Month: December 2009

Holiday Season Offer

Here is a great offer from the Predictive Analytics Conference. Basically a 15 % discount to visit PAWS in San Fransisco AND a chance to win a free pass as well.

pawsf10_bp_125

discount code for the SF 2010 show: AJAY010
It gives your readers a discount of 15% off a Two Day Conference Pass (workshops not included). For every three people who register using your code, we will give you a free pass to the conference.

Since I basically need just one pass for the conference- if I cross more than 1 free pass, I will simply give it back to the people who registered using my blog. Simple.

However if this had been NFL tickets the offer may not be repeated again  🙂 ( note to myself- I need to get into predictive analytics  for sports using the data mining and analytics softwares I have been reading or find a company that has a predictive analytics for SPORTS vertical).

Books of 2009

Here are some books that I read, tried to read and should get more time to read.You can click the link as WordPress.com does not allow the use of scripts.

Non coding Favorite Book ” The Age of Unthinkable”

Coding Favorite Book “R for SAS and SPSS Users” and “Elementary Statistics using JMP”

With Thanks to SAS Publishing, Bob Muenchen, James Taylor for the books as gifts.

Google Web Intelligence (Beta)

Here is a screenshot from the kind of insights that can be created by the new Intelligence features in the free Google Analytics.

It can be used in websites as well as technical support websites to help create customer segments based on Behavior of visitors.


Avg. Time on Site
00:03:23 81%
expected: 00:01:23-00:01:59		 Total Traffic Significance:
00:06:29 180%
expected: 00:01:59-00:02:48		 Landing Page: /
36 Visits (15.3% of total)		 Significance:

Bounce Rate
51.49% 29%
expected: 71.50%-73.53%		 Total Traffic Significance:
49.69% 30%
expected: 67.03%-73.71%		 Visitor Type: New Visitor
163 Visits (69.4% of total)		 Significance:
53.23% 27%
expected: 68.88%-76.93%		 Country/Territory: United States
124 Visits (52.8% of total)		 Significance:
55.56% 26%
expected: 70.66%-79.68%		 Visitor Type: Returning Visitor
72 Visits (30.6% of total)		 Significance:

Pageviews
578 162%
expected: 199-221		 Total Traffic Significance:
333 233%
expected: 95-108		 Country/Territory: United States
124 Visits (52.8% of total)		 Significance:
428 178%
expected: 136-170		 Visitor Type: New Visitor
163 Visits (69.4% of total)		 Significance:
213 168%
expected: 70-84		 Medium: referral
93 Visits (39.6% of total)		 Significance:
116 86%
expected: 61-87		 Source: google
56 Visits (23.8% of total)		 Significance:
150 122%
expected: 62-76		 Visitor Type: Returning Visitor
72 Visits (30.6% of total)		 Significance:

Visitors
201 74%
expected: 111-120		 Total Traffic Significance:

Visits
235 97%
expected: 112-124		 Total Traffic Significance:
124 112%
expected: 0-58		 Country/Territory: United States
124 Visits (52.8% of total)		 Significance:
75 115%
expected: 0-41		 Source: (direct)
75 Visits (31.9% of total)		 Significance:
163 95%
expected: 0-85		 Visitor Type: New Visitor
163 Visits (69.4% of total)		 Significance:
93 144%
expected: 0-41		 Medium: referral
93 Visits (39.6% of total)		 Significance:
72 76%
expected: 0-43		 Visitor Type: Returning Visitor
72 Visits (30.6% of total)		 Significance:
51 107%
expected: 0-25		 Source: linkedin.com
51 Visits (21.7% of total)		 Significance:
48 98%
expected: 0-26		 Referral Path: linkedin.com/news
48 Visits (20.4% of total)		 Significance:

New Version of R released: R 2.10.1

Note from  Denmark on the R _Project Build, ( currently Copen Hagen is seeing more excitement since Shakespeare mentioned it in Hamlet -thanks to the hot air in Global Warming Marathon)

Peter Dalgaard P.Dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk
Mon Dec 14 11:20:20 CET 2009

R-2.10.1.tar.gz was built a short while ago.

