6 ms·

Wizard for Mac - a tool for statistics and data analysis

92 points by harper 14y ago

dmix 14y ago
Seeing pricing >$50 for software products always makes me happy as a bootstrapper. It shows you trust the value your customers will put in your product.
- fwr 14y ago
  $80 for something that is "Best for casual (...) users" is not really the price I'd pay for a program I'd use from time to time to casually crunch numbers in. And not like there's a free alternative out there that just blows Wizard out of the water, right?
  - Flow 14y ago
    There is? A link would make me happy.
    - kome 14y ago
      http://www.sofastatistics.com/ http://www.sofastatistics.com/
      - Flow 14y ago
        Looks good. Thanks! I was aware of https://gephi.org https://gephi.org since before, always nice to have more tools in the toolbox. :)
  - EvanMiller 14y ago
    Thanks. I have updated the copy to better reflect the distinction between the two versions.
jonpaul 14y ago
For the love of God... please put your video on Dropbox or S3. I don't think your site can handle it. At least I'm having issues with it.
- dfc 14y ago
  There are nicer ways to make recommendations/requests than "for the love of god...do X."
  - jonpaul 14y ago
    You are correct, I just got a bit excited about the product and really wanted to watch the video. I'm sorry if I came off a bit too aggressive.
- EvanMiller 14y ago
  Sorry about that. The HN traffic was unexpected. I will upload to Dropbox ASAP.
  - mva 14y ago
    Or upload it to youtube and split it up, so it's scrollable (wasn't able to scroll in the 30+ minute video now).
  - EvanMiller 14y ago
    For future reference, uploading a video to Dropbox when you are on the HN front page is a bad idea. My account was suspended almost immediately. Switching to YouTube...
EvanMiller 14y ago
Sorry for the poor audio quality in the video. Some random thoughts that may be of interest: 1. I've been in grad school for economics the last four years. The program basically embodies all the things I've learned about econometrics, i.e. applied statistics. Wizard does about 1% of the things that R does, but it does them very, very well. 2. Wizard is fast. All the tight loops are written in C. Wizard will use all the cores on your Mac as well as the CPU's vector capabilities. This was achieved with a combination of Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. I highly recommend both technologies. For my research I am using Wizard on data sets with ~3 million rows, and it works like a champ. 3. The main weaknesses of the program is that it does not deal with time-series data particularly well, and you can't manually enter data. These shortcomings will be addressed in future releases. 4. The program is closed-source. I might make some of the libraries open-source. Or I might not. I haven't decided. 5. The non-Pro version will be released sometime next week. 6. I have absolutely no regrets about not writing Wizard using JavaScript and HTML5. 7. [Edit] You can read a review of the pre-release version of the program here: http://www.macstats.org/reviews/wizard.html http://www.macstats.org/reviews/wizard.html
- pkaler 14y ago
  I took a Stats course in university. Basically, this one: http://www.stat.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/stat/courses/outlines/Statistics/STAT270/stat270_2012-3.pdf http://www.stat.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/stat/courses/outlines... Can you recommend a way for myself and others in the same position to brush on their stats?
- neilxdsouza 14y ago
  For point 2. Do you compile to C or is it running as an interpreter? I too have written something similar, but I compile to C++ and yes the speed is amazing, and memory consumption minimal, because, you only keep 1 record in memory (if using more cores then this will not be true). If you are interested in a solution for entering data, let me know. My solution is open source.
  - EvanMiller 14y ago
    The program uses the Objective-C run-time, but the core routines are written in C.
jonpaul 14y ago
I just watched the video, nice work! I regularly deal with files that have 10,000,000+ records. How well does Wizard scale with large data sets?
- EvanMiller 14y ago
  Thanks. I've been testing on 3-4M records on a quad-core laptop, and it works great. I would guess that 10M records will be doable on an 8-12 core Mac Pro, but I don't have access to one to test this particular hypothesis.
boggzPit 14y ago
video!!! ;)
sirwanqutbi 14y ago
502 Bad Gateway. Links down.
- denzil_correa 14y ago
  Same for me.
- Gojja 14y ago
  Me too
- EvanMiller 14y ago
  Sorry. It's back up.
macmac 14y ago
502 Bad Gateway
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
justindocanto 14y ago
Getting a 502 error when i visit
filip01 14y ago
Just tried it out. Looks really good. Would be a perfect plug-in for Sequel Pro for example. What other products are there in the same space (easy-to-use statistics tools for Mac)?
zmjones 14y ago
Why pie charts dude?

