The most recent versions of Salford Predictive Modeler™ SPM PRO EX include a new BATTERY to invoke bootstrapped replication of most model types available in SPM. One of our reasons for adding this BATTERY was to provide access to the full CART engine when generating RandomForests® (RF) models. The principle advantages of this are:

Breiman’s original RF uses a stripped down and simplified tree growing algorithm designed for speed. It lacks tree growing options and missing handling, and fort many users Breiman's RF is confined to classification problems. By accessing the full CART engine with all of its Salford extensions and customized controls, modelers can accomplish far more sophisticated analyses, handle missing values with surrogates, apply penalties and constraints, and most importantly for those interested in continuous dependent variables, BATTERY BOOTSTRAP gives access to both Least Squares (LS) and Least Absolute Deviation (LAD) regression trees.

The principle drawback of BATTERY BOOTSTRAP is that the extra machinery comes with a computational price: RF runs under BATTERY BOOTSTRAP are much slower than under Breiman–RF. The extra robustness, ability to handle huge problems, and added controls should often make the slower runs worthwhile. Also observe that at the moment the RF post–model visualization machinery is not available.

SAN DIEGO — CART® and RandomForests® co–developers include two of the prominent speakers for Salford Systems’ Analytics and Data Mining Conference, which will be held in San Diego, CA May 24–25, 2012.

CART co–developer Dr. Richard Olshen’s interests regarding research are in statistics and mathematics and their applications to medicine and biology. Many efforts have concerned binary tree–structured algorithms for classification, regression, survival analysis, and clustering. Those for classification and survival analysis have been used with success in computer–aided diagnosis and prognosis, especially in cardiology, oncology, and toxicology.

SAN DIEGO – Salford Systems CEO Dan Steinberg and Salford product user Felipe Fernandez will share with KDD 2011 attendees how broad scale predictive modeling and marketing optimization can be used to improve retail sales. The presentation will be included in the conference’s inaugural Industrial Practice Expo on Tuesday, Aug. 23.

SAN DIEGO – Salford Systems announces its 2012 Analytics and Data Mining Conference with the launch of its new conference website. The conference will be held in San Diego, Calif., May 24-25, 2012.