These are my links for September 8th through September 14th:
- Jaakko Hintikka, Past, present and future of set theory | PhilPapers – What one can say about the past, present and future of set theory depends on what one expects or at least hopes set theory will accomplish…I begin with a quote from the inaugural lecture in 1903 of my mathematical grandfather, the internationally known Finnish mathematician Ernst Lindelöf. The subject of his lecture was – guess what – Cantor’s set theory. In his conclusion, Lindelöf says of Cantor’s results: For mathematics they have lent new tools and opened up new fields of research, they have thrown entirely new light on the foundations of analysis and brought clarity and order where there was only disorder and contradictions. Thus they have greatly contributed to the harmony that is the essence of mathematics, a harmony a grasp of which is the reward of mathematical research. We can all agree with the compliments Lindelöf pays to set theory as an impressive specimen of mathematical research, including the theory of infinite cardinals and ordinals.
- An Introduction to Data Mining – Data mining, the extraction of hidden predictive information from large databases, is a powerful new technology with great potential to help companies focus on the most important information in their data warehouses. Data mining tools predict future trends and behaviors, allowing businesses to make proactive, knowledge-driven decisions. The automated, prospective analyses offered by data mining move beyond the analyses of past events provided by retrospective tools typical of decision support systems. Data mining tools can answer business questions that traditionally were too time consuming to resolve. They scour databases for hidden patterns, finding predictive information that experts may miss because it lies outside their expectations.
- Open Source BI: A Market Overview, Steve Holub – “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”John Maynard Keynes
The following survey provides a list of open source software (OSS) tools used in business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing systems. The tool selection criteria was based on the frequency and currency of the releases and on whether the product has released a stable build which could be used in a production environment. We only present those solutions which have had updates within the past two years. Our study looked at BI tools in the following categories: i) databases; ii) extract/transform/load (ETL); iii) master data management; iv) BI reporting tools; and v) data mining. In the case of an open source software bundle that overlaps categories, we divide the software bundle into its separate parts for ease of categorization.
