GDAT 2011 in Review

As usual, the Guerrilla Data Analysis Techniques (GDAT) class was a total blast. Motivated students always guarantee that. It would really help our scheduling, however, if people didn't wait until the last nanosecond to register for the class. But given the crazy economic climate, I'm more than happy to do whatever it takes to make GDAT fly.

Guerrillas in the data mist [Photo: P. Newsom]

Some course highlights that you missed:

• How to apply PCA tools in R to performance data
  
• An introduction to power-law data modeling. Case studies included: network packet traces, detecting disaster recovery onset, Oracle SQL query-time distributions.
  
• How to use heatmaps and treemaps in R to visualize the performance and capacity of kilo-servers in your data center
  
• The use of animation and video for performance visualization tools
  
• How to apply Machine Learning tools in R to cubic light-years of performance data
  
• How to debug your R scripts
  
• Jim Holtman may have helped me to resolve a bug in PDQ-R that causes the R Console to crash. If so, PDQ-R could soon be ready for CRAN time.
  

We also had a couple of excellent class dinners. Almost like old times. Maybe we aren't heading for GFC-2 or that "double-dip" recession. :)