SEARCHThe View from Eigenvector
EigenNews and EigenViews from Barry and the Eigenvector staff.
iPods Ordered!
Apr 25, 2011
EigenU 2011 is now less than 3 weeks away: it starts on Sunday, May 15. Once again we’ll have the “PLS_Toolbox/Solo User Poster Session” where users can showcase their own chemometric achievements. This Tuesday evening event is open to all EigenU participants, as well as anyone with a poster which demonstrates how PLS_Toolbox or Solo […]
Switch from MLR to PLS?
Apr 20, 2011
In a recent post, Fernando Morgado posed the following question to the NIR Discussion List: “When is it necessary to move from traditional Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) to Partial Least Squares Regression (PLS)?” That’s a good discussion starter! I’ll offer my take on it here. I have several answers to the question, but before I […]
“This software is awesome!”
Apr 7, 2011
That’s what Eigenvector’s Vice-President, Neal B. Gallagher, wrote to our developers, Jeremy, Scott and Donal, this morning about the latest version of PLS_Toolbox. So, OK, he may be a little biased. But it underscores a point, which is that all of us at EVRI who do consulting (including Neal, Jeremy, Bob, Randy, Willem and myself) […]
EigenU 2011 Filling Up!
Mar 31, 2011
The Sixth Edition of Eigenvector University, EigenU 2011, is filling up. Many of our most popular classes are more than half full. This includes Linear Algebra for Chemometricians, MATLAB for Chemometricians, Chemometrics I: PCA, Chemometrics II: Regression and PLS, Variable Selection, and Common Chemometric Mistakes (and how to avoid them). This year EigenU runs from […]
Improved Model_Exporter Coming Soon
Mar 29, 2011
EVRI’s Model_Exporter allows users of PLS_Toolbox and Solo to export their Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Partial Least Squares (PLS) Regression and other models in a variety of formats suitable for use in both MATLAB and other environments (e.g. LabSpec, GNU Octave, Symbion, LabVIEW, Java, C++/C#). A new, improved version of Model_Exporter will be released in […]
PLS_Toolbox or Solo?
Mar 28, 2011
Customers who are new to chemometrics often ask us if they should purchase our MATLAB-based PLS_Toolbox or stand-alone Solo. I’ll get to some suggestions in a bit, but first it is useful to clarify the relationship between the two packages: Solo is the compiled version of the PLS_Toolbox tools which are accessible from the interfaces. […]
New Versions Released
Mar 23, 2011
New versions of our most popular software products were released earlier this month. Our MATLAB-based, full-featured chemometrics package, PLS_Toolbox, is now in version 6.2. The stand-alone version of PLS_Toolbox, Solo, and Solo+MIA for multivariate and hyperspectral image analysis also move to version 6.2. MIA_Toolbox is now in version 2.5. The functionality of Solo+MIA and MIA_Toolbox […]
Happy Anniversary, Jeremy!
Feb 15, 2011
Time flies! Today marks the 10th anniversary of Jeremy Shaver joining Eigenvector Research. There are so many nice things I could say about Jeremy that I’m not sure where to start. When Jeremy joined us in 2001, It didn’t take long for us to figure out that he was more than merely multi-talented. He rapidly […]
EigenU 2011 Registration Now Open
Jan 25, 2011
The Sixth edition of Eigenvector University will be held May 15-20, 2011. Once again, we’ll be at the fabulous Washington Athletic Club in the heart of downtown Seattle. We’ve added two new classes this year, “SVMs, LWR and other Non-linear Methods for Calibration and Classification” and “Design of Experiments.” The non-linear methods class will focus […]
Sijmen de Jong
Nov 8, 2010
Sijmen de Jong passed away on October 30, 2010. I first heard of Sijmen not long after finishing my dissertation. It was late 1992 or so, and I was working at Battelle, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Sijmen had gotten a copy of an early version of PLS_Toolbox which was available on the internet via […]
Speed of PLS Algorithms
Nov 1, 2010
Previously I wrote about accuracy of PLS algorithms, and compared SIMPLS, NIPALS, BIDIAG2 and the new DSPLS. I now turn to speed of the algorithms. In the paragraphs that follow I’ll compare SIMPLS, NIPALS and DSPLS as implemented in PLS_Toolbox 6.0. It should be noted that the code I’ll test is our standard code (PLS_Toolbox […]
Advanced Features in Leuven, Belgium
Oct 4, 2010
Following a successful premier of our new course, Using the Advanced Features of PLS_Toolbox/Solo 6.0, we’re pleased to announce that we will be repeating the course in Leuven, Belgium on November 22, 2010. The course is being arranged in conjunction with CQ Consultancy. And, yes! It was a successful premier! We had 28 students at […]
Mediterranean Tour
Sep 17, 2010
I head off tomorrow morning (way too early!) on a “tour” of the Mediterranean. I’ll be attending The First African-European Conference on Chemometrics, aka Afrodata, in Rabat, Morocco. From there, I’ll go to CMA4CH–Application of MVA and Chemometrics to Cultural Heritage and Environment in Sicily. Then it’s on to Barcelona to teach Using the Advanced […]
One Last Time on Accuracy of PLS Algorithms
Sep 9, 2010
Scott Ramos of Infometrix wrote me last week and noted that he had followed the discussion on the accuracy of PLS algorithms. Given that they had done considerable work comparing their BIDIAG2 implementation with other PLS algorithms, he was “surprised” with my original post on the topic. He was kind enough to send me a […]
Coming in 6.0: Analysis Report Writer
Sep 4, 2010
Version 6.0 of PLS_Toolbox, Solo and Solo+MIA will be out this fall. There will be lots of new features, but right at the moment I’m having fun playing with one in particular: the Analysis Report Writer (ARW). The ARW makes documenting model development easy. Once you have a model developed, just make the plots you […]
Advanced Features in Barcelona
Sep 1, 2010
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be doing a one day short course, Using the Advanced Features of PLS_Toolbox, on the University of Barcelona campus, on October 1, 2010 (one month from today!). The course will show how to use many of the powerful, but often underutilized, tools in PLS_Toolbox. It will also feature some […]
Re-orthogonalization of PLS Algorithms
Aug 23, 2010
Thanks to everybody that responded to the last post on Accuracy of PLS Algorithms. As I expected, it sparked some nice discussion on the chemometrics listserv (ICS-L)! As part of this discussion, I got a nice note from Klaas Faber reminding me of the short communication he wrote with Joan Ferré, “On the numerical stability […]
Accuracy of PLS Algorithms
Aug 13, 2010
In 2009 Martin Andersson published “A comparison of nine PLS1 algorithms” in Journal of Chemometrics[1]. This was a very nice piece of work and of particular interest to me as I have worked on PLS algorithms myself [2,3] and we include two algorithms (NIPALS and SIMPLS) in PLS_Toolbox and Solo. Andersson compared regression vectors calculated […]
Clustering in Images
Aug 6, 2010
It is probably an understatement to say that here are many methods for cluster analysis. However, most clustering methods don’t work well for large data sets. This is because they require computation of the matrix that defines the distance between all the samples. If you have n samples, then this matrix is n x n. […]
10,000 Commits
Jul 30, 2010
The EVRI software developers surpassed a landmark when our Donal O’Sullivan made the 10,000th “commit” to our software repository. Donal was working on some improvements to our Support Vector Machine (SVM) routines in PLS_Toolbox and submitted the changes yesterday afternoon. As noted by our Chief of Technology Development, Jeremy Shaver, “This is a trivial landmark […]