Tag: mining

2011 Analytics Recap

Events in the field of data that impacted us in 2011

1) Oracle unveiled plans for R Enterprise. This is one of the strongest statements of its focus on in-database analytics. Oracle also unveiled plans for a Public Cloud

2) SAS Institute released version 9.3 , a major analytics software in industry use.

3) IBM acquired many companies in analytics and high tech. Again.However the expected benefits from Cognos-SPSS integration are yet to show a spectacular change in market share.

2011 Selected acquisitions

Emptoris Inc. December 2011

Cúram Software Ltd. December 2011

DemandTec December 2011

Platform Computing October 2011

 Q1 Labs October 2011

Algorithmics September 2011

 i2 August 2011

Tririga March 2011

 

4) SAP promised a lot with SAP HANA- again no major oohs and ahs in terms of market share fluctuations within analytics.

http://www.sap.com/india/news-reader/index.epx?articleID=17619

5) Amazon continued to lower prices of cloud computing and offer more options.

http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2011/12/21/amazon-elastic-mapreduce-announces-support-for-cc2-8xlarge-instances/

6) Google continues to dilly -dally with its analytics and cloud based APIs. I do not expect all the APIs in the Google APIs suit to survive and be viable in the enterprise software space.  This includes Google Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, Prediction API at https://code.google.com/apis/console/b/0/ Some of the location based , translation based APIs may have interesting spin offs that may be very very commercially lucrative.

7) Microsoft -did- hmm- I forgot. Except for its investment in Revolution Analytics round 1 many seasons ago- very little excitement has come from MS plans in data mining- The plugins for cloud based data mining from Excel remain promising yet , while Azure remains a stealth mode starter.

8) Revolution Analytics promised us a GUI and didnt deliver (till yet 🙂 ) . But it did reveal a much better Enterprise software Revolution R 5.0 is one of the strongest enterprise software in the R /Stat Computing space and R’s memory handling problem is now an issue of perception than actual stuff thanks to newer advances in how it is used.

9) More conferences, more books and more news on analytics startups in 2011. Big Data analytics remained a strong buzzword. Expect more from this space including creative uses of Hadoop based infrastructure.

10) Data privacy issues continue to hamper and impede effective analytics usage. So does rational and balanced regulation in some of the most advanced economies. We expect more regulation and better guidelines in 2012.

Free Tibet

We should all ask China to free Tibet because of the following reasons-

10 Reasons to Free Tibet

1) Replace a system of governance which is giving 12% GDP growth with a 1000 year old belief that one old guy is really a reincarnation of GOD

2) Because it is a romantic idea

3) The average Tibetan is much better economically than most other countries in Asia and Africa. Still freedom is messy- Donald Rumsfield.

4) So we can sell beer, Facebook ads, Internet Pornography to Tibetans which do not have the liberty to do so currently

5) So we can explore that area for mining and minerals

6) Damn it. We need one more ally for the free world. So we can invade more non free countries.

7)  Tibetans girls are hot.

8) Dalai Lama is cool. and he doesnot charge by the hour unlike other yoga Gurus.

9) We need to encircle China just like we did in the 19th Century and Opium Wars

10) So artists like Ai Wei Wei can blog freely

1 Reason not to Free Tibet

1) Tibetans want to be free. If we give them democracy- they will be disappointed to know that the bullets just get replaced by the pepper spray. How silly is that? The desire to be free- when there is no such thing as free anymore.

(This was an article in Sarcasm and meant as literary and not a pseudo-intellectual political article. I have no training in Politics. For details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

Webinar: Using R within Oracle #rstats

Webinar: Using R within Oracle — Nov 30, noon EST

==========================================
Oracle now supports the R open source statistical programming language. Come to this webinar to learn more about using R within an Oracle environment.