92 points by harper 14y ago

dmix 14y ago

Seeing pricing >$50 for software products always makes me happy as a bootstrapper. It shows you trust the value your customers will put in your product.

fwr 14y ago
$80 for something that is "Best for casual (...) users" is not really the price I'd pay for a program I'd use from time to time to casually crunch numbers in. And not like there's a free alternative out there that just blows Wizard out of the water, right?
- Flow 14y ago
  There is? A link would make me happy.
  - kome 14y ago
    http://www.sofastatistics.com/ http://www.sofastatistics.com/
    - Flow 14y ago
      Looks good. Thanks! I was aware of https://gephi.org https://gephi.org since before, always nice to have more tools in the toolbox. :)
- EvanMiller 14y ago
  Thanks. I have updated the copy to better reflect the distinction between the two versions.

jonpaul 14y ago

For the love of God... please put your video on Dropbox or S3. I don't think your site can handle it. At least I'm having issues with it.

dfc 14y ago
There are nicer ways to make recommendations/requests than "for the love of god...do X."
- jonpaul 14y ago
  You are correct, I just got a bit excited about the product and really wanted to watch the video. I'm sorry if I came off a bit too aggressive.
EvanMiller 14y ago
Sorry about that. The HN traffic was unexpected. I will upload to Dropbox ASAP.
- mva 14y ago
  Or upload it to youtube and split it up, so it's scrollable (wasn't able to scroll in the 30+ minute video now).
- EvanMiller 14y ago
  For future reference, uploading a video to Dropbox when you are on the HN front page is a bad idea. My account was suspended almost immediately. Switching to YouTube...

EvanMiller 14y ago

Sorry for the poor audio quality in the video. Some random thoughts that may be of interest: 1. I've been in grad school for economics the last four years. The program basically embodies all the things I've learned about econometrics, i.e. applied statistics. Wizard does about 1% of the things that R does, but it does them very, very well. 2. Wizard is fast. All the tight loops are written in C. Wizard will use all the cores on your Mac as well as the CPU's vector capabilities. This was achieved with a combination of Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. I highly recommend both technologies. For my research I am using Wizard on data sets with ~3 million rows, and it works like a champ. 3. The main weaknesses of the program is that it does not deal with time-series data particularly well, and you can't manually enter data. These shortcomings will be addressed in future releases. 4. The program is closed-source. I might make some of the libraries open-source. Or I might not. I haven't decided. 5. The non-Pro version will be released sometime next week. 6. I have absolutely no regrets about not writing Wizard using JavaScript and HTML5. 7. [Edit] You can read a review of the pre-release version of the program here: http://www.macstats.org/reviews/wizard.html http://www.macstats.org/reviews/wizard.html

pkaler 14y ago
I took a Stats course in university. Basically, this one: http://www.stat.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/stat/courses/outlines/Statistics/STAT270/stat270_2012-3.pdf http://www.stat.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/stat/courses/outlines... Can you recommend a way for myself and others in the same position to brush on their stats?
neilxdsouza 14y ago
For point 2. Do you compile to C or is it running as an interpreter? I too have written something similar, but I compile to C++ and yes the speed is amazing, and memory consumption minimal, because, you only keep 1 record in memory (if using more cores then this will not be true). If you are interested in a solution for entering data, let me know. My solution is open source.
- EvanMiller 14y ago
  The program uses the Objective-C run-time, but the core routines are written in C.

jonpaul 14y ago

I just watched the video, nice work! I regularly deal with files that have 10,000,000+ records. How well does Wizard scale with large data sets?

EvanMiller 14y ago
Thanks. I've been testing on 3-4M records on a quad-core laptop, and it works great. I would guess that 10M records will be doable on an 8-12 core Mac Pro, but I don't have access to one to test this particular hypothesis.

boggzPit 14y ago

video!!! ;)

sirwanqutbi 14y ago

502 Bad Gateway. Links down.

denzil_correa 14y ago
Same for me.
Gojja 14y ago
Me too
EvanMiller 14y ago
Sorry. It's back up.

macmac 14y ago

502 Bad Gateway

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

justindocanto 14y ago

Getting a 502 error when i visit

filip01 14y ago

Just tried it out. Looks really good. Would be a perfect plug-in for Sequel Pro for example. What other products are there in the same space (easy-to-use statistics tools for Mac)?

zmjones 14y ago

Why pie charts dude?