In this note research and publications by Zdzisław Pawlak and his collaborators from 1970s and 1981 are recalled. Focus is placed on the sources of inspiration which one can identify on the basis of those publications. Finally, developments from 1981 related to rough sets and information systems are outlined.

You can find lots of information on Kaggle about competing, but it is difficult to know what is relevant and also very expensive in terms of time and effort – so we put all the essential knowledge into one book. Konrad: My favorite part is Chapter 12 on simulation competitions. Reinforcement learning is a field I have been getting into over the last few years – unlike computer vision or NLP, it has yet to reach wider appeal outside academic circles. It was an interesting and educational experience to try and distill what I have learned into a useful introduction to that fascinating domain. Luca: I enjoyed writing about the history of Kaggle and the professional opportunities it offers.

Konrad is a data science manager with experience stretching longer than he likes to ponder on. He holds a PhD in statistics from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he focused on problems of extreme dependency modeling in credit risk. He slowly moved from classic statistics towards machine learning and into the business applications world. Konrad worked in a variety of financial institutions on an array of data problems and visited all the stages of a data product cycle: from translating: business requirements ("what do they really need"), through data acquisition ("spreadsheets and flat files? He currently leads a central data science team at Adevinta.

BERLIN – German industrial robot-maker Hahn Automation plans to invest millions of euros in new factories in China over the next three years, keen to capitalize on an economy that's rebounding more rapidly than others from the COVID-19 crisis. "If we want to grow with the Chinese market, we have to manufacture on the ground," Chief Executive Frank Konrad said of the investment drive, intended to skirt Chinese export hurdles in what Beijing views as a strategic sector. "Our goal is to make up to 25% of our sales in China by 2025," he said, up from roughly 10% now. But while the Chinese recovery may be good news for companies like Hahn, it is complicating efforts by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government to diversify trade relations and become less dependent on Asia's rising superpower. Despite Berlin's concerns, German industry is deepening ties with China, which battled the pandemic with stricter measures than other countries, moved out of a first lockdown earlier and saw demand rebound more quickly. Olaf Kiesewetter, CEO of car sensor supplier UST in Thuringia in eastern Germany, shares the same ambition of making 25% of sales in China.