Jamie's Junk : Books

Time's running out for your free data mining book!

JamieMac — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:52:00 GMT

The survey is now closed. Thank you.

Tomorrow is the last day you can fill out this survey for a chance to win one of ten copies of Data Mining with SQL Server 2008. I used the the Data Exploration tool in the SQL Server 2008 Data Mining Client for Excel, and saw that it takes most people less than 15 minutes to fill it out.

(time to take survey in seconds)

Regarding the book, just today I received my sample copies and I was surprised at how much bigger it is than the 2005 book! It rounds out at 636 pages - I remember last version we were running up against publisher defined page limits and we cut back material to make it fit. This time, we just wrote what needed to be written and the publisher agreed to let us, the authors, make the decisions on how long the book should be. I'm really happy about how the text turned out this time - we still don't have a review on Amazon, so hopefully the public will agree!

Get a FREE AUTOGRAPHED copy of Data Mining with SQL Server 2008

JamieMac — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 05:44:00 GMT

The survey is now closed. Thank you

I checked on Amazon today and Data Mining with SQL Server 2008 is finally in stock!

However, if you are currently using SQL Server Data Mining, before you rush out and buy a copy, please take this opportunity to win a FREE COPY AUTOGRAPHED BY BOGDAN AND ME by filling out a middling short survey on how you use the product. I will be using the survey responses to determine the variety of creative ways customers are implementing SQL Server Data Mining solutions, and, of course, as the information churns in our brains, it means that you could have an impact on what happens in the product down the road. So not only do you have a chance to win a book, your input could change history!

In any case, I'm not giving away just one, but TEN copies of the book to random responders by November 21. So, if you are a SQL Server Data Mining user, please fill out the survey and get your name in the drawing.

Oh, and feel free to go ahead and buy the book, if you win, you'll have an extra loaner copy!! :)

"Supercrunchers" and Microsoft Data Mining

JamieMac — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:22:00 GMT

Ian Ayres, Yale Law school professor and author of SuperCrunchers, talks about data driven decisions and the Data Mining Addins in this Gartner podcast. He also mentions some other company, but we won't talk about them :) Give it a listen!

Free SQL Data Mining chapter from "Practical Business Intelligence with SQL Server 2005"

JamieMac — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:02:00 GMT

Informit.com has made available a complete data mining chapter from Practical Business Intelligence with SQL Server 2005.

The co-author of the book, John Hancock, is a Microsoft Consultant out of Canada that I've had the pleasure to meet. He visited the Analysis Services team for a bit in what's called the "SWAP" program (although it seems a bit one-sided, consultant's swap in, but we never seem to swap out, hmmmm). John had implemented a very clever application of our Association Rules algorithm to implement a link analysis solution. He took advantage of our extensive .Net programmability model inside stored procedures. It was really cool.

John and Roger's chapter is described as "This sample chapter looks at how to use some of the data mining features in SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 to perform tasks such as customer segmentation and market basket analysis. The data mining results are presented in the form of new dimensions in cubes and are used in Web applications."

I've read through it a bit and I'm impressed - it doesn't have the "too close to the product" issues that my book has, so many things have better high-level explanations, but you get the detail of how to implement the solution as well.

It shipped!!! It shipped!! It shipped!!

JamieMac — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 06:43:00 GMT

No, no, no - not Yukon! (launch date Nov 7) Our book! I just checked Amazon and it has those now famous words "Usually available within 24 hours." You can download the companion material directly from Wiley

What's a book without a cover?

JamieMac — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 21:14:00 GMT

Our publisher has finally released the cover art for my upcoming book (with Zhaohui Tang) "Data Mining in SQL Server 2005"

You can pre-order at Amazon - buy 10 copies!