DM: Introductions

[Will Dwinnell]

Hi,

My name is Will Dwinnell.
I have a degree in economics with a minor in computer science from
Villanova and an M.B.A. from Pittsburgh.

I work with machine learning systems and statistics.  I have even 
built a
few learning systems myself.  Professionally, my work has been all 
over the
map.  I have done commercial work, industrial work and even some 
medical
diagnostic work (for Baylor College of Medicine).  I guess I could 
tell a
few stories about my work if anyone's interested.  I am familiar with 
many
of the machine learning technologies (neural networks, tree induction,
etc.) and many of the tools available for this kind of work (PRW, 
Darwin,
CARTŪ , etc.).  I have published in the modeling field and have more 
stuff
coming out (look for me in "PC AI").  I have also presented 
occasionally.

Presently, I am 'between jobs' (anyone know of any DM job leads near
Philadelphia or Wilmington?) and I continue to write and even consult 
from
time to time.  Also, I am an Assistant SysOp on the AI Expert Forum on
CompuServe.

One issue I'd like to raise is: what are the exact boundaries of "data
mining"?  There is significant overlap with any number of other 
fields:
statistics, machine learning, A.I., database and so on.  This gets 
into the
issue of hardware requirements, etc. too.  Many people seem to think 
that
one needs supercomputing hardware to do this work, yet my experience 
has
been that much of this work (modeling, clustering, analysis) can be 
done on
PCs.

Will Dwinnell
610-917-0594
predictor@compuserve.com