DALSolution 4.0 from Context Co., Ltd. on the US market

Dr. Ilya Zaslavsky

As the US economy is doing well, political and economic decisions are being increasingly derived from the results of surveys and public opinion polls. Whether in the design of a new car model, the next policy move, or an advertising campaign - each step is carefully matched against potential consumer response. Often, in the search for data regularities, survey analysts go beyond simple frequency analysis of answers to a particular question. In studies of complex social phenomena, designing medical treatment strategies or assessing drug effectiveness, it becomes increasingly important to analyze many categorical and numeric variables simultaneously. This type of situation creates golden opportunities for comprehensive survey data analysis tools, especially if they provide a friendly and credible methodology for subject matter experts. DALSolution 4.0 from Context Co., Ltd. is such a tool.

Competition

Any new entrant on the survey data analysis market (and DALSolution is truly novel, not only as a brand name, but in analytical methodology, functionality and interface decisions) faces stiff competition. At one end, there are all-purpose statistical software packages like SPSS, SAS, Statistica, Strata, S-Plus, etc. Designed with a user-statistician in mind, they implement a wide variety of conventional statistical methods, often united by nothing more than a common interface. At the other end, there are specialized analysis systems, for various market segments such as clinical research, market analysis, crime analysis, etc., oriented towards particular forms of data representation and analysis common to those disciplines. DALSolution 4.0 is different from both groups of packages, offering several unique features that allow it to stand out among the competitors.

Unique features of DALSolution 4.0

What makes DALSolution 4.0 unique is the methodology of the Analysis of Rules consistently implemented in the software. DALSolution helps you extract regularities from your data in the form of transparent and easily interpretable rules. Once you find the rules you are interested in, you can work on making the rules more accurate and complete, by testing them in different subsets and adding or removing specific factors. These rules, or statements about relationships between variables and their values, are easily expressed in normal human language. Thus, it is typically very easy to explain rules to decision-makers who are not directly involved in data analysis.

At the same time, DALSolution is designed to handle survey data of many different kinds. For example, you can conveniently handle variables with multiple responses - such as “Mark all diseases you have had”, or “What qualities of the product do you value most? - Check all that apply” (other statistical and spreadsheet packages usually require a series of variables to represent such data). Several built-in functions handle categorical time series, as well as operations on dates and numeric values, allowing for rule-building based on categorical, numeric, and date variables simultaneously. What impresses potential software buyers is the convenient interface and extreme ease of operation, whether during data entry, data manipulations or analysis.

DALSolution As a Social Data Mining Tool

Quite often, DALSolution 4.0 is perceived as a data mining, or, more broadly, as an Exploratory Data Analysis tool, not a statistical software package. but this is only partly true. DALSolution indeed offers you several unique mechanisms for massaging and presenting heterogeneous survey data collections, including over a hundred 2D and 3D charts. As a “social data mining” tool, DALSolution is the first of its kind. It is true that DALSolution 4.0 does not compute the common regressions, principal components, discriminant functions, etc. available in dozens of standard packages. but an accurate rule computed with DALSolution is as good - or better - than a high regression coefficient, or a similar statistical measure! And the analysis of rules is applicable to a much wider class of data analysis tasks than conventional statistics.

ELZA Research distributes DALSolution 4.0 in the US market

ELZA Research, with offices in San Diego, CA, and Lansing, MI, started offering DALSolution 4.0 to customers in the United States in late 1998. The company was organized by Dr. Ilya Zaslavsky who has been involved in determinacy analysis (this is where the letters DA in DALSolution come from) research and applications since 1983. We offer DALSolution-related training, technical support and consultations. Other areas of expertise of ELZA Research associates include Geographic Information Systems (custom programming, training, project development), distance education (we were among the first to experiment with synchronous distance teaching over Internet - see ), and traditional statistical analysis and modeling. As with the marketing of any new software product, our first task is to create a critical mass of users who know our software, share our methodological principles, and can describe its advantages to others. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have, or to request a demo CD.

ELZA Research, 3005 Governor Dr., San Diego, CA 92122, USA;

URL: http://www.elzaresearch.com; e-mail: info@elzaresearch.com, techsup@elzaresearch.com.

Dr. Ilya Zaslavsky, of ELZA Research, can be contacted at ilya@elzaresearch.com.