Teradata Analytics

March 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A recent announcement showing Teradata partnering with KXEN and Revolution Analytics for Teradata Analytics.

http://www.teradata.com/News-Releases/2012/Teradata-Expands-Integrated-Analytics-Portfolio/

The Latest in Open Source Emerging Software Technologies
Teradata provides customers with two additional open source technologies – “R” technology from Revolution Analytics for analytics and GeoServer technology for spatial data offered by the OpenGeo organization – both of which are able to leverage the power of Teradata in-database processing for faster, smarter answers to business questions.

In addition to the existing world-class analytic partners, Teradata supports the use of the evolving “R” technology, an open source language for statistical computing and graphics. “R” technology is gaining popularity with data scientists who are exploiting its new and innovative capabilities, which are not readily available. The enhanced “R add-on for Teradata” has a 50 percent performance improvement, it is easier to use, and its capabilities support large data analytics. Users can quickly profile, explore, and analyze larger quantities of data directly in the Teradata Database to deliver faster answers by leveraging embedded analytics.

Teradata has partnered with Revolution Analytics, the leading commercial provider of “R” technology, because of customer interest in high-performing R applications that deliver superior performance for large-scale data. “Our innovative customers understand that big data analytics takes a smart approach to the entire infrastructure and we will enable them to differentiate their business in a cost-effective way,” said David Rich, chief executive officer, Revolution Analytics. “We are excited to partner with Teradata, because we see great affinity between Teradata and Revolution Analytics – we embrace parallel computing and the high performance offered by multi-core and multi-processor hardware.”

and

The Teradata Data Lab empowers business users and leading analytic partners to start building new analytics in less than five minutes, as compared to waiting several weeks for the IT department’s assistance.

“The Data Lab within the Teradata database provides the perfect foundation to enable self-service predictive analytics with KXEN InfiniteInsight,” said John Ball, chief executive officer, KXEN. “Teradata technologies, combined with KXEN’s automated modeling capabilities and in-database scoring, put the power of predictive analytics and data mining directly into the hands of business users. This powerful combination helps our joint customers accelerate insight by delivering top-quality models in orders of magnitude faster than traditional approaches.”

Read more at

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/06/4315500/teradata-expands-integrated-analytics.html

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Brief Review WPS 3.0

March 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

What is WPS 3.0-

An Alternative SAS language analytics software  from WPC

I downloaded the free evaluation from http://teamwpc.co.uk/tryorbuy/evaluations and tested out WPS 3.0 here

https://docs.google.com/presentation/pub?id=19HdBuaNvypGVU2FhVopDkADbI4FXBPT2zMoXsZeEwWQ&start=true&loop=false&delayms=3000

 

I think it is quite good compared to latest versions of Base SAS (whose interface hasnt changed since….), but for more specialized business vertical focused analytical tasks, it mean need more scrutiny.

Also it may be a good idea to increase R integration.

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JMP 10 set to launch on Mar 20- and 5 other pricing comparisons

February 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

 JMP 10 gets ready for launch on Mar 20. I really like the GUI of JMP , and the way it is designed to make complex analytics faster . It is a much better GUI than SAS Institute’s own Enterprise Miner.

Also the price is quite nice-and there is a promotional offer now.

http://www.jmp.com/landing/jmp9_gets_10.shtml

Now is the perfect time to buy a JMP 9 annual license – you’ll get a FREE upgrade to JMP 10 when it is released on March 20.

With JMP 10, you’ll be able to:

Drag and drop to make control charts.

Use more graph types and a clickable graph gallery in Graph Builder.

View your analysis while easily switching columns.

Click and drag to create custom JMP applications using JMP Scripting Language.

Take advantage of 64-bit architecture (for annual license users only).

So purchase an annual license today. You will get immediate access to JMP 10 when it’s released in March and all the other perks of an annual license.

