Last week I attended the JMP Discovery 2010 conference. What a great way to learn about the new features coming up in version 9, to network, to see old friends and make new ones, and to enjoy the many keynote speakers like Dan Ariely who talked about how predictably irrational we are. I also had the opportunity to lead a breakout session on Tailor-Made Split-Plot Designs, a short tutorial on JMP® Custom Design.
For us, the conference marked the one year anniversary of the publication of our book, and a time for celebration. We have received very positive feedback from our readers, Prof Phil Ramsey of New Hampshire university used our book in his summer course "Statistics for Engineers and Scientists", and, to top it all off, we won the 2009-2010 International Technical Publications Competition (ITPC) Award of Excellence awarded by the Society for Technical Communications.
John Sall, co-founder and Executive Vice President of SAS, gave a one-hour demo showcasing some of the new features of JMP 9. Windows users will discover a new look, while excel users can now leverage the profiler to optimize and simulate worksheet formulas. R users will be able to run R code from within JMP, and data miners will find a new array of tools. From the engineering and science side there are many enhancements to existing tools, as well as some new ones. Here are some of the new things:
- Fit Y by X platform. Analysis of Means (ANOM) has been added when the X variable is categorical. ANOM is a graphical way for comparing means to the overall mean. Think of it as a control chart with decision limits.
- Sample Size calculator. A Reliability Test Plan is now available to design reliability studies. There is also a Reliability Demonstration calculator for planning a reliability demonstration study.
- Life Distribution. Several new distributions have been added including a 3-parameter Weibull distribution.
- Degradation. A new tool for performing degradation analyses within the Analyze>Reliability and Survival platform.
- Accelerated Life Test Design. Within the DOE platform to design ALT plans for one and two accelerating factors.
- Graph Builder. Several new additions including the ability to use custom maps.
I am looking forward to sharing with you examples of how to use these new tools. The schedule date for the release of JMP 9 is October 12. Stay tuned.
