Posts Tagged ‘SPSS’

Research In a recent post (SPSS – Making good on an investment), I spoke about a study on the ROI of SPSS. This time, I would like to call out a study performed by Ventana Research of San Ramon, Calif. in March 2012. This study reports on organizations already using predictive analytics: March 7, 2012 […]

  Chi-Squared Challenging using SPSS A Chi-Square Challenge (or Test) procedure organizes your data pond variables into groups and computes a chi-square statistic. Here is the specific definition: “The chi-square (chi, the Greek letter pronounced “kye”) statistic is a statistical technique used to determine if a “distribution of observed frequencies” differs from the “theoretical expected […]

The Frequencies command is one of the simplest yet one of the most useful descriptive techniques.  Its objective is to simply sum the number of instances within a particular category. For example, the following questions could be easily answered: How many males and females make up my data pond? What are the number of ethnic […]

Of the Conventional Analytics Mind   Using a conventional mindset, data ponds are identified and analyzed to build predictive models: Data ponds are identified for evaluation Data scientist performs detailed descriptive analysis Based upon the descriptive analysis a “outcome of interest” is established Using established guidelines a modeling technique is carefully chosen A predictive model […]

The SPSS Statistics Crosstabs procedure forms two-way and multi-way tables (and provides a variety of tests and measures of association for the two-way tables). The structure of the table and whether categories are ordered determine what test or measure to use. Crosstabs’ statistics and measures of association are computed for two-way tables only. If you […]

A  codebook is a type of document used for gathering and storing codes. Originally codebooks were often literally books, but today codebook is a byword for the complete record of a series of codes, regardless of physical format. – Wikipedia The codebook command was introduced in IBM SPSS Statistics version 17. It provides information about the […]

IBM SPSS Statistics offers many ways to help save time when analyzing data, particularly if you are continually performing the same types of analysis on similar sets of pools of data. TIME SAVERS “Metadata Attributes” – Data attributes have properties associated with them, and these properties are defined in metadata.   During data analysis, documentation […]

Over the last month I’ve been taking a tactical view of analytics by focusing on some of the specific features of IBM SPSS Statistics so today, I have decided to think a bit more “strategically”. If your organization wants to begin leveraging survey-response type data for example, what might be a reasonable approach? If I […]

The power of SPSS allows the data scientist or predictive modeler to consume large data volumes. This data may come in smaller manageable subsets or possible huge “data ponds”.  Depending upon the procedures you will be performing in your analysis, SPSS may reread the entire data set for each procedure.  Of course, procedures that change […]

Automated Data Preparation (ADP)   The seasoned data scientist knows that probably the single most import step in creating a predictive model is pinpointing the appropriate “data pond” and ensuring that it is properly “prepared”. I’ve written about the many “out of the box” tools that SPSS users can use to manage data, such as […]

  Serious Analytical Architect? Any serious analytic architect will need to at least be aware of the individual SPSS products offered and have at least a basic understanding of what each of them can do. Here is the list: IBM Showcase Report Writer Quickly create professional-looking, presentation-quality reports using intuitive, word processor-like page layout and […]

IBM SPSS defines each variable with a “TYPE”. By default, all variables in SPSS are assumed to be numeric until you change them. SPSS V20 currently supports the following variable types: Numeric and String (the most common), Comma, Dot, Scientific Notation, Date, Dollar, Custom Currency and Restricted Numeric What day is it? Today I want […]