The first-year fee for a single user is $1,320 (1)

If I compare the price to some other analytical software-

well the SAS Language replacement software

http://www.minequest.com/

http://www.minequest.com/WPS.html

Prices start at $1206 (note the Bridge to R allows you to work with R at $199) (2)

well here is Revolution Analytics (3) everything is at $1000 even the 32 and 64 bit versions

https://revolutionanalytics.secure.force.com/

Annual Subscription
 Includes software license and technical support
 
Price
 
Revolution R Enterprise Single-User Workstation (64-bit Windows)
 
$1,000.00
 
 
 
Revolution R Enterprise Single-User Workstation (32-bit Windows)
 
$1,000.00
 
 
 
Revolution R Enterprise Single-User Workstation (64-bit Red Hat 5 Enterprise Linux)
 
$1,000.00
  

Perhaps the best or atleast the most affordable commercial license version of R is Rattle

http://rattle.togaware.com/sales.html

Rattle can be purchased on DVD as a standalone installation for $500USD ($560AUD) ( 4)

Rattle (the R Analytical Tool To Learn Easily) is a data mining toolkit used to analyse very large collections of data. Rattle presents statistical and visual summaries of data, transforms data into forms that can be readily modelled, builds both unsupervised and supervised models from the data, presents the performance of models graphically, and scores new datasets. Rattle is in use, delivering data mining outcomes, at many organisations world wide, and is used for teaching data mining to students at universities world wide.


http://www.statconn.com/products.htmlI also liked the pricing of R Excel (5)

licensed on a per user/per computer scheme. The following prices are for one computer/one user

Product Name Software License Annual Updates and Support Total Price
RExcel
(includes statconnDCOM for use with RExcel)		 330EUR 51EUR 381EUR
SWord
(includes statconnDCOM for use with SWord)		 N/A
statconnDCOM 220EUR 35EUR 255EUR
statconnWS
Windows, Linux or MacOS X		 N/A

It took me much more time to understand IBM pricing (6) including the R developer version of SPSS

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/analytics/spss/products/statistics/developer/features.html?S_CMP=wspace

SPSS Statistics Developer

Features and benefits

IBM SPSS Statistics Developer is not a commercial implementation of the R language, which remains free, but a program for wrapping R functions in a format that allows them to run in IBM SPSS Statistics.

IBM SPSS Statistics Developer gives you:

  • All of the core, non-analytictal functionality found in IBM SPSS Statistics,
  • Easy access to nearly 2,000 open source statistical functions
  • The ability to produce presentation-quality output and standard pivot tables
  • Superior data management features
  • Access to more wrapped packages online at DevCentral on developerWorks
All prices are shown in USD.
Detailed price list
Select Part description *IBM price excluding tax
IBM SPSS Statistics Developer Authorized User License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months (D0EPMLL) 514.00
IBM SPSS Statistics Developer Authorized User Initial Fixed Term License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months (D0ECWLL) 226.00
IBM SPSS Statistics Developer Concurrent User License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months (D0ENJLL) 1,280.00
IBM SPSS Statistics Developer Concurrent User Initial Fixed Term License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months (D0ECXLL) 565.00

BM SPSS Statistics Base enables you to get a quick look at your data, formulate hypotheses for additional testing, and then carry out statistical and analytic procedures to help clarify relationships between variables, create clusters, identify trends and make predictions.

  • Quickly access and analyze massive datasets
  • Easily prepare and manage your data for analysis
  • Analyze data with a comprehensive range of statistical procedures
  • Easily build charts with sophisticated reporting capabilities
  • Discover new insights in your data with tables, graphs, mapping capabilities, cubes and pivoting technology
  • Quickly build dialog boxes or let advanced users create customized dialog boxes that make your organization’s analyses easier and more efficient
  • Operating systems supported: Windows, Mac, Linux

View features and benefits

SPSS Statistics – SPSS Statistics Base

Mapping – Improve your ability to target, forecast, and plan by geographic area, and expand your reporting capabilities using pre-built map templates or ESRI files.

Faster tables – Generate fully interactive and editable output tables up to five times faster.

