PS Imago Pro is a result of the mature and long established IBM SPSS Partner Ecosystem. IBM encourages its partners to use their skills and expertise to develop additional functions and features that further enhance the core SPSS product that IBM offers, without diluting any of the existing functionality of that core product.
Here are a list of some of the most common data cleaning problems that you are likely to encounter and which SPSS procedures help to resolve them.
Data and analytics are becoming ever more central to businesses and their operations. The growth of cloud computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning means that advanced analytics plays an ever-growing role in traditionally data-heavy businesses, from retail and heathcare to finance and ecommerce. How is this likely to develop further in 2023? In this blog …
Key analytics trends for 2023 and how they will affect your business Read More »
IBM SPSS Statistics provides a powerful suite of data analytics tools which allows you to quickly analyze your data with a simple point-and-click interface and enables you to extract critical insights with ease. During these times of rapid change that demand agility, it is imperative to embrace data driven decision-making to improve business outcomes. Organisations …
Resources to help you accelerate your data analysis with SPSS Read More »
With v29 of IBM SPSS Statistics just released, should you consider an upgrade if you are running an unsupported version of SPSS? In terms of eagerness to upgrade, our customers fall in to a few categories: Some will upgrade as soon as they feasibly can – either due to IT policy or because they would …
In September this year, IBM released the latest version of SPSS Statistics. Version 29 introduces some new analysis procedures and includes more recent versions of R and Python Parametric Accelerated Failure Time (AFT) Models Version 29 brings a new addition to the SPSS family of Survival analysis procedures. Unlike the existing Life Tables, Kaplan-Meier and …
How to turn insights into action One of the challenges that organisations most commonly face when conducting data science and advanced analytics projects is how to take the findings of their analysis and use them to generate value for the business. In short, how to turn insights into action. It’s not unusual for such projects …
How can you best turn your data science insights into action? Read More »
Lorna – Can you start just by telling me a little bit about your background and how you came to be where you are now in your career? Bethan – I started out doing a maths degree at Lancaster University. And then I did a master’s in operational research, which was data science really, just …
Expert insights: Bethan Blakeley, Analytics Director, Boxclever Read More »
Smart Vision Europe recently announced an exciting new partnership with DataRobot, a rapidly rising player in the data science market with ambitions to be the de-facto leader of cloud-based AI for all. Over the past few months, I’ve been playing around with the platform, and I must say I am thoroughly impressed with what I …
Cloud AI at the cutting edge: taking DataRobot for a spin Read More »
At Smart Vision Europe we have many years of experience helping our customers successfully get started with applying and getting value from data science, AI and machine learning. We have set up and delivered numerous successful data science programmes across a range of industries as well as in the public sector. Under the collective banner …
Announcing Smart Vision’s new business partner relationship with Data Robot Read More »
IBM has just announced the general availability of IBM SPSS Statistics 28.0.1. This modification release introduces new statistical tests, enhancements to existing procedures and functional enhancements that will improve everyday usability. In this blog post we outline some of the new features and functionality. New statistical procedures and algorithm enhancements Kernel Ridge Regression As part …
SPSS Modeler is a robust data science software for professional analysts and data scientists. The software scales from supporting line-of-business predictive analysis to enterprise-scale implementation.Consisting of IBM SPSS Modeler Desktop 18.3 and IBM SPSS Modeler Server 18.3, SPSS Modeler delivers a robust predictive analytics solution for a holistic approach to predictive analytics. It brings predictive intelligence to decisions made by individuals, …
In my most recent blog post I wrote about the benefits and opportunities that cloud computing brings to data science projects and reciprocally, how data science projects provide a great way to demonstrate the value of cloud computing. In this post I want to discuss the cloud computing skills challenge and provide some advice on …
What skills are needed to successfully run data science projects in the cloud? Read More »
IBM is about to release the latest version of SPSS Statistics. Here’s a summary of some of the new enhancements that existing users can look forward to. Meta-analysis Meta-analysis is a well-established analytical approach that combines the results from a range of studies with a view to estimating the effect size of the treatment in question. …
What is unstructured data? The data you have access to within your organisation can be broadly sorted into two categories: structured and unstructured. Structured data is quantitative data that can be organised into a format that can neatly be fitted into the fields and columns of relational databases or spreadsheets. Examples might include things like …
Using text analytics to get value from unstructured data Read More »