— URL for TechCast: https://stbeehive.oracle.com/bconf/confDetails?confID=334B:3BF0:owch:38893C00F42F38A1E0404498C8A6612B0004075AECF7&guest=true&confKey=608880
— Web Conference ID: 303397
— Web Conference Key: 608880
— Dialup:             1-866-682-4770      , ID 5548204, passcode 1234

After a steady rise in the past few years, in 2010 the open source data mining software R overtook other tools to become the tool used by more data miners (43%) than any other (http://www.rexeranalytics.com/Data-Miner-Survey-Results-2010.html).

Several analytic tool vendors have added R-integration to their software. However, Oracle is the largest company to throw their weight behind R. On October 3, Oracle unveiled their integration of R: Oracle R Enterprise (http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/features-oracle-r-enterprise-498732.html) as part of their Oracle Big Data Appliance announcement (http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/512001).

Oracle R Enterprise allows users to perform statistical analysis with advanced visualization on data stored in Oracle Database. Oracle R Enterprise enables scalable R solutions, while facilitating production deployment of R scripts and Hadoop based solutions, as well as integration of R results with Oracle BI Publisher and OBIEE dashboards.

This TechCast introduces the various Oracle R Enterprise components and features, along with R script demonstrations that interface with Oracle Database.

TechCast presenter: Mark Hornick, Senior Manager, Oracle Advanced Analytics Development.
This TechCast is part of the ongoing TechCasts series coordinated by Oracle BIWA: The BI, Warehousing and Analytics SIG (http://www.oracleBIWA.org).

Moving data between Windows and Ubuntu VMWare partition

I use Windows 7 on my laptop (it came pre-installed) and Ubuntu using the VMWare Player. What are the advantages of using VM Player instead of creating a dual-boot system? Well I can quickly shift from Ubuntu to Windows and bakc again without restarting my computer everytime. Using this approach allows me to utilize software that run only on Windows and run software like Rattle, the R data mining GUI, that are much easier installed on Linux.

However if your statistical software is on your Virtual Disk , and your data is on your Windows disk, you need a way to move data from Windows to Ubuntu.

The solution to this as per Ubuntu forums is –http://communities.vmware.com/thread/55242

Open My Computer, browse to the folder you want to share.  Right-click on the folder, select Properties.  Sharing tab.  Select the radio button to “Share this Folder”.  Change the default generated name if you wish; add a description if you wish.  Click the Permissions button to modify the security settings of what users can read/write to the share.

On the Linux side, it depends on the distro, the shell, and the window manager.

Well Ubuntu makes it really easy to configure the Linux steps to move data within Windows and Linux partitions.

 

NEW UPDATE-

VMmare makes it easy to share between your Windows (host) and Linux (guest) OS

 

Step 1

and step 2

Do this

 

and

Start the Wizard

when you finish the wizard and share a drive or folder- hey where do I see my shared ones-

 

see this folder in Linux- /mnt/hgfs (bingo!)

Hacker HW – Make this folder //mnt/hgfs a shortcut in Places your Ubuntu startup

Hacker Hw 2-

Upload using an anon email your VM dark data to Ubuntu one

Delete VM

Purge using software XX

Reinstall VM and bring back backup

 

Note time to do this

 

 

 

-General Sharing in Windows

 

 

Just open the Network tab in Ubuntu- see screenshots below-

Windows will now ask your Ubuntu user for login-

Once Logged in Windows from within Ubuntu Vmware, this is what happens

You see a tab called “users on “windows username”- pc appear on your Ubuntu Desktop  (see top right of the screenshot)

If you double click it- you see your windows path

You can now just click and drag data between your windows and linux partitions , just the way you do it in Windows .

So based on this- if you want to build  decision trees, artifical neural networks, regression models, and even time series models for zero capital expenditure- you can use both Ubuntu/R without compromising on your IT policy of Windows only in your organization (there is a shortage of Ubuntu trained IT administrators in the enterprise world)

Revised Installation Procedure for utilizing both Ubuntu /R/Rattle data mining on your Windows PC.