Enhanced language support – The user interface is now available in Brazilian Portuguese, making SPSS Statistics available to more users across your enterprise.

and the urls at IBM are certainly big data urls

https://www-112.ibm.com/software/howtobuy/buyingtools/paexpress/Express?P0=E1&part_number=D0EKZLL,D0EEMLL,D0EK0LL,D0EEJLL&catalogLocale=en_US&locale=en_US&country=USA&PT=html

Detailed price list
Select Part description *IBM price excluding tax
IBM SPSS Statistics Base Authorized User License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months (D0EJ9LL) 2,320.00
IBM SPSS Statistics Base Authorized User Initial Fixed Term License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months (D0EEILL) 1,020.00
IBM SPSS Statistics Base Concurrent User License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months (D0ELQLL) 5,790.00
IBM SPSS Statistics Base Concurrent User Initial Fixed Term License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months (D0EEFLL) 2,550.00

https://www-112.ibm.com/software/howtobuy/buyingtools/paexpress/Express?P0=E1&part_number=D0EKZLL,D0EEMLL,D0EK0LL,D0EEJLL&catalogLocale=en_US&locale=en_US&country=USA&PT=html

Whether you’re a statistician or other analytics professional or have to analyze data as part of your business responsibilities, the IBM SPSS Statistics Standard Edition offers the advanced statistical procedures you need to make your analysis more reliable, so you reach more dependable conclusions.

    • Address fundamental business and research questions.
    • Business managers can use this edition to identify potential costs savings and improve campaign response rates.
    • Analysts can quickly understand large and complex datasets and statistically identify the best predictors to drive quality decision-making.
    • Includes these capabilities: Use linear models to make your analysis more accurate and reach more dependable conclusions; apply nonlinear models to your data to improve theaccuracy of your predictions; and create customized tables to quickly slice and dice your data.
    • Operating systems supported: Windows, Mac, Linux 
 and the bundle pricing
Detailed price list
Select Part description *IBM price excluding tax
IBM SPSS Statistics Standard Authorized User License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months (D0EKZLL) 5,120.00
IBM SPSS Statistics Standard Authorized User Initial Fixed Term License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months (D0EEMLL) 2,250.00
IBM SPSS Statistics Standard Concurrent User License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months (D0EK0LL) 12,800.00
IBM SPSS Statistics Standard Concurrent User Initial Fixed Term License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months (D0EEJLL) 5,640.00

 

Of course SAS has seperate pricing for it’s SMB segment for companies less than 500 mill revenue

From a SAS reseller

http://www.strongtower-us.com/

Software packages eligible for SMB pricing
(Individual SAS products are eligible as well.)

Visual Data Discovery (VDD) Visual Business Intelligence (VBI) Visual Enterprise Business Intelligence (EBI) Futrix – Compliments these SAS offerings
Base SAS9**
Stat
Graph
Integration Technologies
Enterprise Guide
JMP
1 Access Engine***		 Base SAS9**
Graph
Information Map Studio
Integration Technologies
Enterprise Guide
JMP
Add-In for Microsoft Office
Web Report Studio
Web OLAP Viewer
2 Access Engines***		 ALL VBI Components +
Information Delivery Portal
SAS® OLAP Server		 Quicker Deployment of SAS Bundles.
Days versus weeks of training.
Deep Data Exploration linked with reports and dashboards.
Server Version 5-seat minimum Server Version 5-seat minimum Server Version 5-seat minimum
Individual PC Version available

But I couldnt get a price easily online – even for SMB pricing – the closest I got was an example

But I found out leasing is an option with SAS

http://www.strongtower-us.com/leasing.html

As an example:

A SAS software package that costs $26,500 for first year fees and $ 7,800. For the second and third year renewal year fees would cost approximately $1,300 per month for 36 months.

This financing is also available to SAS Resellers and SAS Salespeople and Account Teams to offer to your customers.

http://www.simbologica.eu/e_reseller.html

http://costechnology.com/sas-technology/partnership

were additional SAS resellers

Well Okay to sum up

JMP at $1320 is actually a good price given the brand name , support system and the relative pricing differentials over both Revolution R and WPS.

Rattle at $500 is the next best R option, but I think Revolution Analytics at $1000 (and big Data capabilities)  is also a good bargain. I also think R Excel is a good option, but it would be interesting if someone can help non Revolution R products better marketing and distribution.