We are living through a golden age of technological innovation and revolution. Whether it’s the blending of real time data, technical software and hardware instrumentation to deliver efficient, user friendly and zero carbon buildings or the combination of data, artificial intelligence algorithms and automotive technology to enable semi-autonomous vehicles, we are witnessing rapid expansion of …
Why data science presents the best use cases for cloud computing Read More »
How COVID-19 is changing the nature of advanced analytics We’re over a year into the COVID-19 pandemic now and it seems that everyone is an amateur statistics expert. Concepts like the R number, exponential growth and, most recently, probability and assessment of risk that used to be really only for discussion amongst epidemiologists and statisticians …
How COVID-19 is changing the nature of advanced analytics Read More »
One of the wonderful things about IBM SPSS Statistics is its ubiquity. I realise that it is not a household name in the way that big consumer brands are, but if you have ever had the need to analyse data, either professionally, in an academic context or in the public realm, the chances are that …
5 reasons why an SPSS subscription makes data science more accessible Read More »
How can a data scientist access training in 2021? 3 trends things to look out for… I have been involved in the delivery and implementation of data science software applications, data science projects and solutions that have advanced and predictive analytics at their core, in one form or another, for almost 30 years. Of course, …
How can a data scientist access training in 2021? 3 trends things to look out for… Read More »
Lorna: Can you just start off by telling me a little bit about yourself, what your background is and how you came to be where you are now? Diana: I’m a psychologist. I did psychology A-Level. That’s where it all started. Then I did an undergraduate course in psychology in London. With psychology, it’s 50% …
A fascinating recent report by MIT Sloan in collaboration with BCG has confirmed what many industry insiders have known for years: only a small minority of companies manage to make their initial AI projects succeed. Based on global survey of more than 3,000 managers and scholars in 29 industries, the report’s authors discovered that only …
In this series of ‘eat your greens‘ posts looking at core statistical concepts in more detail, we have looked closely at what a test of statistical significance actually is. In particular, we have focused on how to interpret the statistical probability value that various tests generate. This value, often labelled ‘P=’, ‘Prob’ or ‘Sig.’ in …
IBM have released a new update to SPSS v27. Interestingly, this is a ‘dot’ release that contains a number of useful functional improvements rather than the usual bug fixes or third-party compatibility enhancements. The new procedures include three additional statistical tests for comparing differences in proportions. These procedures were introduced as syntax only commands in …
A worked example of a classic inferential statistical procedure: the independent samples t-test.
This is the latest in our ‘eat your greens’ series – a back to basics look at core statistical concepts that are often misunderstood or misapplied. In everyday speech the term ‘correlation’ refers to a mutual connection or relationship between two things. In statistics correlations are specific measures or values that attempt to quantify the …
Spreadsheets have been much in the news over the last couple of days in the UK, and not for good reasons. It looks as though Excel’s limit on the number of rows of data possible in a spreadsheet has led to Public Health England misplacing more than 16,000 Covid test results. The implications of this …
This is the fifth post in our ‘eat your greens’ series – a back to basics look at some of the core concepts of statistics and analytics that, in our experience, are frequently misunderstood or misapplied. In this post we’ll look in more depth at the concept of the standard error and confidence intervals. In …
The gateway to inference – the standard error and confidence intervals Read More »
This is the fourth post in our ‘eat your greens’ series – a back to basics look at some of the core concepts of statistics and analytics that, in our experience, are frequently misunderstood or misapplied. In this post we’ll look in more depth at the concept of the normal distribution. One of the first …
None of us can have failed to notice the recent debacle over Ofqual’s (the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation) use of an algorithm to predict pupil grades. Once again, ‘algorithm fever’ has generated a flurry of news articles questioning whether we are sleepwalking into a dystopian future where human expert decision-making is replaced with …
This is the third post in our ‘eat your greens’ series – a back to basics look at some of the core concepts of statistics and analytics that, in our experience, are frequently misunderstood or misapplied. In this post we’ll look in more depth at the concept of the standard distribution. I’m often struck by …
This is the second post in our ‘eat your greens’ series – a back to basics look at some of the core concepts of statistics and analytics that, in our experience, are frequently misunderstood or misapplied. In this post we’ll look in more depth at the concept of testing versus inferring. One of most daunting …
What do we mean when we say something is statistically significant? A guide to one of the most misused concepts in statistics.
