SEARCHThe View from Eigenvector
EigenNews and EigenViews from Barry and the Eigenvector staff.
Chemometrics at SIMS XVII
Sep 17, 2009
The the 17th International Conference on Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry, SIMS XVII, is being held this week in Toronto, CA. I am here with our Willem Windig. I’ve had an interest in SIMS for about a dozen years now, after being introduced to it by Anna Belu. Anna invited me to do a workshop on […]
Different kinds of PLS weights, loadings, and what to look at?
Sep 12, 2009
The age of Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression (as opposed to PLS path modeling) began with the SIAM publication of Svante Wold et. al. in 1984 [1]. Many of us learned PLS regression from the rather more accessible paper by Geladi and Kowalski from 1986 [2] which described the Nonlinear Iterative PArtial Least Squares (NIPALS) […]
New software releases coming in October
Sep 11, 2009
The Eigenvector programming staff has been working hard all summer, and the fruits of their labor are just about ripe! In October we plan to release new and substantially improved versions of PLS_Toolbox, MIA_Toolbox, Solo, and Solo+MIA. For a rundown of the most significant improvements see the new features brochure. I’m especially excited about the […]
Donal O’Sullivan joins Eigenvector
Sep 5, 2009
We’re pleased to announce that Donal O’Sullivan is the newest Eigenvectorian. As Senior Software Developer, Donal will be working with our Jeremy Shaver and Scott Koch to accelerate development of our off-the-shelf software products (PLS_Toolbox, Solo, etc.) and create custom solutions for our consulting clients. Donal has a wealth of programming experience and a very […]
Back to School Deals for Chemometrics Novices
Aug 26, 2009
NOTE: Current pricing can be found here. That nip in the air in the morning means that back to school time has arrived. Kids of all ages are getting their supplies together, and so are their teachers. If you are a student or instructor in a chemometrics or related class, we’ve got a deal for […]
Eigenvector Awarded SBIR Contract
Jul 8, 2009
We got some good news last week when we found out we won an SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) award to work with NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). The project will focus on continued advancement of the Temperature-Programmed Sensing (TPS) system developed at NIST by Steve Semancik and co-workers. The TPS system is […]
What Works and What Doesn’t
Jun 28, 2009
After SSC11 I got a note from my colleague Paman Gujral at the Automatic Control Laboratory at EPFL summarizing some of the talks. He wrote: “Rasmus Bro gave an excellent talk too about the pitfalls in using chemometric methods. Kowalski commented that software firms are a lot to blame for advocating methods that don’t work.” […]
Referencing Software – Summary
Jun 27, 2009
The post I wrote on June 11, Referencing Software, resulted in a rather lengthy thread on ICS-L, the Chemometrics discussion list. Most discussants generally agreed that the software used to develop results for scientific papers should be referenced, including the software title, publisher, year and version number. There were a few dissenters. Sergey Kucheryavski wrote: […]
Eigenvector President Goes to Jail
Jun 25, 2009
But it was for a good cause. I recently participated in the March of Dimes “Jail and Bail” fundraiser. The MoD got it’s start raising money for polio research in 1938. The other name for polio is “infantile paralysis,” as it typically attacked children and young adults. MoD defeated polio in the 1950’s, and has […]
Software Engineer Sought
Jun 19, 2009
The current recession hasn’t slowed things down here at Eigenvector. In fact, we’re looking for another Software Engineer to help us speed up evolution of our current products and develop custom solutions for our consulting clients. Please find below an ad for the position. BMW Software Engineer sought for leading role in scientific software development. […]
Referencing Software
Jun 11, 2009
Yesterday I picked up a newly-arrived journal and noted that the article highlighted on the front page looked quite interesting as we have been doing some related work. I eagerly turned to the article and found that the author had been using PLS-DA (Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis) and was, in fact, one of our […]
Use of Unlabeled Data in Regression Modeling
Jun 7, 2009
In 1995 Edward V. Thomas published “Incorporating Auxiliary Predictor Variation in Principal Components Regression” in J. Chemometrics, (vol. 9, no. 6, pps 471-481). Thomas demonstrated how additional samples, without matching references values, can be used when building a PCR model. These samples, commonly called “unlabeled data,” help stabilize the estimates of the principal components. So […]
EAS Chemometrics Award Session for Romà Tauler
Jun 4, 2009
As announced in a previous post, Romà Tauler was selected as this year’s recipient of the EAS Award for Achievements in Chemometrics. Romà asked me to organize the award session, and I have happily obliged. The session will be on Tuesday afternoon, November 17. The theme of the session is “Uncertainties, Ambiguities, and Chemometrics.” Talks […]
EigenU Redux: Chemometrics in Wenatchee, July 13-16
Jun 4, 2009
We had a number of people that just couldn’t make it to EigenU last month and wanted a Chemometrics course this summer. So we’re planning on doing a course here in Wenatchee, WA, July 13-16, 2009. We’re doing our “Basic Chemometrics” course on Monday-Wednesday, including: Linear Algebra for Chemometricians MATLAB for Chemometricians Chemometrics I: Principal […]
Chemometrics in Cultural Heritage
May 29, 2009
Last fall I had the pleasure, with Rasmus Bro, to teach a chemometrics course in Rome. The choice of this location was a result of Rasmus just wanting to go to Rome, and me making an email acquaintance of Prof. Giovanni Visco of the University of Rome, (La Sapienza). In 2008 Giovanni was organizing the […]
Chemometrics and Fortune 500 Companies
May 28, 2009
The other day I was updating my bio for a conference and was working on some sentences regarding our experience teaching chemometrics. It included a reference to teaching employees of Fortune 500 companies. So I decided to try to figure out how many of these companies had sent employees to our courses. Scanning the list, […]
Another EigenU Complete!
May 26, 2009
The fourth edition of Eigenvector University came to a close last Friday, May 22. The week-long EigenU 2009 had 25 participants from a wide variety of industries and universities. This was somewhat smaller than 2008, but still a good showing given the current state of the economy. Of course, we think it’s the really smart […]
Congratulations Romà!
Apr 17, 2009
This year’s Eastern Analytical Symposium Award for Achievements in Chemometrics goes to Romà Tauler. Romà is a Research Professor at CSIC, the Institute of Chemical and Environmental Research in Barcelona, Spain. Romà continues to be a pioneer in Multivariate Curve Resolution, the collection of techniques used for decomposing spectral data into its physically meaningful underlying […]
EigenU Registration Open
Apr 9, 2009
The fourth edition of Eigenvector University will be held in Seattle May 17-22. We’re excited about this edition in part because we have four new courses: Robust Methods, Correlation Spectroscopy, Common Mistakes in Chemometrics (and how not to make them), and Implementing Chemometrics in PAT. But we’re also excited because EigenU is about the only […]
PLS_Toolbox and Solo 5.2 Released
Apr 8, 2009
PLS_Toolbox and Solo 5.2 were released on April 7, 2009. This is the first major update to version 5.0. There’s a little too much new stuff in it to call it 5.1 (see the complete list), so we’re calling it 5.2. At first glance you won’t actually notice many of the improvements; most of them […]