Both SAS  language products and SPSS were too expensive in my opinion. WPS is a great bargain replacement for SAS desktop licenses but it is too closely priced to JMP. Comparing JMP and WPS- I would choose JMP any day since I can also use R from within JMP (unless I get a volume discount from WPS or if they add Bridge to R in all the standard bundles for free).

So the affordable  or cost/benefit ladder IMHO (ignoring legacy software costs, training etc)

Open Source R>>

Rattle >~R Excel

>Revolution Analytics ~>JMP> ~WPS

>   IBM SPSS Bundles ~> Base SAS Bundles

These are my opinions only! Please dont get angry with me

 

 

 

 

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Interview Prof Benjamin Alamar , Sports Analytics

February 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Here is an interview with Prof Benjamin Alamar, founding editor of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sport, a professor of sports management at Menlo College and the Director of Basketball Analytics and Research for the Oklahoma City Thunder of the NBA.

Ajay – The movie Moneyball recently sparked out mainstream interest in analytics in sports.Describe the role of analytics in sports management

Benjamin- Analytics is impacting sports organizations on both the sport and business side.
On the Sport side, teams are using analytics, including advanced data management, predictive anlaytics, and information systems to gain a competitive edge. The use of analytics results in more accurate player valuations and projections, as well as determining effective strategies against specific opponents.
On the business side, teams are using the tools of analytics to increase revenue in a variety of ways including dynamic ticket pricing and optimizing of the placement of concession stands.
Ajay-  What are the ways analytics is used in specific sports that you have been part of?

Benjamin- A very typical first step for a team is to utilize the tools of predictive analytics to help inform their draft decisions.

Ajay- What are some of the tools, techniques and software that analytics in sports uses?
Benjamin- The tools of sports analytics do not differ much from the tools of business analytics. Regression analysis is fairly common as are other forms of data mining. In terms of software, R is a popular tool as is Excel and many of the other standard analysis tools.
Ajay- Describe your career journey and how you became involved in sports management. What are some of the tips you want to tell young students who wish to enter this field?

Benjamin- I got involved in sports through a company called Protrade Sports. Protrade initially was a fantasy sports company that was looking to develop a fantasy game based on advanced sports statistics and utilize a stock market concept instead of traditional drafting. I was hired due to my background in economics to develop the market aspect of the game.

There I met Roland Beech (who now works for the Mavericks) and Aaron Schatz (owner of footballoutsiders.com) and learned about the developing field of sports statistics. I then changed my research focus from economics to sports statistics and founded the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. Through the journal and my published research, I was able to establish a reputation of doing quality, useable work.

For students, I recommend developing very strong data management skills (sql and the like) and thinking carefully about what sort of questions a general manager or coach would care about. Being able to demonstrate analytic skills around actionable research will generally attract the attention of pro teams.

About-

Benjamin Alamar, Professor of Sport Management, Menlo College

Benjamin Alamar

Professor Benjamin Alamar is the founding editor of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sport, a professor of sports management at Menlo College and the Director of Basketball Analytics and Research for the Oklahoma City Thunder of the NBA. He has published academic research in football, basketball and baseball, has presented at numerous conferences on sports analytics. He is also a co-creator of ESPN’s Total Quarterback Rating and a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal. He has consulted for teams in the NBA and NFL, provided statistical analysis for author Michael Lewis for his recent book The Blind Side, and worked with numerous startup companies in the field of sports analytics. Professor Alamar is also an award winning economist who has worked academically and professionally in intellectual property valuation, public finance and public health. He received his PhD in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2001.

Prof Alamar is a speaker at Predictive Analytics World, San Fransisco and is doing a workshop there

http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2012/agenda.php#day2-17

2:55-3:15pm

All level tracks Track 1: Sports Analytics
Case Study: NFL, MLB, & NBA
Competing & Winning with Sports Analytics

The field of sports analytics ties together the tools of data management, predictive modeling and information systems to provide sports organization a competitive advantage. The field is rapidly developing based on new and expanded data sources, greater recognition of the value, and past success of a variety of sports organizations. Teams in the NFL, MLB, NBA, as well as other organizations have found a competitive edge with the application of sports analytics. The future of sports analytics can be seen through drawing on these past successes and the developments of new tools.

