SEARCHThe View from Eigenvector
EigenNews and EigenViews from Barry and the Eigenvector staff.
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 […]
Eigenvector Welcomes Randy Bishop
Jul 26, 2010
All of us at EVRI would like to issue a warm, (albeit belated), welcome to Randy Bishop. Randy joined our staff in March, 2010. We started running into Dr. Bishop about 10 years ago at FACSS meetings where he often taught experimental design. In those days he was with GE Plastics and heavily involved with […]
New Website Up and Running
Jul 21, 2010
We’re pleased to announce that the new Eigenvector website is up! We’ve been working on it for several months. You may have noticed we haven’t updated the current site during that time, but it is all up-to-date now! I developed Eigenvector’s first website in the fall of 1996. There were just over 2 million registered […]
Pseudoinverses, Rank and Significance
Jun 1, 2010
The first day of Eigenvector University 2010 started with a class on Linear Algebra, the “language of chemometrics.” The best question of the day occurred near the end of the course as we were talking about pseudoinverses. We were doing an example with a small data set, shown below, which demonstrates the problem of numerical […]
Eigenvector University 2010 Best Posters
May 26, 2010
The EigenU 2010 Poster Session was held Tuesday evening, May 18. This year 7 users contributed posters for the contest, and the Eigenvectorians chipped in another 5, so there was plenty to discuss. We all enjoyed beer, wine and hors d’oeuvres as we discussed the finer points of aligning chromatograms and calculating PARAFAC models, among […]
Biggest Chemometrics Learning Event Ever?
May 26, 2010
Eigenvector University 2010 finished up on Friday afternoon, May 21. What a week! Six days, 17 courses, 10 instructors and 45 students. I’d venture a guess that this was the biggest chemometrics learning event ever. If more chemometrics students and instructors have been put together for more hours than in Seattle last week, I’m not […]
Ready for EigenU
May 14, 2010
Eigenvector University 2010 starts in just 2 days. We’re busy doing the final tune-ups on our course notes, making final catering arrangements, etc. I hope that all our guests are ready to get out of their offices for a while and spend some time “sharpening the saw.” This year’s EigenU will be the biggest ever, […]
Robust Methods
May 12, 2010
This year we are presenting “Introduction to Robust Methods” at Eigenvector University. I’ve been working madly preparing a set of course notes. And I must say that it has been pretty interesting. I’ve had a chance to try the robust versions of PCA, PCR and PLS on many of the data sets we’ve used for […]
Welcome to the 64-bit party!
May 3, 2010
Unscrambler X is out, and CAMO is touting the fact that it is 64-bit. We say, “Welcome to the party!” MATLAB has had 64-bit versions out since April, 2006. That means that users of our PLS_Toolbox and MIA_Toolbox software have enjoyed the ability to work with data sets larger than 2Gb for over 4 years […]
Best Poster iPods Ordered
Apr 28, 2010
As in past years, this year’s Eigenvector University includes a poster session where users of MATLAB, PLS_Toolbox and Solo can showcase their work in the field of chemometrics. It is also a chance to discuss unsolved problems and future directions, over a beer, no less. This year’s crop of posters will be judged by Bruce […]
EigenU 2010 on-track to be biggest ever
Apr 18, 2010
The Fifth Edition of Eigenvector University is set for May 16-21, 2010. Once again we’ll be at the beautiful Washington Athletic Club in Seattle. This year we’ll be joined by Bruce Kowalski, co-founder (with Svante Wold) of the field of Chemometrics. Rasmus Bro will also be there, along with the entire Eigenvector staff. Registrations are […]
Another EAS Meeting
Nov 15, 2009
Hard to believe that a year has passed, but I’m once again back at the Eastern Analytical Symposium, in Somerset NJ. EAS 2009 started today (Sunday, Nov. 15) with short courses, and will continue through Thursday (Nov. 19). I’m teaching today with Don Dahlberg. Once again we’re presenting “Chemometrics without Equations” to a new group […]
Chemometric “how to” videos on-line
Nov 12, 2009
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s a video worth? Here at EVRI we’ve started developing a series of short videos that show “how to” do various chemometric tasks with our software packages, including our new PLS_Toolbox 5.5 and Solo 5.5. Some of the presentations are pretty short and specific, but others are […]
The Gang’s all here: Chemometric software updates released
Nov 5, 2009
In this case, “the Gang” is all our most popular software packages, and they’ve all gotten substantial improvements. This includes our flagship MATLAB toolbox for chemometrics, PLS_Toolbox, and its stand-alone version Solo. Plus our products for Multivariate Image Analysis MIA_Toolbox and the stand alone Solo+MIA. As evidenced by the release notes, PLS_Toolbox and Solo received […]