Open Source Analytics

Over the next one month, we will do some cutting edge analytics using entirely free open-source software (so that you dont have to approach your boss for that million dollar analytics budget).

Yes, you guessed it right. This blog is for people who, like me, are tired of all the hype created around analytics by commercial BI vendors and the exorbitant prices they charge for bad software products. This blog is for people and organizations who want to discover the world of analytics and use advanced data-mining for actualizing their highest potential, but haven’t been able to do it so far. (more…)

When you are bootstrapping your way towards developing your dream software product, you have to be extra careful with your first few customers. You have to make sure they get all the benefits you had to offer. And you have to make sure that your upcoming product meets their custom requirements. After all, they are paying you for it, and are helping in the actualization of the vision, right?

Ummm… Not so simple really.
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Unfortunately most of the websites on analytics and data-mining are chock full of hype and have very little content that you can actually learn from. Still, there are some sites that are regularly referred to by the insiders. Very few, but still.

Here is a great Course on Data Mining created by Dr. Piatetsky-Shapiro and 3 computer science faculty members from Connecticut College working in conjunction with an instructional designer.

This course is organized as 19 modules of 75 minutes and provides a thorough overview of the field. The detailed course outline is available here.

If you know of some other good free courses about data-mining/BI/analytics, please let me know and I’ll put them up here.

Data mining has been defined as

The nontrivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown, and potentially useful information from data

and

The science of extracting useful information from large data sets or databases.

Well, in simpler terms, data-mining is what you do when you are unable to know your customers as you would if you were living and working in a small community. (more…)

If you are doing business intelligence/analytics/data-mining today and are satisfied with your results, this blog may not be for you.

This blog is about doing the best of that stuff in an accessible (here) and affordable (free) way. Its about Open Source Analytics.