Wednesday 17 October 2012

Cluster Analysis


Identifying distinct criminal personalities, separating customers into different types, discovering the characteristics of different kinds of stars -- all involve the use of statistical clustering methods.  Learn more about the statistical underpinnings of cluster analysis and its implementation in Anthony Babinec's online course "Cluster Analysis" at Statistics.com. For more details please visit at http://www.statistics.com/clustering/.

This course will teach you how to use various cluster analysis methods to identify possible clusters in multivariate data. In marketing applications, clusters of customer records are called market segments (and the process is called market segmentation).  Clustering is also used in computational biology, environmental science, web and internet analytics, and in military and security applications.  Methods discussed include hierarchical clustering (in which smaller clusters are nested inside larger clusters), k-means clustering; two-step clustering; and normal mixture models for continuous variables.

Who Should Take This Course:
·         Marketing analysts who need to cluster customer data as part of a market segmentation strategy;
·         Computational biologists (e.g. for taxonomy);
·         Environmental scientists (e.g. for habitat studies);
·         IT specialists (e.g. in modeling web traffic patterns);
·         Military and national security analysts (e.g. in automated analysis of intercepted communications).

Course Program:

Course outline: The course is structured as follows

SESSION 1: Hierarchical Clustering

  • Hierarchical clustering - dendrograms
  • Divisive vs. agglomerative methods
  • Different linkage methods

SESSION 2: K-means Clustering


SESSION 3: Normal Mixture Model

  • Finite mixture model
  • K-means cluster as a special case

SESSION 4: Other Approaches


Before forming AB Analytics, Anthony Babinec was Director of Advanced Products Marketing at SPSS; he worked on the marketing of Clementine and introduced CHAID, neural nets and other advanced technologies to SPSS users. He has presented at the AMA's Applied Research Methods Conference and Advanced Research Techniques Forum, the Sawtooth Software Conference, Statistical Innovation's Statistical Modeling Week, and numerous professional meetings. He is on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Chapter of the American Statistical Association, where he has held various offices including President. He is on the Editorial Board of the "Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing."  Participants can ask questions and exchange comments directly with Dr. Babinec via a private discussion board throughout the period.

You will be able to ask questions and exchange comments with Mr. Anthony Babinec via a private discussion board throughout the course.   The courses take place online at statistics.com in a series of 4 weekly lessons and assignments, and require about 15 hours/week.  Participate at your own convenience; there are no set times when you must be online. You have the flexibility to work a bit every day, if that is your preference, or concentrate your work in just a couple of days.

For Indian participants statistics.com accepts registration for its courses at special prices in Indian Rupees through its partner, the Center for eLearning and Training (C-eLT), Pune.

For India Registration and pricing, please visit us at www.india.statistics.com.

Call: 020 66009116

Websites:

No comments: