Rise of Asia in Data Science

Yes, we in the U.S. are frequently insular about what is going on in the rest of the world. No doubt that's why I was a little caught off guard when I found out there is a conference on Spark this year in China.

So like any good Data Scientist, I decided to rely on data rather than anecdotes, and I plotted conferences by region over the past three years, using the list of conferences from kdnuggets.com.

In the chart above, "West" means USA, Canada, Western Europe and Australia. "East Asia" includes Southeastern Asia but not South Asia. "Other" includes South Asia, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, Mexico, and South America.

Undoubtedly, additional 2014 conferences will be announced as the year goes on, so that is why the 2014 bar is shorter -- it's partial data at this point. But the proportion of East Asian conferences from the whole, while still small, has taken a gigantic leap in 2014 compared to previous years.