PdVega, a new library for pandas, Elastic Cloud Enterprise version 1.1.3, Google Analytics’ Audiences report, EverString’s Data platform, and more in today’s top stories around machine learning, blockchain, and data science news.
1. Introducing PdVega, a library for creating Interactive Vega-Lite Plots for Pandas
The PdVega library allows quick creation of interactive Vega-Lite plots from Pandas dataframes. Vega-Lite is a visualization specification that allows users to declaratively describe which data features should map to which visualization features using a well-defined JSON schema. PdVega uses an API that is nearly identical to Pandas’ built-in plotting API. It is designed for easy use within the Jupyter notebook. The resulting plots are beautiful and dynamic data visualizations with a minimum of boilerplate. More information is available at the official documentation.
2. Elastic Cloud Enterprise version 1.1.3 released
Elastic Cloud Enterprise (ECE) 1.1.3 has been released with an important bug fix to support Elasticsearch 6.1.x deployments. This new release adds support for Elasticsearch and Kibana version 6.1.3 by fixing a potential data loss bug when attempting a cluster configuration change (meaning any cluster configuration change, such as an upgrade or the addition of capacity). More bug fixes include:
- For stack versions 6.1.0 and above, Kibana now navigates to the home page when there is no data.
- Added a check that ensures the reallocation of clusters happens only after data is successfully migrated.
- Added an internal configuration flag when starting ZooKeeper that corrects a failure during an ECE upgrade.
Other minor bug fixes and changes can be found in the release notes.
3. Google Analytics rolls out new ‘Audiences’ report to analyze a website’s custom audiences.
Google Analytics has introduced a new report in Analytics called “Audiences” which analyzes a website’s custom audiences. The new Audience dimension can be used in segments and custom reports. With the new Audiences report, users can now view how their audience is performing and subsequently evaluate remarketing efforts. The Audiences report can display the following metrics:
- Acquisition: The volume of users an audience is sending, and how well the audience works to generate potential new business.
- Behavior: How well a site engages a particular audience based on bounce rate, pages per session, and time on site.
- Conversions: How well an audience is performing in terms of goal completions and transactions.
4. Hortonworks updates its streaming analytics platform for better data flow management
Hortonworks Inc. incorporated some new releases to their Hortonworks DataFlow (HDF) streaming analytics platform. It now has the ability to share and publish data flows directly to production with improved support for complex processes. According to Scott Gnau, Hortonworks’ CTO, “The new release will be particularly useful for companies in regulated environments that need to rigorously document and govern their data”. Apart from this, HDF can now also be integrated with the Apache Atlas data governance and metadata framework, Hortonworks’s SmartSense problem resolution and optimization software, and Apache Knox authentication gateway. The new release is available as on 1st Feb’2018. All Hortonworks enhancements have been incorporated into their respective open-source projects.
5. EverString announces ML powered Data Platform for B2B marketing firms
EverString announced the launch of a new Data Platform powered by Machine Learning to provide sales and marketing teams with company intelligence. The platform combines machine learning and AI to help keep contact, firmographic, technographic and intent insights up to date in real time. The platform can automatically identify problematic data and apply machine learning to improve system-wide accuracy. With this platform, B2B companies can prioritize pipeline to focus time and resources on high-value prospects and maintain their growing databases with accurate data on relevant prospects.