Using VMWare to build a free data mining system in R, as well as isolate your analytics system (thus using both Linux and Windows without overburdening your machine)

First Time

  1. http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_player/4_0Download and Install
  2. http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/downloadDownload Only
  3. Create New Virtual Image in VM Ware Player
  4. Applications—–Terminal——sudo apt get-install R (to download and install)
  5.                                          sudo R (to open R)
  6. Once R is opened type this  —-install.packages(rattle)—– This will install rattle
  7. library(rattle) will load Rattle—–
  8. rattle() will open the GUI—-
Getting Data from Host to Guest VM
Next Time
  1. Go to VM Player
  2. Open the VM
  3. sudo R in terminal to bring up R
  4. library(rattle) within R
  5. rattle()
At this point even if you dont know any Linux and dont know any R, you can create data mining models using the Rattle GUI (and time series model using E pack in the R Commander GUI) – What can Rattle do in data mining? See this slideshow-http://www.decisionstats.com/data-mining-with-r-gui-rattle-rstats/
If Google Docs is banned as per your enterprise organizational IT policy of having Windows Explorer only- well you can see these screenshots http://rattle.togaware.com/rattle-screenshots.html

Data Mining with R GUI -Rattle #Rstats

Why is RATTLE my favorite R package?
because it allows data mining in a very nice interface.
Complicated software need not have complicated interfaces.
Have a look-

(Note- download rattle from http://rattle.togaware.com)

For better visibility please click the full screen button or click the second pps below- automatically advances every 5 secs

How to make an analytics project?

Some of the process methodologies I have used and been exposed to while making analytics projects are-1) DMAIC/Six Sigma

While Six Sigma was initially a quality control system, it has also been very succesful in managing projects. The various stages of an analytical project can be divided using the DMAIC methodology.

DMAIC stands for

  • Define
  • Measure
  • Analyze
  • Improve
  • Control

Related to this is DMADV, ( “Design For Six Sigma”)

  • Define
  • Measure and identify CTQs
  • Analyze
  • Design
  • Verify

2) CRISP
CRISP-DM stands for Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining

CRISP-DM breaks the process of data mining into six major phases- and these can be used for business analytics projects as well.

  • Business Understanding
  • Data Understanding
  • Data Preparation
  • Modeling
  • Evaluation
  • Deployment

3) SEMMA
SEMMA  stands for

  • sample
  • explore
  • modify
  • model
  • assess

4) ISO 9001

ISO 9001 is a certification as well as a philosophy for making a Quality Management System to measure , reduce and eliminate error and customer complaints. Any customer complaint or followup has to be treated as an error, logged, and investigated for control.

5) LEAN
LEAN is a philosophy to eliminate Wastage in a process. Applying LEAN principles to analytics projects helps a lot in eliminating project bottlenecks, technology compatibility issues and data quality resolution. I think LEAN would be great in data quality issues, and IT infrastructure design because that is where the maximum waste is observed in analytics projects.

6) Demings Plan Do Check Act cycle.

Google Plus API- statistical text mining anyone

For the past year and two I have noticed a lot of statistical analysis using #rstats /R on unstructured text generated in real time by the social network Twitter. From an analytic point of view , Google Plus is an interesting social network , as it is a social network that is new and arrived after the analytic tools are relatively refined. It is thus an interesting use case for evolution of people behavior measured globally AFTER analytic tools in text mining are evolved and we can thus measure how people behave and that behavior varies as the social network and its user interface evolves.

And it would also be  a nice benchmark to do sentiment analysis across multiple social networks.

Some interesting use cases of using Twitter that have been used in R.

  • Using R to search Twitter for analysis
http://www.franklincenterhq.org/2429/using-r-to-search-twitter-for-analysis/
  • Text Data Mining With Twitter And R
  • TWITTER FROM R… SURE, WHY NOT!
  • A package called TwitteR
  • slides from my R tutorial on Twitter text mining #rstats
  • Generating graphs of retweets and @-messages on Twitter using R and Gephi
But with Google Plus API now active

The Console lets you see and manage the following project information:

  • Activated APIs – Activate one or more APIs to enable traffic monitoring, filtering, and billing, and API-specific pages for your project. Read more about activating APIs here.
  • Traffic information – The Console reports traffic information for each activated API. Additionally, you can cap or filter usage by API. Read more about traffic reporting and request filtering here.
  • Billing information – When you activate billing, your activated APIs can exceed the courtesy usage quota. Usage fees are billed to the Google Checkout account that you specify. Read more about billing here.
  • Project keys – Each project is identified by either an API key or an OAuth 2.0 token. Use this key/token in your API requests to identify the project, in order to record usage data, enforce your filtering restrictions, and bill usage to the proper project. You can use the Console to generate or revoke API keys or OAuth 2.0 certificates to use in your application. Read more about keys here.
  • Team members – You can specify additional members with read, write, or ownership access to this project’s Console page. Read more about team members here.
Google+ API Courtesy limit: 1,000 queries/day

Effective limits:

API Per-User Limit Used Courtesy Limit
Google+ API 5.0 requests/second/user 0% 1,000 queries/day
API Calls
Most of the Google+ API follows a RESTful API design, meaning that you use standard HTTP methods to retrieve and manipulate resources. For example, to get the profile of a user, you might send an HTTP request like:

GET https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/people/userId

Common Parameters

Different API methods require parameters to be passed either as part of the URL path or as query parameters. Additionally, there are a few parameters that are common to all API endpoints. These are all passed as optional query parameters.

Parameter Name

Value

Description

callback

string

Specifies a JavaScript function that will be passed the response data for using the API with JSONP.

fields

string

Selector specifying which fields to include in a partial response.

key

string

API key. Your API key identifies your project and provides you with API access, quota, and reports. Required unless you provide an OAuth 2.0 token.

access_token

string

OAuth 2.0 token for the current user. Learn more about OAuth.

prettyPrint

boolean

If set to “true”, data output will include line breaks and indentation to make it more readable. If set to “false”, unnecessary whitespace is removed, reducing the size of the response. Defaults to “true”.

userIp

string

Identifies the IP address of the end user for whom the API call is being made. This allows per-user quotas to be enforced when calling the API from a server-side application. Learn more about Capping Usage.

Data Formats

Resources in the Google+ API are represented using JSON data formats. For example, retrieving a user’s profile may result in a response like:

{
  "kind": "plus#person",
  "id": "118051310819094153327",
  "displayName": "Chirag Shah",
  "url": "https://plus.google.com/118051310819094153327",
  "image": {
    "url": "https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-XnZDEoiF09Y/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAYCI/7fow4a2UTMU/photo.jpg"
  }
}

Common Properties

While each type of resource will have its own unique representation, there are a number of common properties that are found in almost all resource representations.

Property Name

Value

Description

displayName

string

This is the name of the resource, suitable for displaying to a user.

id

string

This property uniquely identifies a resource. Every resource of a given kind will have a unique id. Even though an id may sometimes look like a number, it should always be treated as a string.

kind

string

This identifies what kind of resource a JSON object represents. This is particularly useful when programmatically determining how to parse an unknown object.

url

string

This is the primary URL, or permalink, for the resource.

Pagination

In requests that can respond with potentially large collections, such as Activities list, each response contains a limited number of items, set by maxResults(default: 20). Each response also contains a nextPageToken property. To obtain the next page of items, you pass this value of nextPageToken to the pageTokenproperty of the next request. Repeat this process to page through the full collection.

For example, calling Activities list returns a response with nextPageToken:

{
  "kind": "plus#activityFeed",
  "title": "Plus Public Activities Feed",
  "nextPageToken": "CKaEL",
  "items": [
    {
      "kind": "plus#activity",
      "id": "123456789",
      ...
    },
    ...
  ]
  ...
}

To get the next page of activities, pass the value of this token in with your next Activities list request:

https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/people/me/activities/public?pageToken=CKaEL

As before, the response to this request includes nextPageToken, which you can pass in to get the next page of results. You can continue this cycle to get new pages — for the last page, “nextPageToken” will be absent.

 

it would be interesting the first wave of analysis on this new social network and see if it is any different from others, if at all.
After all, an API is only as good as the analysis and applications  that can be done on the data it provides