This is a maintenance release and fixes a number of mostly minor issues.

See the full list of changes below.

You can get it from

http://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-2/R-2.10.1.tar.gz

or wait for it to be mirrored at a CRAN site nearer to you. Binaries
for various platforms will appear in due course.

        For the R Core Team

        Peter Dalgaard

SPSS Directions : Rexer Survey Results

Here are some results shared by Dr Karl Rexer of Rexer Analytics- they were presented at SPSS Directions. Clementine was #1 in customer satisfaction — everyone (N=78) who identified it as their primary tool were satisfied or very satisfied. It’s pretty amazing that not even one person was neutral (it was a 5-point scale).

For a detailed poster on the results contact http://www.RexerAnalytics.com More than 710 data mining professionals had completed the survey.

Here are some results shared by Dr Karl Rexer of Rexer Analytics- they were presented at SPSS Directions

When asked to select all of the software packages they use for data mining, each person selected an average of 5 tools.  More data miners reported using SPSS Statistics than any other tool.  And when we asked people to indicate their primary data mining tool, the tool selected by the most data miners was SPSS Modeler (Clementine).  The SPSS people were also thrilled to see that Clementine was #1 in customer satisfaction — everyone (N=78) who identified it as their primary tool were satisfied or very satisfied.  It’s pretty amazing that not even one person was neutral (it was a 5-point scale).

For a  detailed poster on the results contact www.RexerAnalytics.com More than 710 data mining professionals had completed the survey.

Time for the PAWS Conference

I just got an email from the great Dr Eric Siegel, one of my many mentors in this field of learning analytics and data. There are just three more days left for the Early Bird Price- so if you are doing your Media Planning Budget – it is a good time to register here. You can click on the screenshot itself to go to Registration Page.

Christmas Carol: The Best Software (BI-Stats-Analytics)

There is no best software- they are just optimized for various constraints and tangible as well as intangible needs as defined for users.

  1. There is no best software- they are just optimized for various constraints and tangible as well as intangible needs as defined for users.  ( Image below Citation- support.sas.com )
  2. Price in products is defined as Demand divided by Supply. Sometimes this is Expected Demand over Expected Supply ( see Oil Prices) Everyone grumbles over prices but we pay what we think is fair. ( citation http://bm2.genes.nig.ac.jp/RGM2/index.php?ctv=Survival
  3. Prices in services are defined by value creation as well- Value= Benefit Divided by Cost  Benefits are tangible as in how much money it saves in fraud as well as intangible – how easy it is to start using JMP versus R Commander  Costs are Tangible- How much do we have to pay using our cheque book for this annual license or perpetual license or one time license or maintain contract or application support.Intangible costs are how long I have to hold the phone while talking to customer support and how much time it takes me to find the best solution using the website on my own without a sales person bothering me with frequent calls. (citation- http://academic.udayton.edu/gregelvers/psy216/spss/graphs.htm#tukey
  4. All sales people ( especially in the software industry) spam you with frequent calls, email reminders and how their company is the best company ever with the best software in the history of mankind. That is their job and they are pushed by sales quotas and pulled by their own enthusiasm to sell more to same customer. If you ever bought three licences and found out you just needed two at the end of the year- forgive the salesman. As Arthur Miller said’ All Salesmen are Dreamers  (Citation of STATA graph below http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/Stata/library/GraphExamples/code/grbartall.htm)
  5. Technology moves faster than you can say Jackie Robinson. and it is getting faster. Research and Development ( R and D) will always move slower than the speed at which Marketing thinks they can move. See http://www.dilbert.com for more insights on this. You either build a Billion Dollar in house lab ( like Palo Alto – remember) or you go for total outsourcing (like semi conductors and open source do). Or you go for a mix and match. ( Citation- http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~burkardt/html/matlab_graphics/matlab_graphics.html )

Based on the above parameters the best statistical software for 2009 continues to be the software that uses a mixture of Genetic Algorithms, Time Series Based Regression and Sampling – it is the software that runs in the head of the statistical /mathematical / customer BRAIN

Thats the best Software ever.

(Citation – Hugh of http://gapingvoid.com/ )

Happy Hols