In this issue:
I. Opinions of Steve Ward, CEO
II. We get letters
III. Announcing a new service – the Formula Detective(SM)
IV. Presidents Day holiday closure
V. IntelliSearch Uses NeuroShell Classifier to fuel Yamaha Motorcycle sales in Brazil
VI. Make sure you continue to get the news
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I. Opinions of Steve Ward, CEO
Item 1. First I would like to sincerely thank each of you who picked up his or her mouse and voted for NeuroShell in the Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities Magazines annual contest. As you know, many people use that rating to help decide which software to purchase. Your vote has helped us continue to bring you free technical support and free web upgrades. The winners will be announced on February 20.
Item 2. In this newsletter we are announcing a new service – the Formula Detective(SM) Data Mining Service. Actually this is our first formal service aside from consulting and teaching. It has been a passion of mine, and I have been working on it personally since 1996, off and on of course. The service finds formulas that match your data – readable formulas and not the kind that one might get by generating neural net equations (as we did in NeuroShell 2) or the endless LISP-like expressions one might get with genetic programming.
At one time I wanted it to be software which we would sell outright. Yes, we did develop some new software for this service, but there is more of a process there than just running some software. We use several tools and techniques, perhaps multiple times, so getting the best results is arguably not for the uninitiated.
Item 3. It has been suggested that we make our newsletters look more classy, with pictures, different fonts, etc. We’d love to do that. The only problem is that last time we tried it we got a barrage of angry letters from a minority whose email programs weren’t able to correctly display what we put together. Then our staff spent valuable time resending plain text versions to those users. I guess we should be flattered that people wanted to read this newsletter so much, they got angry when they couldn’t. Nevertheless, angry users is not what we need, so until we figure out how to send out universal format, I guess we’ll have to stick to plain text. Maybe we should ask the spammers how to do it? Maybe the newsletter looks less like spam if it IS in plain text? What is your opinion?
Item 4 (repeated from last month). Several weeks ago a user called and said he saw a company profiled on (he thinks) McNeil Lehrer. He recognized NeuroShell Trader on the company’s computer screens. If this was your company, please tell us – we’d like to brag about you.
Thanks for listening.
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II. We get letters
“Just to reinforce what I communicated to you 6 years ago, in my opinion your GeneHunter product remains a Best Buy for those of us at ChevronTexaco who develop optimization applications using the genetic algorithm. Its low price, ease of use (both as an add-n or VB- or C- based tool), and its ability to rapidly solve problems both big and small keeps it as a favorite in our toolbox. In addition, we appreciate the quality training Ward Systems provides. Keep up the good work!”
Jim Ouimette
Consulting Engineer
ChevronTexaco Energy Research and Technology Company
“I have worked with artificial intelligence and trading software since graduating from college in 1987. Ward Systems is the best on the market. I use NeuroShell Trader and many of the add-ins to manage my hedge funds. I trade commodities markets in my CTA fund, “the Non-Linear Fund”, and am launching a new fund to trade the NASDAQ 100 stocks.
Confidence breeds success in the investment world, and the only software I trust to model and trade in real time is the NeuroShell Trader. Also, Steve Ward has gone above and beyond in helping me understand his products and their limitations for my style of trading.”
Marc A. Spungin
President
Prairie Investment Management
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III. Announcing a new service – the Formula Detective(SM) Data Mining Service
In February we are launching a new service that we call the Formula Detective (SM) Data Mining Service. This is not software we are selling, but as the name implies, a service we will provide. Basically it will work like this – you send us your data and we find a formula that best fits the data. The formula will be one you can show your boss. You don’t have to buy any software or spend hours of your time figuring out the best way to use the software. We also provide you with a rating of the effectiveness of the variables in the data.
There will be a modest non-refundable deposit, but beyond that you won’t have to pay for the service unless you like the results the formula provides.
Watch for details our new service on www.wardsystems.com, coming soon.
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IV. Presidents Day holiday closure
February 16th is Presidents Day here in the USA, so we’ll be closed that day. Please note that so you don’t get frustrated trying to reach us that day.
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V. IntelliSearch Uses NeuroShell Classifier to Fuel Yamaha Motorcycle Sales in Brazil.
The Brazilian company IntelliSearch recently inked a deal with the Yamaha Motors branch in Brazil (Yamaha Motor do Brasil or YMDB for short) to provide credit analysis for new dealers. Carlos Nogueira built the scoring application with NeuroShell Classifier to replace an existing rule based tool. The project also includes the development of an application that will consolidate and validate financial statements sent by YMDB dealers on a regular basis. The application will select and pre-process some of the data from these statements, creating many inputs that will feed the credit analysis module.
Nogueira had been working as an IT consultant with Yamaha on other projects and made a contact with the person responsible for credit analysis. “He showed me the current credit scoring tool, in fact a credit risk classification tool, which was an internally developed Excel spreadsheet with a few worksheets and macros. As it usually happens with this kind of tool, it became outdated in terms of inputs, rules, and weights.” Nogueira said the system was developed by a YMDB employee who works in another division and can no longer work on the model. Moreover, the old scorecard model wasn’t able to cope with the quick market changes faced by Yamaha, such as the lack of accurate finacial statements data from many dealers requiring a shift to new input data sources.
Nogueira won the contract for IntelliSearch by building a prototype for YMDB with the Classifier. Nogueira jumped in and made a PowerPoint presentation that showed the advantages of using neural networks for credit classification. “I got their attention and the person responsible for credit analysis got hooked on the neural net appeal. I bought your NeuroShell Classifier and built a prototype in Microsoft Access. I gave a demonstration and it was a wild success. As a plus, the prototype also performed the same conventional ‘scorecard like’ procedure done by YMDB’s Excel tool, so I was able to compare the two approaches and show them the neural net pros. At the end of the demo, they were very excited and told me that it was exactly what they were looking for.”
Nogueira’s company had previously developed credit scoring applications for four other clients using other neural net tools, but Nogueira switched to the NeuroShell Classifier for the YMDB project because “of a few important reasons. The first one is that the NeuroShell Classifier core engine and user interface are more up to date than our former choices. Second, the NeuroShell Classifier tool adds genetic algorithms for input optimization during training. Third (as an outcome of the second), the Classifier is able to show the relative importance of inputs, a must have to YMDB and a key differentiator in the NN based applications arena.”
YMDB has experienced rapid growth for the past three years, with a 30% annual growth rate for gross sales. Some of that growth comes from improved technology in the Yamaha motorcycles, but most of the growth emerged from an aggressive new dealer certification program. Three years ago there were 200 dealers and today that number grew to nearly 350. More dealers, however, meant more dealers who were delinquent in their payments. YMDB hopes to alleviate this problem by adding an improved credit analysis modeled with the NeuroShell Classifier as part of the dealer certification process.
IntelliSearch (http://www.intellisearch.com.br/) is a small local company but with a lot of “IT grown gray hair,” according to Carlos Nogueira. In addition to credit scoring applications, the company offers data security and cryptography related services in partnership with other companies. IntelliSearch is also starting a Project Risk Management activity.
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VI. Make sure you continue to get the news
We are still surprised that, many months after we sent out our June newsletter announcing release 4.0, users are still calling or emailing to ask when release 4.0 will be available. Seems they all changed their email addresses and never notified us of that. They could have been making money with the new features all of this time. There are many others, no doubt, who still don’t know about release 4.0.
After all these years we are also still getting tech support calls from NeuroShell 2 users who don’t know about the AI Trilogy and its components. So they’re stuck trying to impress their bosses with older technology.
Don’t be left behind – tell us when you change email addresses.
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