Nature-inspired algorithms draw on mechanisms found in biological and physical systems to tackle the challenge of partitioning complex datasets into meaningful groups. By emulating processes such as ...

Dr. James McCaffrey of Microsoft Research presents a full-code, step-by-step tutorial on technique for visualizing and clustering data. A self-organizing map (SOM) is a data structure that can be used ...

Indexes are fundamental to database performance, but too often, they’re treated as “set it and forget it” structures. As the data landscape evolves—with hybrid cloud deployments, real-time analytics, ...

Clustering non-numeric -- or categorial -- data is surprisingly difficult, but it's explained here by resident data scientist Dr. James McCaffrey of Microsoft Research, who provides all the code you ...