IBM SPSS Modeler Cookbook

Foreword

Our company, ISL was a provider of Artificial Intelligence tools and technology to organizations developing advanced software solutions. By 1992, what had started as a casual interest from our clients in applying some of our tools-the machine learning modules to their historic data had evolved into a promising practice in what was to become known as data mining. This was developing into a nice line of business for us, but was frustrating in a couple of ways: First, we'd always intended that ISL should be a software supplier. Yet here we were, because of the complexity of the technologies involved, providing data mining on a consulting services basis.

Secondly, we were finding that data mining projects involved a lot of hard work, and that most of that work was boring. Unearthing significant patterns and delivering accurate predictions... that part was fun. But most of our effort went on mundane tasks such as manipulating data into the formats required by the various modules and algorithms we applied.

So we built Clementine to make our job easier and allow us to focus on the interesting parts of projects, and to give us a tool we could provide to our clients. When the first prototypes were ready, we tested them by using them to re-run projects we'd previously executed manually. We found work that had previously taken several weeks was now reduced to under an hour; we'd obviously got something right.

As the embryonic data mining market grew, so did our business. We saw other vendors, with deeper pockets and vastly more resources than little ISL, introduce data mining tools, some of which tried to emulate the visual style of the Clementine's user interface. We were relieved when, as the inevitable shoot-outs took place, we found time and time again evaluators reporting that our product had a clear edge, both in terms of productivity and the problem- solving power it gave to analysts.

On reflection, the main reasons for our success were that we got a number of crucial things right: Clementine's design and implementation, from the ground up, was object-oriented. Our visual programming model was consistent and "pure"; learn the basics, and everything is done in the same way

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ISBN 978-1-84968-546-7

IBM SPSS Modeler Cookbook

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