Seminal Random Forests speaker - FYI

[Daniel Donahoe <da...@q.com>]

Dear Colleagues:

 

As Vice Chair of the Utah section of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers (ASME), I invited Professor Adele Cutler (Utah State University,
USU)  to speak on Big Data. The ASME/UT executive committee agreed, and the
meeting was hosted by the Mechanical Engineering Department at the
University of Utah on February 8th. Professor Cutler worked with Professor
Leo Breimen (her PhD advisor at UC Berkeley, now deceased) to create the
method now in Mahout named Random Forests. You can find more background on
RF on Adele's website at USU.  The link to the video of her talk will be
posted soon on the ASME/UT website. I recommend you check this out, because 

 

I find that inventors/authors/creators usually have a different view than
you may expect, a profoundly insightful vantage point illuminated by an
unencumbered vision. [Note: Most engineers make a mistake ignoring history.
There is a good reason ABET requires undergraduate liberal art electives,
because initial conditions define the trajectory of events.]

 

We had some debate on how to pronounce "Mahout". Is the Hindi pronunciation
generally used, and if not, why?

 

Regards,

 

Dan Donahoe

N Salt Lake

 

 

 

 

                                                     

Re: Seminal Random Forests speaker - FYI

[Dawid Weiss <da...@cs.put.poznan.pl>]

You may find some answers here?
https://cwiki.apache.org/MAHOUT/mahoutname.html

Dawid

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 6:27 PM, Daniel Donahoe <da...@q.com> wrote:
> Dear Colleagues:
>
>
>
> As Vice Chair of the Utah section of the American Society of Mechanical
> Engineers (ASME), I invited Professor Adele Cutler (Utah State University,
> USU)  to speak on Big Data. The ASME/UT executive committee agreed, and the
> meeting was hosted by the Mechanical Engineering Department at the
> University of Utah on February 8th. Professor Cutler worked with Professor
> Leo Breimen (her PhD advisor at UC Berkeley, now deceased) to create the
> method now in Mahout named Random Forests. You can find more background on
> RF on Adele's website at USU.  The link to the video of her talk will be
> posted soon on the ASME/UT website. I recommend you check this out, because
>
>
>
> I find that inventors/authors/creators usually have a different view than
> you may expect, a profoundly insightful vantage point illuminated by an
> unencumbered vision. [Note: Most engineers make a mistake ignoring history.
> There is a good reason ABET requires undergraduate liberal art electives,
> because initial conditions define the trajectory of events.]
>
>
>
> We had some debate on how to pronounce "Mahout". Is the Hindi pronunciation
> generally used, and if not, why?
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Dan Donahoe
>
> N Salt Lake
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Re: Seminal Random Forests speaker - FYI

[Ted Dunning <te...@gmail.com>]

The problem with "using Hindi pronunciation" is 3-fold.

a) it is hard to get consistent answers about the Hindi pronunciation.
 This seems to be partly vexed by the assumption on the part of some of the
people that I have asked that I want to know the way that native English
speakers mis-pronounce the word.

b) when I do get plausible answers about Hindi pronunciation, the dipthongs
involved are very difficult for speakers of European languages who do not
speak Indic languages.  I usually do well at imitating difficult sounds,
but I confess that it is difficult to avoid making Hindi speakers laugh
when I try this word.

c) elephants are mostly found in southern India where Hindi isn't even the
dominant language.

In the end, I tend to say that anybody who contributes to the project can
say it any way that they want.

But I do like to point out the pun on a Hebrew word that is available if
you use the fruit-rhyming alternative.  See the wiki page that Dawid refers
to for more info.

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 10:27 AM, Daniel Donahoe <da...@q.com> wrote:

> We had some debate on how to pronounce "Mahout". Is the Hindi pronunciation
> generally used, and if not, why?
>