Year: 2011

Try JMP for free in steps 1-2-3

Test a 30 day free trial of JMP, the beautiful software with the ugliest website.

In case you have never used JMP, but know the difference between a mean and a mode- take a look.

Step 1 Fill long and badly designed outdated form (note the blue lightening graphics design and font)


Step 2 See uselessly long message, as the website does require registration but it has not done  any oAuth/SM easy registration even though they help sell software in the same campus on social media

Step 3 Wait for 352 mb TO DOWNLOAD without a bit torrent or mirror servers, or even a link for scheduling Download Accelerator-

Note internet connections can be lousy (globally not just in India) to categorize 352 mb of downloads as painful.


And after all the violence and double talk
There’s just a song in all the trouble and the strife

JMP is still the best easiest to use powerful Big Data software with extensions into R and SAS.

Tips to Play Farmville Really Well

Here are some tips to play Farmville really well-

1) Keep your Farmville friends in a seperate friend list  by creating a list at http://www.facebook.com/friends/edit/

This ensures friendship , work and Farmville dont mess around with each other. You also dont need a lot of friends in Farmville (max 40 actives) unlike Mafia Wars

2) Register at http://rewards.zynga.com/ to get free or double rewards by doing the same work. These rewards can be redeemed in-game

3) Set a time as well as money budget. Like $10 per month and 1 hour on weekends with 15 minutes on weekdays with max 3-4 logins. Continue reading “Tips to Play Farmville Really Well”

Free and Open Source cannot get basic economics correct

Nutch robots
Image via Wikipedia

Before you rev up those keyboards, and shoot off a snarky comment- consider this statement- there are many ways to run (and ruin economies). But they still have not found a replacement for money. Yes Happiness is important. Search Engine is good.

So unless they start a new branch of economics with lots more motivational theory and psychology and lot less quant especially for open source projects, money ,revenue, sales is the only true measure of success in enterprise software. Particularly if you have competitors who are making more money selling the same class of software.

Popularity contests are for high school quarterbacks —so even if your open source software is popular in downloads, email discussions, stack overflow or Continue reading “Free and Open Source cannot get basic economics correct”

Bollywood Movie Review Dum Maro Dum 2011

This is a nice Bollywood thriller, crime action romance betrayal suspense or as we call it back home- a Masala movie.

Watch it for the action, engrossing plot, songs or just the rather realistic look at India’s drug,rave, party, beach culture in Goa. Continue reading “Bollywood Movie Review Dum Maro Dum 2011”

Google releases V1.2 of Google Prediction API

Diagram showing overview of cloud computing in...
Image via Wikipedia

To join the preview group, go to the APIs Console and click the Prediction API slider to “ON,” and then sign up for a Google Storage account.

For the past several months, I have been member of a semi-public beta test/group/forum – that is headed by Travis Green of the Google Prediction API Team (not the hockey player). Basically in helping the Google guys more feedback on the feature list for model building via cloud computing. I couldn’t talk about it much , because it was all NDA hush hush.

Anyways- as of today the version 1.2 of Google Prediction API has been launched. What does this do to the ordinary Joe Modeler? Well it helps gives your models -thats right your plain vanilla logistic regression,arima, arimax, models an added ensemble option of using Google’s Machine Learning Continue reading “Google releases V1.2 of Google Prediction API”

High Performance Analytics

Marry Big Data Analytics to High Performance Computing, and you get the buzzword of this season- High Performance Analytics.

It basically consists of Parallelized code to run in parallel on custom hardware, in -database analytics for speed, and cloud computing /high performance computing environments. On an operational level, it consists of software (as in analytics) partnering with software (as in databases, Map reduce, Hadoop) plus some hardware (HP or IBM mostly). It is considered a high margin , highly profitable, business with small number of deals compared to say desktop licenses.

As per HPC Wire- which is a great tool/newsletter to keep updated on HPC , SAS Institute has been busy on this front partnering with EMC Greenplum and TeraData (who also acquired  SAS Partner AsterData to gain a much needed foot in the MR/SQL space) Continue reading “High Performance Analytics”

Broad Guidelines for Graphs

Here are some broad guidelines for Graphs from EIA.gov , so you can say these are the official graphical guidelines of USA Gov

They can be really useful for sites planning to get into the Tableau Software/NYT /Guardian Infographic mode- or even for communities of blogs that have recurrent needs to display graphical plots- particularly since communication, statistical and design specialists are different areas/expertise/people.

Energy Information Administration Standard

Broad Guidelines for Graphs-I am reproducing an example from EIA ‘s guidelines for graphs-
http://www.eia.gov/about/eia_standards.cfm#Standard25

Energy Information Administration Standard 2009-25

Title: Statistical Graphs
Superseded Version: Standard 2002-25
Purpose: To ensure the utility (usefulness to intended users) and objectivity (accuracy, clarity, completeness, and lack of bias) of energy information presented in statistical graphs.
Applicability: All EIA information products.
Required Actions:

  1. Graphs should be used to show and compare changes, trends and/or relationships, and to assist users in visualizing the conclusions drawn from the data represented.
  2. A graph should contain sufficient Continue reading “Broad Guidelines for Graphs”