R Oracle Data Mining

Here is a new package called R ODM and it is an interface to do Data Mining via Oracle Tables through R. You can read more here http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/options/odm/odm-r-integration-089013.html and here http://cran.fhcrc.org/web/packages/RODM/RODM.pdf . Also there is a contest for creative use of R and ODM.

R Interface to Oracle Data Mining

The R Interface to Oracle Data Mining ( R-ODM) allows R users to access the power of Oracle Data Mining’s in-database functions using the familiar R syntax. R-ODM provides a powerful environment for prototyping data analysis and data mining methodologies.

R-ODM is especially useful for:

  • Quick prototyping of vertical or domain-based applications where the Oracle Database supports the application
  • Scripting of “production” data mining methodologies
  • Customizing graphics of ODM data mining results (examples: classificationregressionanomaly detection)

The R-ODM interface allows R users to mine data using Oracle Data Mining from the R programming environment. It consists of a set of function wrappers written in source R language that pass data and parameters from the R environment to the Oracle RDBMS enterprise edition as standard user PL/SQL queries via an ODBC interface. The R-ODM interface code is a thin layer of logic and SQL that calls through an ODBC interface. R-ODM does not use or expose any Oracle product code as it is completely an external interface and not part of any Oracle product. R-ODM is similar to the example scripts (e.g., the PL/SQL demo code) that illustrates the use of Oracle Data Mining, for example, how to create Data Mining models, pass arguments, retrieve results etc.

R-ODM is packaged as a standard R source package and is distributed freely as part of the R environment’s Comprehensive R Archive Network ( CRAN). For information about the R environment, R packages and CRAN, see www.r-project.org.

and

Present and win an Apple iPod Touch!
The BI, Warehousing and Analytics (BIWA) SIG is giving an Apple iPOD Touch to the best new presenter. Be part of the TechCast series and get a chance to win!

Consider highlighting a creative use of R and ODM.

BIWA invites all Oracle professionals (experts, end users, managers, DBAs, developers, data analysts, ISVs, partners, etc.) to submit abstracts for 45 minute technical webcasts to our Oracle BIWA (IOUG SIG) Community in our Wednesday TechCast series. Note that the contest is limited to new presenters to encourage fresh participation by the BIWA community.

Also an interview with Oracle Data Mining head, Charlie Berger https://decisionstats.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/oracle/

Hadley's tutorials on R Visualization

Here are a set of extremely nice tutorials from Hadley Wickham  (creator of ggplot) and whom we interviewed here at https://decisionstats.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/interview-hadley-wickham-r-project-data-visualization-guru/

Hadley is teaching two short courses at Vanderbilt university (read at http://gettinggeneticsdone.blogspot.com/2010/07/hadley-wickhams-ggplot2-data.html)

or download code and presentations here at http://had.co.nz/vanderbilt-vis/

They are a set of very very lucid and easy to understand presentations so even if you know very little R, or just want to learn visualization you can refer to them.

Here is the first lesson by Prof Hadley on Basics in Visualization using R.

Protected: Analyzing SAS Institute-WPS Lawsuit

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Open Source and Software Strategy

Curt Monash at Monash Research pointed out some ongoing open source GPL issues for WordPress and the Thesis issue (Also see http://ma.tt/2009/04/oracle-and-open-source/ and  http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/switching-things-around/).

As a user of both going upwards of 2 years- I believe open source and GPL license enforcement are general parts of software strategy of most software companies nowadays. Some thoughts on  open source and software strategy-Thesis remains a very very popular theme and has earned upwards of 100,000 $ for its creator (estimate based on 20k plus installs and 60$ avg price)

  • Little guys like to give away code to get some satisfaction/ recognition, big guys give away free code only when its necessary or when they are not making money in that product segment anyway.
  • As Ethan Hunt said, ” Every Hero needs a Villian”. Every software (market share) war between players needs One Big Company Holding more market share and Open Source Strategy between other player who is not able to create in house code, so effectively out sources by creating open source project. But same open source propent rarely gives away the secret to its own money making project.
    • Examples- Google creates open source Android, but wont reveal its secret algorithm for search which drives its main profits,
    • Google again puts a paper for MapReduce but it’s Yahoo that champions Hadoop,
    • Apple creates open source projects (http://www.apple.com/opensource/) but wont give away its Operating Source codes (why?) which help people buys its more expensive hardware,
    • IBM who helped kickstart the whole proprietary code thing (remember MS DOS) is the new champion of open source (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/) and
    • Microsoft continues to spark open source debate but read http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/07/02/a-perspective-on-openness.aspx and  also http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/
    • SAS gives away a lot of open source code (Read Jim Davis , CMO SAS here , but will stick to Base SAS code (even though it seems to be making more money by verticals focus and data mining).
    • SPSS was the first big analytics company that helps supports R (open source stats software) but will cling to its own code on its softwares.
    • WordPress.org gives away its software (and I like Akismet just as well as blogging) for open source, but hey as anyone who is on WordPress.com knows how locked in you can get by its (pricy) platform.
    • Vendor Lock-in (wink wink price escalation) is the elephant in the room for Big Software Proprietary Companies.
    • SLA Quality, Maintenance and IP safety is the uh-oh for going in for open source software mostly.
  • Lack of IP protection for revenue models for open source code is the big bottleneck  for a lot of companies- as very few software users know what to do with source code if you give it to them anyways.
    • If companies were confident that they would still be earning same revenue and there would be less leakage or theft, they would gladly give away the source code.
    • Derivative softwares or extensions help popularize the original softwares.
      • Half Way Steps like Facebook Applications  the original big company to create a platform for third party creators),
      • IPhone Apps and Android Applications show success of creating APIs to help protect IP and software control while still giving some freedom to developers or alternate
      • User Interfaces to R in both SAS/IML and JMP is a similar example
  • Basically open source is mostly done by under dog while top dog mostly rakes in money ( and envy)
  • There is yet to a big commercial success in open source software, though they are very good open source softwares. Just as Google’s success helped establish advertising as an alternate ( and now dominant) revenue source for online companies , Open Source needs a big example of a company that made billions while giving source code away and still retaining control and direction of software strategy.
  • Open source people love to hate proprietary packages, yet there are more shades of grey (than black and white) and hypocrisy (read lies) within  the open source software movement than the regulated world of big software. People will be still people. Software is just a piece of code.  😉

