Thanks to the collaboration with synchrotrons Elettra (Trieste) and Soleil (Paris), Orange is getting an add-on InfraOrange, with widgets for analysis of infrared spectra. Its primary users obviously come from these two institutions, hence we organized the first workshop for InfraOrange at one of them.

Some 20 participants spent the first day of the workshop in Trieste learning the basics of Orange and its use for data mining. With Janez at the helm and Marko assisting in the back, we traversed the standard list of visual and statistical techniques and a bit of unsupervised and supervised learning. The workshop was perhaps a bit unusual as most attendees were already quite familiar with these methods, but most haven’t yet used them in such an interactive fashion.

Marko explaining how to analyze spectral data with Orange.

On the second day Marko and Andrej took over and focused on the analysis of spectral data. We demonstrated the use of widgets specifically developed for infrared data and used them with data mining techniques we covered on the first day. After lunch the attendees tried to work on their own data sets, which was a real test for InfraOrange.

Orange for spectral data.

Group photo!

We now have a lot of realistic feedback on what to improve. There is a lot of work to do still, but a week after the workshop the most often occurring bugs have already been fixed.

The future of InfraOrange looks bright and…. khm… well, colorful! :)