, an accomplished senior data scientist and systems engineer, Thomas Anthony, and an academic leader, Dr. Sang Suh, with broad expertise from artificial intelligence to data analytics, constitute a perfect team to achieve the goal of compiling a book on Big Data and Visual Analytics. For most uninitiated professionals “Big Data” is nothing but a buzzword or a new fad. For the people in the trenches, such as Sang and Thomas, Big Data and associated analytics is a matter of serious business. I am honored to have been given the opportunity to review their compiled volume and write a foreword to it. After reviewing the chapters, I realized that they have developed a comprehensive book for data scientists and students by taking into account both theoretical and practical aspects of this critical and growing area of interest. The presentations are broad and deep as the need arise. In addition to covering all critical processes involving data science, they have uniquely provided very practical visual analytics applications so that the reader learns from the perspective executed as an engineer- ing discipline. This style of presentation is a unique contribution to this new and growing area and places this book at the top of the list of comparable books. The chapters covered are 1. Automated Detection of Central Retinal Vein Occlu- sion Using Convolutional Neural Network, by “Bismita Choudhury, Patrick H. H. Then, and Valliappan Raman”; 2. Swarm Intelligence Applied to Big Data Analytics for Rescue Operations with RASEN Sensor Networks, by “U. John Tanik, Yuehua Wang, and Serkan G. ldal”; 3. Gender Classification Based on Deep Learning, by “Dhiraj Gharana, Sang Suh, and Mingon Kang”; 4. Social and Organizational Culture in Korea and Women’s Career Development, by “Choonhee Yang and Yongman Kwon”; 5. Big Data Framework for Agile Business (BDFAB) as a Basis for Developing Holistic Strategies in Big Data Adoption, by “Bhuvan Unhelkar”; 6. Scalable Gene Sequence Analysis on Spark, by “Muthahar Syed, Jinoh Kim, and Taehyun Hwang”; 7. Big Sensor Data Acquisition and Archiving with Compression, by “Dongeun Lee”; 8. Advanced High Performance Computing for Big Data Local Visual Meaning, “Ozgur Aksu”; 9. Transdisciplinary Benefits of Convergence in Big Data Analytics, “U. John Tanik and Darrell Fielder”; 10. A Big Data Analytics Approach in Medical Image Segmentation Using Deep Convolutional v vi Foreword Neural Networks, by “Zheng Zhang, David Odaibo, and Murat M. Tanik”; 11. Big Data in Libraries, by “Robert Olendorf and Yan Wang”; 12. A Framework for Social Network Sentiment Analysis Using Big Data Analytics, by “Bharat Sri Harsha Karpurapu and Leon Jololian”; 13. Big Data Analytics and Visualization: Finance, by “P. Shyam and Larry Mave”; 14. Study of Hardware Trojans in a Closed Loop Control System for an Internet-of-Things Application, by “Ranveer Kumar and Karthikeyan Lingasubramanian”; 15. High Performance/Throughput Computing Workflow for a Neuro-Imaging Application: Provenance and Approaches, by “T. Anthony, J. P. Robinson, J. Marstrander, G. Brook, M. Horton, and F. Skidmore.” The review of the above diverse content convinces me that the promise of the wide application of big data becomes abundantly evident. A comprehensive transdisciplinary approach is also evident from the list of chapters. At this point I have to invoke the roadmap published by the National Academy of Sciences titled “Convergence: Facilitating Transdisciplinary Integration of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Beyond” (ISBN 978-0-309-30151-0). This document and its NSF counterpart states convergence as “an approach to problem solving that cuts across disciplinary boundaries. It integrates knowledge, tools, and ways of thinking from life and health sciences, physical, mathematical, and computational sciences, engineering disciplines, and beyond to form a comprehensive synthetic framework for tackling scientific and societal challenges that exist at the interfaces of multiple fields.” Big data and associated analytics is a twenty-first century area of interest, providing a transdisciplinary framework to the problems that can be addressed with convergence. Interestingly, the Society for Design and Process Science (SDPS), www.sdpsnet. org, which one of the authors has been involved with from the beginning, has been investigating convergence issues since 1995. The founding technical principle of SDPS has been to identify the unique “approach to problem solving that cuts across disciplinary boundaries.” The answer was the observation that the notions of Design and Process cut across all disciplines and they should be studied scientifically in their own merits, while being applied for developing the engineering of artifacts. This book brings the design and process matters to the forefront through the study of data science and, as such, brings an important perspective on convergence. Incidentally, the SDPS 2017 conference was dedicated to “Convergence Solutions.” SDPS is an international, cross-disciplinary, multicultural organization dedicated to transformative research and education through transdisciplinary means. SDPS celebrated its twenty-second year during the SDPS 2017 conference with emphasis on convergence. Civilizations depend on technology and technology comes from knowledge. The integration of knowledge is the key for the twenty-first century problems. Data science in general and Big Data Visual Analytics in particular are part of the answer to our growing problems. This book is a timely addition to serve data science and visual analytics community of students and scientists. We hope that it will be published on time to be distributed during the SDPS 2018 conference. The comprehensive and practical nature of the book, addressing complex twenty-first century engineering problems in a transdisciplinary manner, is something to be celebrated. I am, as one of the Foreword vii founders of SDPS, a military and commercial systems developer, industrial grade software developer, and a teacher, very honored to write this foreword for this important practical book. I am convinced that it will take its rightful place in this growing area of importance.