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New tool enables powerful data analysis

A mathematical tool to extract and visualize useful features from data sets has existed for nearly 40 years - in theory. Called the Morse-Smale complex, it partitions sets by similarity of features and encodes them into mathematical terms. But working with the Morse-Smale complex is not easy. “It’s a powerful language. But a cost of that, is that using it meaningfully for practical applications is very difficult,” Gyulassy said.

Gyulassy’s algorithm divides data sets into parcels of cells, then analyzes each parcel separately using the Morse-Smale complex. Results of those computations are then merged together. As new parcels are created from merged parcels, they are analyzed and merged yet again. At each step, data that do not need to be stored in memory are discarded, drastically reducing the computing power required to run the calculations. (via phsyorg.com)