December 2000 Newsletter

I. Announcing the 12 Days of Christmas (Chanukah, Kwanzaa, etc.) Sale

We wanted to share the spirit of the holiday season with you by offering our software at sale prices. But we couldn’t agree on just one type of sale, so we came up with 12! Now the fun begins.

Each of the 12 days has its own sale, but the trick is that in order to get a particular sale price, you have to order on that day – no exceptions. This sale may not be combined with any other offer or discount and we cannot give credits for previous purchases. If the sale day occurs on the weekend or holiday when the office is closed (we have to bake cookies sometime!), you can order on the internet by visiting www.wardsystems.com or www.neuroshell.com. You can also fax your order.

Just be sure to mention the specific sale in the comments box in the online order form or when you call or fax.

Happy Holidays from the folks at Ward Systems Group.

Day 1 – December 18, 2000
Spend $0 to $500 and receive a 5 percent discount on your software.
Spend $500 – $1000 and receive a 10 percent discount on your software.
Spend $1000 – $1500 and receive a 15 percent discount on your software.
Spend $1500 or more and receive a 20 percent discount on your software.

Day 2 – December 19, 2000
Buy the NeuroShell Predictor and Classifier and receive a free Run-Time Server, a $295 value.

Day 3 – December 20, 2000
Receive $100 off if you upgrade from NeuroShell Trader to NeuroShell Trader Professional, $150 off if you upgrade from Trader Professional to NeuroShell DayTrader Professional, and $200 off if you upgrade from NeuroShell Trader to NeuroShell DayTrader Professional.

Day 4 – December 21, 2000
Free UPS Blue shipping in the United States or free UPS Express shipping outside of the United States.

Day 5 – December 22, 2000
Receive a 15 percent discount off of all software purchases of GeneHunter, NeuroShell Predictor, NeuroShell Classifier, NeuroShell Run-Time Server, NeuroShell Engine, and NeuroShell 2.

Day 6 – December 23, 2000
Buy 2 NeuroShell Trader Add-ons and receive 1 free.

Day 7 – December 24, 2000
Receive a 15 percent discount on all upgrades, including NeuroShell Trader.

Day 8 – December 25, 2000
Buy either the NeuroShell Predictor, NeuroShell Classifier, or NeuroShell Trader and receive a free upgrade for NeuroShell 2 (if you already own an older release).

Day 9 – December 26, 2000
Buy the NeuroShell DayTrader and receive 2 free Add-ons or buy the NeuroShell Trader or Trader Professional and receive 1 free Add-on.

Day 10 – December 27, 2000
Receive a 15 percent discount on purchases of all versions of the NeuroShell Trader and Add-ons (but not Trader upgrades).

Day 11 – December 28, 2000
Receive a $100 discount if you purchase the AI Trilogy.

Day 12 – December 29, 2000
Purchase the NeuroShell DayTrader Professional and receive a free copy of GeneHunter for portfolio optimization.

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II. Cluster Indicators now shipping

In our last newsletter we announced another great Trader add-on we believe no serious trader should be without! This one, like some of our others, is based on how the human brain might classify the market, but it isn’t even a neural network (although neural net enthusiasts will see this as similar to a Kohonen Self Organizing Map, trained by genetic algorithm!).

Our new Cluster Indicators tell you how far the current bar is from the cluster center of the recent “buy” bars or “sell” bars. You can use a Cluster Indicator as a buy rule, buying when the current bar is “close” to the cluster center of recent “buy” bars. Sell when the current bar is “close” to the “sell” cluster center.

The genetic algorithm optimizer in the Trader Pro or DayTrader Pro finds the cluster centers that optimize the profit.

The Cluster Indicators also make dynamite inputs to a neural network. (For the neural net enthusiasts, this creates a paradigm much like the popular classic Radial Basis Function neural nets, except in the Trader Pro, your clusters don’t have to all be based on the same inputs, and in fact can be optimized! There was also a paradigm called Counter-propagation that was similar to feeding our Cluster Indicators into a neural net.)

The Cluster Indicators add-on is only $249. For more information, including a graphic of clustering, see the add-ons sidebar of www.neuroshell.com.

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III. Oligodendrogliomas

As everyone surely already knows, oligodendrogliomas are brain tumors. Dr. J.R. Iglesias-Rozas of Klinikum Stuttgart, Katharinenhospital, in Stuttgart, Germany, has succeeded in classifying brain tumors with the NeuroShell Classifier. Dr. Iglesias-Rozas’ work is outlined in his paper, Diagnosis of Human Oligodendrogliomas with the Help of the NeuroShell Easy Classifier(TM) Neural Network, portions of which are below. Our congratulations to Dr. Iglesias-Rozas and his colleagues! (Editor’s note: The NeuroShell Classifier was once named the NeuroShell Easy Classifier.)

