Unlike expensive and complicated enterprise data mining software, XLMiner is very easy to use. An On-Ramp for Predictive Analytics Expertise This means that users can work with datasets much larger than those handled by Excel, while retaining the familiarity and ease of use of Excel. XLMiner also includes a ‘scoring’ function that can be used to apply a fitted data mining model to a larger external database. In XLMiner V4.0, this facility is extended to sample data from PowerPivot’s in-memory database. XLMiner has always included facilities to sample data from popular relational databases (DB2, Oracle, etc.) as well as from Excel spreadsheets.
XLMiner V4.0 works with both PowerPivot for Excel 2010 and the new PowerPivot version for Excel 2013 Preview Edition.Įven in the largest enterprise data mining products, vendors recommend that data mining models should be built based on a sample of data from the larger database this data sample easily fits in a spreadsheet. In the forthcoming Microsoft Excel 2013, an enhanced PowerPivot add-in is included ‘in the box’ with Excel. PowerPivot makes it easy to integrate data from multiple disparate data sources – including Microsoft’s Window Azure Data Marketplace, with a huge array of publicly available datasets – into one, potentially quite large, in-memory relational database. But Excel already handles million-row spreadsheets, and PowerPivot for Excel – an add-in from Microsoft’s SQL Server group that brings a powerful database engine into memory with Excel – handles up to hundreds of millions of rows of data in Excel. Some observers believe that spreadsheets are only suitable for small datasets and models. Working with ‘Big Data’ in an Excel Spreadsheet Users can apply principal component analysis, k-means clustering, and hierarchical clustering to simplify their data, and automatically find ‘clusters’ of similar data points.
It offers discriminant analysis, logistic regression, k-nearest neighbors, classification trees, naïve Bayes and neural nets for classification, and association rules for affinity analysis.įor the “data cleaning” step that typically precedes analysis, XLMiner offers data sampling and partitioning, missing data handling, binning, and transformation of categorical data. It includes multiple regression, exponential smoothing, and ARIMA models for forecasting, but it also includes data mining tools such as regression trees, k-nearest neighbors, and neural networks for more complex prediction models. XLMiner goes far beyond other statistics and forecasting add-ins for Excel. Now in XLMiner V4.0, features like scatterplot matrix and parallel coordinates charts, multiple linked charts with ‘brushing’ of data points across charts, and single-click creation of new plots, colors and panels across categorical variables, are available in the familiar Excel environment, linked to XLMiner’s data cleaning and mining functions. Several desktop and web-based products, for example JMP, Tableau and Spotfire, have offered data exploration and visualization outside Excel. Microsoft Excel has traditionally featured extensive facilities for creating charts and graphs, but these were designed primarily for presentation, not for exploration and visualization of complex inter-relationships in multivariate data. “We believe Frontline can powerfully extend XLMiner’s reach, and we’re supporting their efforts with our XLMiner-based data mining courses taught by expert instructors online.” Data Visualization – Beyond Excel Charts “We’re very pleased with this new home for XLMiner,” said Peter Bruce, President and CEO of LLC and co-author of the leading textbook Data Mining for Business Intelligence (Wiley, 2010). To aid analysis using multiple, disparate ‘Big Data’ sources, XLMiner now works with Microsoft PowerPivot, sampling from datasets with up to hundreds of millions of rows.” “Now, XLMiner includes powerful data exploration and visualization features to support the ‘front end’ of business data analytics. “XLMiner has traditionally offered surprisingly powerful data mining and predictive analytics in an Excel add-in, but graphics were not its strength,” said Daniel Fylstra, Frontline’s President and CEO. V4.0 is the first version to reflect Frontline’s investment in new product development for XLMiner, and the first version to work with Excel 2013 Preview Edition.
#Frontline solver excel free download full
INCLINE VILLAGE, NV – Septem– Frontline Systems, developers of the Excel Solver and a full line of advanced optimization and simulation software products for Excel, is shipping new Version 4.0 of XLMiner®, the leading Excel-based add-in for data mining, which it acquired one year ago from Cytel Software Inc.