No coding experience help

[jennybu]

Hi all,
I am currently doing a thesis on clustering algorithms. I have only very basic coding skills so am really struggling with trying to find a topic which is fulfills the requirement as an academic study. I am working in SAS for my main project. I have been trying to download some alternative open source software to use for research as apart from recoding algorithms I really just cannot think of anything. Any ideas or information at all would be more then good.

Thanks
jb

[dsell002]

Not sure if you've already found your answer, but just in case. There are many useful links provided on this very site,

http://www.kdnuggets.com/software/clustering.html

There is also a nice open source application called Weka which is implemented in Java,

http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka/

[phil123]

Are you doing a thesis in computer science? If yes, I think that your project should involve some coding.

If you are not doing a thesis in computer science, you could apply existing clustering algorithms in a specific field. The contribution could be that you find applying clustering in that field allow to do something new or to discover something important in that field (e.g. biology).

Otherwise, there is some applied field in computer science such as e-learning. You could find some applications of clustering in that field for example to cluster students by skills or learning style... this is just an example.

Best,
Phil

[jennybu]

Hey all,
Thanks so much for the replies they are much appreciated. I actually decided to do my paper in Genetic algorithms for clustering. So now the challenge is getting java code and making it work in the SAS E miner code node.

I found a paper which includes code for GA'S for clustering using SAS Macros but not sure how to go about implementing it correctly?

Again any ideas on finding info on this would be great.

Thanks again