Data Analysis & Simulation

Over the last five years, we have been adding new features to EasyFit mostly with business users in mind, but thanks to the nature of the product and the special academic pricing, it has become quite popular among the academic community: a quick search in Google reveals numerous research papers referring to EasyFit, just to name a few:
 

• “Co-evolution of Social and Affiliation Networks” (University of Maryland, USA) [link]
• “Power laws in top wealth distributions: evidence from Canada” (Brock University, Canada) [link]
• “Duration of Coherence Intervals in Electrical Brain Activity in Perceptual Organization” (RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan) [link]
• “Resource Management Schemes for Mobile Ad hoc Networks” (National University of Singapore, Singapore) [link]
• “Modelling the diffusion of innovation management theory using S-curves” (University of London, UK) [link]

(see the larger list of papers using EasyFit)

It is pleasing to see EasyFit helping researchers in such diverse disciplines get their job done in a more efficient way.

Over the past five years, we have been selling our distribution fitting software through Plimus Inc. - the U.S. based company responsible for processing credit card orders and sending out the license keys to the customers who purchased our products. What we like about Plimus is that apart from making the ordering process secure and smooth for our users, this company is also very responsive to any queries, which is especially important when it comes to dealing with people’s money.

However, in some countries there are state regulations preventing customers (mostly government organizations and academic institutions) from ordering software online. To make our distribution fitting products available to users in those countries, we are in the process of creating a network of international distributors. Specifically, this year we have partnered up with a Chinese, a Mexican, and three Taiwanese software resellers who now offer our products through their local distribution channels.

Click here to watch the quick Flash demo showing how to fit probability distributions using EasyFit and apply the best fitting distribution to perform specific calculations - for instance, make estimates using the quantile function, and calculate probabilities.

The data set used in this demo consists of maximum daily wind gust speeds recorded at Station TPLM2 located in the Atlantic Ocean during 2005-2007. This station is owned and maintained by the National Data Buoy Center, and measures wind speed, air temperature, sea temperature, and other data used for weather forecasting.

NOAA defines a wind gust as “a sudden, brief increase in speed of the wind” which usually lasts for less than 20 seconds. The relatively rare but very high wind gusts cause the most damage, that is why they are of more interest than the average daily wind speeds. In essence, the wind gusts are extreme events - no wonder the Generalized Extreme Value distribution perfectly fits the data:

(the x axis units are m/s)