Information Builders Releases WebFOCUS RStat for Data Mining, Standard Statistical Analysis
New predictive analytics tool offers scoring routines for survival models
Note: TDWI’s editors carefully choose vendor-issued press releases about new or upgraded products and services. We have edited and/or condensed this release to highlight key features but make no claims as to the accuracy of the vendor's statements.
Information Builders has released WebFOCUS RStat 1.2, an integrated BI platform that enables employees at all levels to create predictive applications.
As RStat has become a general-purpose data mining and statistical tool that significantly reduces the “IT complexity” for non-statistically trained users, it appeals to a broad group of business analysts and operational employees alike. By enabling more employees to take advantage of a predictive solution and make better decisions, RStat provides greater business benefits at all levels of an organization.
RStat 1.2 dramatically lowers the cost of predictive analytics. By fully integrating RStat with WebFOCUS, customers benefit from significantly lower costs of mining projects by providing efficient access to data. Ninety percent of costs in statistical and mining projects are in data access and manipulation -- two activities that are easier with BI tools.
Additionally, the integration on the reporting server lowers deployment costs by minimizing the need for additional hardware. Instead of having a statistical server and a BI server, RStat 1.2 enables customers to conduct both BI and predictive modeling from a single server. Having this type of integrated environment makes the deployment of a predictive scoring solution simpler and faster than older statistical systems. Information Builders is providing RStat free for modeling and analysis services as part of its Developer Studio product.
WebFOCUS RStat 1.2 includes several new features:
- Survival Analysis: Included as an additional statistical modeling technique and scoring routine with both COX regression and Kaplan-Mayer, RStat 1.2 integrates scoring routines for survival models. Survival analysis is widely used in the pharmaceutical and health-care industries to measure outcomes. In government, it’s used for matching children with foster parents and in the manufacturing and engineering industries, it’s used to model machine failure, maintenance, and replacement of parts.
- Library of Scoring Routines: Expanded to advanced models such as Neural Networks. This widens the scope of models that can be deployed directly with WebFOCUS on any platform.
- Charting capabilities: Expanded with new charts that are relevant for survival analysis. Survival charts allow people to quickly assess whether there are significant differences between segments across an organization or extended network. For example, with a survival chart, someone can compare how long children stay in foster care from one country to another. If differences are shown, a broken process is indicated and an agency can quickly correct that process based on best practices.
- Additional Testing Capabilities: RStat 1.2 can be used for both data mining and standard statistical analysis. Traditional hypothesis testing methods, such as T and F tests, have also been added.
- Techniques for predictive analytics vary from statistics and data mining to game theory. Manually analyzing current and historical data to make predictions about future events is nearly an impossible task for any person or team. By integrating RStat software, the widely used open-source statistical library product, with Developer Studio, Information Builders enables data miners and BI developers to quickly and easily work together on the same platform to access and analyze data and develop predictive models as needed across the organization.
More information is available at informationbuilders.com.