In June of this year, IBM released the latest version of SPSS Statistics. Version 27 introduces several additional analysis procedures as well as new system enhancements. In this report we take a tour of some of the most valuable improvements that have been made. There’s a video of this tour here as well. Bootstrapping and …
PS Imago Pro is a statistical analysis and reporting solution based on IBM SPSS Statistics. Indeed, apart from the inclusion of an additional menu, users of SPSS Statistics may find that the data analysis module of PS Imago Pro looks almost identical to its SPSS counterpart. However, as Figure 1 shows, this additional menu contains …
Lorna: Could you start just by talking a little bit about your own background and how you’ve come to be working with data? Mark: I suppose my background’s different from a lot of people who do this kind of work. They often come from a maths, stats or science background, but I didn’t do A-level …
Expert insight – Mark Langer Crame, Senior Data Intelligence Team Lead, Jisc Read More »
You may have noticed that many media outlets are illustrating the tragic course of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic by employing charts with log scales. These log values refer of course to the mathematical concept of logarithms. This is something that most of us learn about in school when we are taught that a logarithm is …
IBM SPSS Modeler supports Python scripting using Jython, a Java[tm] implementation of the Python language. Modeler versions 16 and 17 use Jython 2.5.1 which includes a number of useful and popular modules. However, many other modules are available and customers often want to use their own so a frequent question is how to include them. There …
Adding New Modules To Jython Scripting In IBM SPSS Modeler Read More »
Most SPSS Modeler scripts include code that locates an existing node e.g.: stream = modeler.script.stream() typenode = stream.findByType(“type”, None) However, some scripts need to search for all nodes – maybe by node type but also matching some other criteria. The Modeler scripting API documentation (PDF) mentions a findAll() function: d.findAll(filter, recursive): Collection filter (NodeFilter) : the node filter recursive …
Using the find all() Function to search for nodes Read More »
This infographic provides an overview of the four main families of approaches to predictive analytics. Prediction encompasses applications that aim to estimate or predict the values of a key target field. Segmentation refers to techniques such as cluster analysis which attempt to find the most ‘naturally occurring” groups within a dataset. Association modelling discovers groups …
An overview of the four main approaches to predictive analytics Read More »
There are a number of configuration settings associated with IBM SPSS Modeler Server that control its behaviour. The default settings aim to ensure that stream execution will complete successfully even if the host machine is being used by a number of other applications i.e. Modeler Server is trying to be a “good citizen”. However, if …
Using SPSS Modeler’s cache_compression setting to speed up your modelling Read More »
Gertrude Sai is Quantitative Manager, Evidence and Insights, at Girl Effect. Lorna: Can you start off by telling me a bit about your background and how you came to be where you are now? Gertrude: Yes, sure. My background is quite varied but mainly analytical. My degree in Psychology was definitely centered around statistics and …
Expert insight: Gertrude Sai, Quantitative Manager, Girl Effect Read More »
Lorna: Can you start by telling me something about how you came to be working with statistics and data? Hanna: I’ve always been interested in the psychology of why people do things and that led me to studying psychology at A-level, for my undergraduate degree and for my masters as well. Whilst doing my undergraduate …
Expert insight: Hanna Adeyinka, Customer Researcher, Hyde Housing Read More »
Inna Yordanova is Senior Researcher at IPSE – the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed. IPSE is the largest organisation representing freelancers and self-employed people. Its 78,000 members are freelancers, contractors, consultants and other self-employed people from all sectors of the economy. Lorna: Can you start off then just by telling me a little …
Expert insight: Inna Yordanova, Senior Researcher at IPSE Read More »
The good news is, it is a product that is still very much alive and in development, albeit it has had a long history of ownership and name changes! Back in the mists of time Data Collection Reports for Surveys was a staple component of the SPSS Market Research suite of tools. When the company …
What ever happened to Data Collection Reports for Surveys? Read More »
Through independent research, evaluation and strategic consulting support, SBD Automotive helps vehicle manufacturers and their partners create autonomous, more secure and better connected cars. Adam O’Shaughnessy is a Senior Specialist – Connected Car. Lorna: Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you’ve come to be working with data and statistics …
Expert insight – Adam O’Shaughnessy, SBD Automotive Read More »
Rob Woods has worked in the analytics industry for over 20 years. He’s currently an Analytics Solutions Architect working on IBM’s Watson FSS suite of products. All views here are his own and not IBM’s. Describe your own background and how you came to be working with statistics / data / analytics I started as …
Expert insight: Rob Woods, Analytics Solution Architect/Data Scientist, Watson FSS Read More »
Like a lot of consultants working in the analytics industry, I’ve built up an extensive portfolio of materials to illustrate different kinds of applications and approaches. Some of these consist of files and slide decks used to explain quite esoteric procedures such as TURF analysis or Partial Least Squares. However, there are certain materials that …
In April of this year, IBM released the latest version of SPSS Statistics. Version 26 introduces a number of additional analysis procedures as well as new command enhancements. If you’re an existing SPSS user and you’d like to upgrade to v26 there’s more information about how to do that here. If you’re interested in trying SPSS …
Lorna: Please could you start just by talking a little bit about your own background and how you’ve come to be working in data? Cliff: I went to university to do a mapping science degree, during which time I had a year out in industry. I worked as a surveyor for a company that was …
Expert insight: Clifford Budge, Head of Ecommerce Data Science, major toy manufacturer Read More »
Here is an interesting confession. I work for an analytics company but I would really rather not think about or talk about analytics. Let me explain. I once worked with an operations director. He had a great team of analysts. He valued their work and was interested in the information they gave him but the …
I work for an analytics company, but I don’t want to talk about analytics Read More »