Title: Diagnosis of Human Oligodendrogliomas with the Help of the NeuroShell Easy ClassifierTM Neural Network

Authors: José Iglesias, M.D., Ph.D., Javier Esparza, Prof. Inf., and Mathias Scherf, Dr. Inf.

Objective: To examine whether a suitable solution can be found concerning the ability to reproduce the histologic classification of human oligodendrogliomas with the assistance of the NeuroShell Easy ClassifierTM neural network.

Study Design: Histologic sections of 449 human oligodendrogliomas were selected. The diagnostic task was given by differentiation of three oligodendroglioma types: 121 low grade oligodendrogliomas, World Health Organization grade 2; 180 low grade oligoastrocytomas; and 148 anaplastic oligodendrogliomas, grade 3. Age, sex and 50 histologic characteristics were examined in each case, describing the presence of a specific histologic feature on a scale of four (zero, absence of the feature; three, abundant presence). From each group, two-thirds of randomly selected tumors were available for the training set and one-third for the testing set.

Results: In the three-class problem, 98.88% of the tumors were correctly classified (testing set). Ninety-nine percent of new testing tumors were correctly classified with Easy ClassifierTM as low grade and anaplastic oligodendrogliomas. In the case of low grade oligodendrogliomas versus low grade oligoastrocytomas, 99% of new tumors were correctly classified.

Conclusion: The main conclusion from this study is that Easy ClassifierTM was able to differentiate, with high accuracy, sensitivity and specificity, among the three types of oligodendrogliomas. (Analyt Quant Cytol Histol 2000;22:383-392)

Keywords: oligodendrogliomas, neural networks (computers), NeuroShell Easy Classifier(TM)

Priv.-Doz. Dr. J.R. Iglesias-Rozas
Klinikum Stuttgart, Katharinenhospital
Institut für Pathologie. Neuropathologie
(Ärztl. Leiter: Prof. Dr. med. A Bosse)
Kriegsbergstr. 60
D – 70174 Stuttgart
Tel: + 711 278 4918
Fax.: + 711 278 4909
e-mail: jr.iglesias@katharinenhospital.de

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IV. NeuroShell Trader Rel. 3.2 coming soon!

The final touches are being added to the NeuroShell Trader beta that is expected to be released in the next several weeks. Major changes include the addition of the Omega Research Global Server as another data feed to the NeuroShell DayTrader Professional, more control over the Quote.com data feed, the capability of changing chart frequency without redoing your chart, and the addition of analysis templates that allow you to apply a pre-saved analysis/chart layout to a new chart. This version also now works with Asian versions of Microsoft Windows.

The new release also contains a number of other improvements, such as allowing you to export a separate data file for each chart page in one step, and more objective functions for optimizations.

Release 3.2 is for all versions of the Trader (Trader, Trader Pro, and DayTrader). When it is available you will be able to download it free from www.ward.net. If you wish, you can order a new set of CDs for $30 plus shipping and handling, but we cannot take orders for the CDs until release 3.2 is actually shipping. When it is available, it will be announced on www.ward.net.

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V. Live from the forum

1. Although the Trader Discussion Forum is being used frequently, there is plenty of available space for you business and scientific users to begin discussions with each other too.

2. If you have been participating in our Trader Discussion Forum on www.ward.net recently, you have seen traders like you

a. discussing how to avoid the NYSE short sale uptick rule,
b. donating DLLs and DLL source code for the maximum entropy method and the HAAR wavelet,
c. revealing the instruments (stocks) they find predictable,
d. discussing methods they use to determine when to begin trading a model, and
e. discussing which of our add-ons they use.

These threads are still on the Trader Forum if you are interested. The Forum becomes more and more useful as more of you participate. Please note that everyone can participate in SOME way, and you don’t have to use your real name unless you want to. Although a registered user of any of our products can “lurk” there, you do have to be a registered Trader user to add comments to the Trader forum. Because of this, you can be assured that you are communicating with a limited, select community, an assurance you don’t have in other forums or chat rooms on the web.

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VI. The referral $$$ program will end soon!

Do you have friends or colleagues who could benefit from one of our major products (any version of NeuroShell, GeneHunter, or the Trilogy)? Refer that person to us and receive a $249 credit towards the purchase of any of our products, add-ons, or upgrades! Yes, if they purchase any of our major products between now and the first of the year and keep it, you’ll save $249 on your next purchase! Just make sure you or the person referred informs us about the referral within a week of purchase. Trader users please note that the $249 will completely pay for one of our Trader add-on products!

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VII. Trader Tips. Did you know…

Did you know that you could add ticker symbols to the list of instruments that the Trader, Trader Pro, and the DayTrader can read from Quote.com?

The NeuroShell Trader comes with a very large number of predefined ticker symbols that can be requested from the Quote.com data server. However, you may find that there are other ticker symbols that you wish to receive from the data server that are not already predefined (stock options, futures contracts, initial public offerings, …). We have just added a tip to www.ward.net explaining how you can add ticker symbols to the list that our Quote.com server will read.

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