“For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.”
-California Governor, Kasper de Jonge
Much as Tommy Chong reminds me of Donald Farmer, every time I watch one of Kasper’s videos, his voice inspires a very imposing picture. I can’t help but think of Arnold, or Dolph Lundgren.
The man is a basketball fiend, too, so I imagine him being 7 feet tall, like a cross between Arnold, Dolph, and Yao Ming. But then I find out things like he uses a Tolkien-inspired name on Skype, and, like me, played a Rogue in World of Warcraft for a few years.
And that’s when I realize: oh yeah, he’s MY kind of people.
But the quote above is suitable for Kasper. He never stops pushing the envelope. No one asks me more questions than Kasper, or is exploring the boundaries of PowerPivot more enthusiastically.
So it’s appropriate, then, that I found that picture on a site in the Netherlands. It’s also appropriate that he be the next guest poster on this site. Check out Kasper’s Blog if you haven’t been following him. And now, on to a killer technique by Kasper:
Data Mining with PowerPivot
I’m currently talking to a client who is very charmed by the possibilities of PowerPivot to analyze data, one thing led to another and we came to data mining .. I got thinking wouldn’t it be GREAT if we could use the Excel data mining add-in on PowerPivot data (with DAX at our disposal). Rob and I agree that this would be a great addition to the powers of PowerPivot and we got very excited. After some sparring with Rob I found a way! Rob asked me to do a guest blog post at PowerPivotPro with the outcome of my research.
In this screencast i will show you how you can use data mining with PowerPivot data:
Think about the possibilities we have, make some great calculations with DAX to make a calculated column or measures and then unleash the power of the data mining add ins !
A few prerequisites: since the data mining add-ins are 32-bits you have to install the 32 bits office 2010 with 32 bits PowerPivot. I hope they launch a 64 bits Excel 2010 version soon!
You have to have a SSAS (2005/2008 /2008R2) instance installed on your network, not the in memory PowerPivot instance but a regular version, to use the data mining models in SSAS.
I used this video to guide me in the demo’s Introducing the Table Analysis Tool for Excel 2007.
And you can download the Excel data mining add-ins here (more videos in there to see the possibilities).
UPDATE: The SQL Server Data Mining team is working to extend the power and ease of use of SQL Server Data Mining to the Cloud. You can use this add-in to run datamining against a service in the cloud, you don’t need a SSAS instance installed ! Check it out on this page: http://www.sqlserverdatamining.com/cloud/
Posted by Kasper de Jonge 
