DM techniques are starting to assist humans in scientific discovery. By traversing enormous data sets, they are finding patterns in molecular structures, genetic data, global climate changes, and more.
NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech have developed SKICAT (SKy Image Cataloging and Analysis Tool), an advanced DM system to automatically analyze and catalog the second Palomar Sky Survey of the northern heavens. (SKICAT is written in C, runs under Unix, and employs custom algorithms and a Sybase DBMS.) When complete, the survey will catalog more than 50 million galaxies, about 2 billion stars, and 100,000 quasars. The survey will produce some 3 terabytes of data, which will be reduced to a galaxy catalog.
SKICAT recently discovered nine
new quasars. With previous search techniques, it took three years to discover a similar number of the same type of quasars. With SKICAT, Caltech astronomers performed the same feat in less than six months using at least an order of magnitude less of observing time.
Flexible C++
Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it
is
theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.
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