Marcos Campos

Maybe I am too much of a data mining geek, but I found the video below to be funny. It also talks about a super cool feature ODM introduced in 11.2: the ability of scoring data mining models at the disk controller level in Exadata. This is a significant performance booster. It also makes it feasible to produce actionable insights from massive amounts of data extremely fast. More on this on a Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com1

For those that have not heard the BMW Oracle Racing team won the America's Cup sailing an incredible new boat. What even those that have been following the news on the race do not know is that Oracle Data Mining helped the performance team tune the boat. I participated helping with that problem and it was a very hard one: Imagine standing under an avalanche of data - 2500 variables, 10 times Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com0

Rexer Analytics has just issued a last call for its annual data mining survey. This is a pretty nice survey that provides a great deal of valuable information about how data mining is used and who is doing it. To participate, please click on the link below and enter the access code in the space provided. The survey should take approximately 20 minutes to complete.  At the end of the survey you Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com2

The Oracle Data Mining group has two openings for talented software developers and machine learning experts. Take a look at these links (IRC1133401, IRC1143559) for more details.Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com1

The Oracle BIWA Summit 2008 is approaching  (December 2-3) . It will be held at Oracle World HQ, Redwood Shores, California. This is the second event of its kind. Last year's event was a great success and lots of fun (see details here ). This year's keynotes include Jeanne Harris (co-author of "Competing on Analytics") and Usama Fayyad (legendary data miner).  Here are some information and linksMarcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com1

For a long time I have thought that we needed data mining books written for developers. Most data mining books are written for business or data analysts. Given that, it was a pleasant surprise to read Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications by Toby Segaran. The book provides a good discussion on data mining concepts anchored with interesting examples. It also Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com5

I firmly believe that a major trend in applications is the incorporation of analytic-enabled functionality. Users want more than just reports or a replay of the past. Users want to have insights and their attention directed to key points. This is where analytics can make a big impact across all types of applications. Notice that I am not proposing exposing analytical capabilities (e.g., data Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com2

Recently someone asked me how to invert a matrix using the UTL_NLA PL/SQL package. This can be done by solving a system of linear equations AX = B like the ones I described in this post but setting B to the identity matrix. I thought that the question was interesting enough to deserve its own post. So I am replicating the answer here for those interested. The UTL_NLA package has many different Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com5

It is that time of the year again. In about a week I am going to be attending the KDD (Knowledge Discovery in Databases) 2008 conference (conference website) along with some other Oracle colleagues. KDD is one of the primary conferences on data mining. This year it will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada, from August 24 to 27.Oracle is a Gold sponsor for the event and will have again a large Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com0

For the past couple of months the blog took a back seat. Basically, since KDD, I have had very little time to write. I have been on the road quite a bit and my trip to KDD unleashed a number of research ideas that I have been following up. I will post on the latter over time as the results mature.I have also dropped the ball answering many of the emails and comments I have received. I have caughtMarcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com7

For the next couple of days I am going to be attending the KDD (Knowledge Discovery in Databases) 2007 conference (conference website) along with some other Oracle colleagues. KDD is one of the primary conferences on data mining. This year it will take place in San Jose, CA, from August 12 to 15.Oracle is a Gold sponsor for the event and will have a large presence at the conference. Among other Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com0

This week I am going to be in San Francisco. I have been invited to give a talk at the San Francisco Bay ACM Data Mining SIG on Wednesday. The title of the talk is In-Database Analytics: A Disruptive Technology. Here is a link with information on the talk.On Friday morning, I am presenting at the ST Seminar at Oracle's headquarter. The title of that talk is In-Database Mining: The I in BI. If Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com0

This post shows how to implement Principal Components Analysis (PCA) with the UTL_NLA package. It covers some of the uses of PCA for data reduction and visualization with a series of examples. It also provides details on how to build attribute maps and chromaticity diagrams, two powerful visualization techniques.This is the second post in a series on how to do Linear Algebra in the Oracle Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com6

Today (Wednesday), May 2, 2007 at 12:00 PM EST, the Oracle Business Intelligence, Warehouse and Analytics (BIWA) Special Interest Group (SIG) will host another interesting free webcast:Oracle's In-Database StatisticsSpeaker: Charlie BergerSession AbstractOracle Database 10g embeds a range of SQL-based basic statistical functions including: summary statistics, hypothesis testing, correlation Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com2

Tomorrow, April 25, 2007On April 25, 2007 at 11:45 AM EDT, the Oracle Business Intelligence, Warehouse and Analytics (BIWA) Special Interest Group (SIG) will host the following free webcast:A Simple Fraud Detection Application using ODM, BIEE, and SQL DeveloperSpeaker: Bob HaberstrohSession AbstractClassification is an often-used methodology in data mining that creates a predictive model Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com3

New to the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 is a hidden gem, the UTL_NLA package. This not very well known package (you don't get many hits for it in Google) brings linear algebra functionality to the Oracle Database. It makes the Oracle Database an even better platform for scientific and advanced analytics programming. Now it is possible to write performant matrix code in the database easily and Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com22

Wikipedia has a nice page on Oracle Data Mining (link). It provides a good overview of the features and history of the product. Here is a snippet of the text:Oracle Data Mining (ODM) is a software product distributed as an option to Oracle Corporation's Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) Enterprise Edition (EE). This product supports a collection of data mining and data analysis Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com0

OTN has a new page (link) describing the statistical functions in the Oracle 10g Database. These functions are available in all versions of the database at no extra cost. Features include:Descriptive statisticsHypothesis testingCorrelations analysis (parametric and nonparametric)Ranking functionsCross Tabulations with Chi-square statisticsLinear regressionANOVATest Distribution fitWindow Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com2

The Business Intelligence, Warehousing and Analytics Special Interest Group (BIWA SIG, BIWA for short) has been recently created. Although it counts with a strong participation of Oracle employees, BIWA is an independent organization from Oracle.BIWA is a community in the making. It provides a number of benefits to its members (membership is free):Get the latest information about Business Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com2

It has been a great year. My daughter was born as well as this blog. I have launched this blog at the beginning of the year (January first to be more precise) and the readership has been great. Amongst the posts, Time Series and Automatic Pivoting were probably the most viewed. I am on vacation in Brazil right now enjoying a family reunion. I have a big family and it is hard to get everyone Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756167848125664628noreply@blogger.com0