You can know more about Prof Alamar at his blog http://analyticfootball.blogspot.in/ or journal at http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jqas. His detailed background can be seen at http://menlo.academia.edu/BenjaminAlamar/CurriculumVitae

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Predictive Models Ain’t Easy to Deploy

February 23, 2012 By 2 Comments

 

This is a guest blog post by Carole Ann Matignon of Sparkling Logic. You can see more on Sparkling Logic at http://my.sparklinglogic.com/

Decision Management is about combining predictive models and business rules to automate decisions for your business. Insurance underwriting, loan origination or workout, claims processing are all very good use cases for that discipline… But there is a hiccup… It ain’t as easy you would expect…

What’s easy?

If you have a neat model, then most tools would allow you to export it as a PMML model – PMML stands for Predictive Model Markup Language and is a standard XML representation for predictive model formulas. Many model development tools let you export it without much effort. Many BRMS – Business rules Management Systems – let you import it. Tada… The model is ready for deployment.

What’s hard?

The problem that we keep seeing over and over in the industry is the issue around variables.

Those neat predictive models are formulas based on variables that may or may not exist as is in your object model. When the variable is itself a formula based on the object model, like the min, max or sum of Dollar amount spent in Groceries in the past 3 months, and the object model comes with transaction details, such that you can compute it by iterating through those transactions, then the problem is not “that” big. PMML 4 introduced some support for those variables.

The issue that is not easy to fix, and yet quite frequent, is when the model development data model does not resemble the operational one. Your Data Warehouse very likely flattened the object model, and pre-computed some aggregations that make the mapping very hard to restore.

It is clearly not an impossible project as many organizations do that today. It comes with a significant overhead though that forces modelers to involve IT resources to extract the right data for the model to be operationalized. It is a heavy process that is well justified for heavy-duty models that were developed over a period of time, with a significant ROI.

This is a show-stopper though for other initiatives which do not have the same ROI, or would require too frequent model refresh to be viable. Here, I refer to “real” model refresh that involves a model reengineering, not just a re-weighting of the same variables.

For those initiatives where time is of the essence, the challenge will be to bring closer those two worlds, the modelers and the business rules experts, in order to streamline the development AND deployment of analytics beyond the model formula. The great opportunity I see is the potential for a better and coordinated tuning of the cut-off rules in the context of the model refinement. In other words: the opportunity to refine the strategy as a whole. Very ambitious? I don’t think so.

About Carole Ann Matignon

http://my.sparklinglogic.com/index.php/company/management-team

Carole-Ann Matignon Print E-mail

Carole-Ann MatignonCarole-Ann Matignon – Co-Founder, President & Chief Executive Officer

She is a renowned guru in the Decision Management space. She created the vision for Decision Management that is widely adopted now in the industry.  Her claim to fame is managing the strategy and direction of Blaze Advisor, the leading BRMS product, while she also managed all the Decision Management tools at FICO (business rules, predictive analytics and optimization). She has a vision for Decision Management both as a technology and a discipline that can revolutionize the way corporations do business, and will never get tired of painting that vision for her audience.  She speaks often at Industry conferences and has conducted university classes in France and Washington DC.

She started her career building advanced systems using all kinds of technologies — expert systems, rules, optimization, dashboarding and cubes, web search, and beta version of database replication. At Cleversys (acquired by Kurt Salmon & Associates), she also conducted strategic consulting gigs around change management.

While playing with advanced software components, she found a passion for technology and joined ILOG (acquired by IBM). She developed a growing interest in Optimization as well as Business Rules. At ILOG, she coined the term BRMS while brainstorming with her Sales counterpart. She led the Presales organization for Telecom in the Americas up until 2000 when she joined Blaze Software (acquired by Brokat Technologies, HNC Software and finally FICO).

Her 360-degree experience allowed her to gain appreciation for all aspects of a software company, giving her a unique perspective on the business. Her technical background kept her very much in touch with technology as she advanced.
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