One great element of SAS’ Analytics2011 conference (not a SAS Users Group conference, but a great place for SAS users to find information about using SAS) is how it gives students a platform to showcase their work in analytics. Every year, hundreds of posters are submitted outlining innovative applications and research in the field of analytics.

One of this years’ student winners is Siddarth Shankar, who authored a poster titled “Visualization of the Sentiment of Tweets.” We asked Siddarth a few questions:

 1. Tell us a little about yourself: Where are you from, what university are you attending, at what stage are you in your education or career?

My name is R. Siddarth Shankar, a masters student specializing in Computer Science from NC State. I defended my thesis on "Visualization of the Sentiment of Tweets" under the guidance of Dr. Christopher G. Healey. I am really interested in using data mining for solving complex problems (business and otherwise like Climate). I especially like the domain of Text Analytics and Machine Learning. 

2.  Can you describe briefly the objectives of your paper?

•  Collecting tweets on a topic of interest.
•  A syntactic, term-based approach for determining the sentiment of a tweet.
•  A two-dimensional emotional model for mapping sentiment to a corresponding emotion. 

3. What statistical methods did you apply and why?

Simple arithmetic mean and normal distribution. In the arithmetic mean approach, every word contributes uniformly to average score. In normal distribution, using standard deviation takes into account the spread of the values and can give a more accurate estimate than the former method.

4. What led you to select this particular topic?

Passion, interest and an urge to do something totally different. 

5. What are next steps for you in your education or career? What are your career objectives?

I am now considering some industry exposure. I have not decided on whether to do my Ph.D, but will not rule out the possibility. As of now and always, I would like to excel in my passion (that which interests me especially is data mining and text analytics) and develop innovative solutions for a better customer experience.  

A special note, I am writing this sentence in the Tamil language (my mother tongue): எல்லா புகழும் இறைவன் ஒறுவனுக்கே (All glory only for God). 

US regional users groups offer student scholarships to help students attend their conferences. For more information, visit http://support.sas.com/learn/ap/student/index.html.