Neural Market Trends

A 100 Year Old 1000 Reichsbanknote

Tom — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:31:05 PST

I felt like a kid in a candy store tonight when I picked up the daily mail. I got my first shipment of old German money notes in the today, the ones I won on Ebay for about $1.75. Below is a photograph of an almost 100 year old 1000 Reichsbanknote. It will be 100 years old on April 21st of this year. Its in really good condition and beautifully decorated. Even if its fake, you can't go wrong for $1.75!

(Front – note the date below the 1000)

(Reverse)

Its hard to believe but the German people, just a mere 100 years ago, probably never fathomed that their Reichsnotes would never lose value and be sold on Ebay for a fraction of its original value.

Rapidminer 5.0 Video Tutorial #6

Tom — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:01:15 PST

Calling all marketers! In this video we discuss how we can use Rapidminer to create a decision tree to help us find "sweet spots" in a particular market segment. This video tutorial uses the Rapidminer direct mail marketing data generator and a split validation operator to build the decision tree.

Video download link (HQ): Rapidminer 5.0 Video Tutorial #6

Working On A Time Series Tutorial

Tom — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:00:38 PST

Its hard to believe but I'm already 50% done with my first batch of Rapidminer 5.0 Video Tutorials. So far, the reception has been positive and I thank everyone who emailed me, IM'd me, or commented on these tutorials. I made a promise to myself to make a batch of 10 video tutorials first before I re-engineer this website further.

So far so good and I'm on target to record a new video tutorial tonight or tomorrow morning. Video #6 will be about creating decision trees in Rapidminer for a direct mail marketing example. For video #7, I'll probably focus on an evolutionary weighting example, and then close out the remaining 3 tutorials with financial time series examples.

Below is an screenshot of one of the time series examples I'm working on. This is a time series chart of the S&P500 with a neural net generated trend line. Neat, huh?

Rapidminer 5.0 Video Tutorial #5

Tom — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:14:09 PST

In this video we continue where we left off in Video Tutorial #4. We discuss some of the parameters that are available in the Genetic Algorithm data transformers to select the best attributes in the data set. We also replace the first operator with another Genetic Algorithm data transformer that allows us to manipulate population size, mutation rate, and change the selection schemes (tournament, roulette, etc).

Video download link (HQ): Rapidminer 5.0 Video Tutorial #5

20 Million Marks

Tom — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:12:10 PST

When I was I kid I used to collect stamps and baseball cards, just like nearly every other American kid does. Then, about 3 years ago I started collecting US coin sets, mostly proofs from the US mint for my kids (they make great presents BTW).

As a lover of history and economics, coin/money collecting (numismatics) just made sense to me and now I go to the monthly coin show in my area and spend a few hours a week on Ebay searching for for interesting coins and paper money for my collection. Just this week I picked up something that reminds me of runaway inflation from the past. Its a 1923 – 20 Million Marks bank note from the Weimar Republic of Germany. Inflation was so rampant during the Wiemar Republic that people used these notes as wall paper.

Since I want to own a piece of history, I bought it for $1.75 from Ebay. Goes to show you, one man's wall paper is another man's treasure.

Neural Market Trends Upgrades & Changes

Tom — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:14:04 PST

In case you hadn't noticed, I started to tinker around with the theme of Neural Market Trends by changing it to something more simpler and removing Google Ads (as a test). I'm doing this to help speed up my blog because a recent SEO checkup told me it was too slow, and possibly scaring off new readers.

Overall I want to make my existing and new reader experience more friendly so things may display weird or links might be temporarily broken as these changes roll out over the next few weeks. Thanks for your patience!

A New Blytic!

Tom — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:59:45 PST

I wanted to give a shout out to my high school buddy, SoldAtTheTop, for the launch of the newest version of his Data Analysis website, Blytic. I poke around there from time to time and he's made some great changes that benefits data modelers, tinkerers, and students of economics. He has created a rich repository of economic data that can now be easily downloaded in an Excel spreadsheet, create dazzling charts that can mash up data and display it, easy embedding of your charts into websites, and a host of other things.

I highly recommend his site and urge you check it out! Great job SoldAtTheTop (not his real name, duh)!

Rapidminer 5.0 Video Tutorial #4

Tom — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:09:51 PST

In this video I highlight the data generation capabilities for Rapidminer 5.0 if you want to tinker around, and how to use a Genetic Optimization data pre-processor within a nested nested experiment. Yes, you read that correctly, a nested nested experiment.

Video download link (HQ):Rapidminer 5.0 Video Tutorial #4

February 2010 Income Report

Tom — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:59:37 PST

I decided to tweak out this blog's web income in January and posted my first income report this year as a starting metric. Below is February's income report, which is showing a pattern of growth, mostly due to my new Rapidminer 5.0 Video Tutorials. All i'm doing now is collecting data to feed into a Rapidminer model later and using typical white hat SEO tricks right now.

Google Adsense: $19.88 ( +78%)

Text Link Ads: $36.62 (+24.5%)

Adify: $0.00 (discontinued)

Affiliates: $0.00

Total: $56.50

This blog had 2,949 visits, 7,418 page views, avg 2.52 pages/view, and an avg time on site of 3:31 minutes.

Calling All Direct Mail Marketers

Tom — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:40:14 PST

One of the video tutorials I'm working on is how to build and use a direct mail marketing model using a Decision Tree learner. Rapidminer can be used for small, medium, and larger marketers as a data discovery tool that helps them understand the buying habits of their customers, and where to target their efforts. A Decision Tree model helps segment your market and identify the "sweet spot" in your customer base.

Check back over the next two weeks for this video tutorial. I'll show you how to mine your data and start being a more effective marketer in under 10 minutes.

Links for 2010-02-01 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:00:00 PST

Inventor unveils $7,000 talking sex robot - CNN.com
Hines, a self-professed happily married man from Lincoln Park, New Jersey, says he spent more than three years developing the robot after trying to find a marketable application for his artificial-intelligence technology.
Bill Watterson, creator of beloved 'Calvin and Hobbes' comic strip looks back with no regrets | - cleveland.com
I'm going to get in my horse and buggy and snail-mail a check for my newspaper subscription. - LOL.

Links for 2010-01-31 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00:00 PST

Why We Travel - The New York Times > Travel > Slide Show > Slide 1 of 47
Travel

Links for 2010-01-27 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 PST

"Happiness Coaching" Comes to the Workplace - WSJ.com
Still, there's no doubt that workers could use a little cheering up. Employee satisfaction has hit the lowest level in the 22-year history of the Conference Board's annual survey on the topic. Only 45% of U.S. workers are satisfied with their jobs, down from 52% in 2005 and 61% in 1987, says this 5,000-household study. - 45% THAT HIGH? I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE LOWER!

Links for 2010-01-25 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 PST

Working Women Say Their Marriage Is Richer For It - NYTimes.com
She added, “In many ways women are their own worst enemies — we want men to do it, but we want to tell them how they should do it.” GIGGLE

Links for 2010-01-24 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 PST

NFL data - get.theinfo | Google Groups
Haha, NFL Data!
Team Encyclopedias and Records | Pro-Football-Reference.com
yeah baby! NFL data per team!!!

Links for 2010-01-20 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 PST

LodestarPG - Software - viewportfolio
Interesting, must d/l code and analyze.

Links for 2010-01-19 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 PST

YouTube- Python tutorial for beginners
Really good video tutorials
pygene - simple python genetic algorithms/programming library
OH NICE!
NumericAndScientific - PythonInfo Wiki