(Art citation-http://gapingvoid.com/about/ and http://gapingvoidgallery.com/

Statistics: Code and Poetry

Dstats

As you can see, my poem on Michael Jackson got more page views

than any code I wrote or any interview I did. which reminds me to be

more humble than be humbled :)) More Details are on Advertise page above.

More Advanced SAS Modeling Procs

A special thanks to Peter Flom ( www.peterflom.com )for suggesting the following –

5) Proc NLMIXED

PROC NLMIXED can be viewed as generalizations of the random coefficient models fit by the MIXED procedure. This generalization allows the random coefficients to enter the model nonlinearly, whereas in PROC MIXED they enter linearly. With PROC MIXED you can perform both maximum likelihood and restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimation, whereas PROC NLMIXED only implements maximum likelihood. This is because the analog to the REML method in PROC NLMIXED would involve a high dimensional integral over all of the fixed-effects parameters, and this integral is typically not available in closed form. Finally, PROC MIXED assumes the data to be normally distributed, whereas PROC NLMIXED enables you to analyze data that are normal, binomial, or Poisson or that have any likelihood programmable with SAS statements.

http://aerg.canberra.edu.au/envirostats/bm/SASHelp/stat/chap46/sect4.htm

6) Proc Glimmix

PROC GLIMMIX fits statistical models to data with correlations or nonconstant variability and where the response is not necessarily normally distributed. These generalized linear mixed models (GLMM), like linear mixed models, assume normal (Gaussian) random effects. Conditional on these random effects, data can have any distribution in the exponential family. The binary, binomial, Poisson, and negative binomial distributions, for example, are discrete members of this family. The normal, beta, gamma, and chi-square distributions are representatives of the continuous distributions in this family.

Some PROC GLIMMIX features are:

  • Flexible covariance structures for random effects and correlated errors
  • Programmable link and variance functions
  • Bias-adjusted empirical covariance estimators
  • Univariate and multivariate low-rank smoothing
  • Joint modeling for multivariate data

Besides including performance enhancements and various fixes, the production release of the GLIMMIX procedure provides numerous additional features. These include:

  • ODS statistical graphics to display LS-means and confidence limits
  • Analysis of Means
  • Odds ratios
  • Custom hypotheses concerning LS-means with the LSMESTIMATE statement
  • New multiplicity adjustments
  • Beta regression

www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi30/196-30.pdf

http://support.sas.com/rnd/app/da/glimmix.html

3) Proc QUANTREG

www.stat.uiuc.edu/~x-he/ENAR-Tutorial.pdf

Ordinary least squares regression models the relationship between one or more covariates X and the conditional mean of the response variable Y given X=x. Quantile regression extends the regression model to conditional quantiles of the response variable, such as the 90th percentile. Quantile regression is particularly useful when the rate of change in the conditional quantile, expressed by the regression coefficients, depends on the quantile. The main advantage of quantile regression over least squares regression is its flexibility for modeling data with heterogeneous conditional distributions. Data of this type occur in many fields, including biomedicine, econometrics, and ecology.

Some PROC QUANTREG features are:

  • Implements the simplex, interior point, and smoothing algorithms for estimation
  • Provides three methods to compute confidence intervals for the regression quantile parameter: sparsity, rank, and resampling.
  • Provides two methods to compute the covariance and correlation matrices of the estimated parameters: an asymptotic method and a bootstrap method
  • Provides two tests for the regression parameter estimates: the Wald test and a likelihood ratio test
  • Uses robust multivariate location and scale estimates for leverage point detection
  • Multithreaded for parallel computing when multiple processors are available

4) Proc Catmod-

http://www.uidaho.edu/ag/statprog/sas/workshops/catmod/outline.html

Categorical data with more than two factors are referred to as multi-dimensional distributions. Procedure CATMOD will be used for analyses concerning such data. PROC CATMOD may also be used to analyze one-and two-way data structures , however it is an effective means to approach more complex data structures.

PROC CATMOD utilizes a different technique to do categorical analysis than the ‘Pearson type’ chi-square. The analysis is based on a transformation of the cell probabilities. This transformation is called the response function. The exact form of the response function depends on the data type and it is normally motivated by certain theoretical considerations. SAS offers many different forms of response functions and even allows the user to specify their own, however, the most common (default) is the Generalized Logit. This function is defined as:

Generalized Logit = LOG(pi/pk),
where pi is the ith cell probability and pk is the last cell probability. The ratio of pi/pk is called an odds ratio and the log of the odds ratio is just a comparison of the ith category to the last, on a log scale. The logit can be rewritten as:
Generalized Logit = LOG(pi) – LOG(pk).
It should be noted that if there are k categories, then there will be only k-1 response functions since the kth one will be zero.