I am still toying with the idea of using FSI from within Excel – wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of having to resort to VBA or C# via VSTO, I could leverage F#, with unfettered access to .NET and a nice scripting language, while having at my disposal things like the charting abilities of Excel? Judging from the discussion on Twitter this morning, it seems I am not the only one to like the idea of F# in Excel: @jonharrop @dnesteruk @7sharp9 @dsyme the F# plugin for MonoDevelop & tryfsharp.org can provide a[...]

This post continues my journey converting the Python samples from Machine Learning in Action into F#. On the program today: chapter 7, dedicated to AdaBoost. This is also the last chapter revolving around classification. After almost 6 months spending my week-ends on classifiers, I am rather glad to change gears a bit! The idea behind the algorithm Algorithm outline AdaBoost is short for “Adaptative Boosting”. Boosting is based on a very common-sense idea: instead of trying to find one perfect classifier t[...]

Are you tired of generating strongly typed classes with millions of lines of C# using crmsvcutil.exe that often crashes?  Fed up with having to re-generate the classes every time something in the schema changes?  Feeling restricted by the LINQ provider's limitations?  Ever wonder why you should need to know what attribute joins to what in your relationships to perform your joins? F# to the rescue! I am working on a F# type provider than aims to solve a lot of these pains, and more besides!  This is just a [...]

This is the continuation of my series converting the samples found in Machine Learning in Action from Python to F#. After starting on a nice and steady pace, I hit a speed bump with Chapter 6, dedicated to the Support Vector Machine algorithm. The math is more involved than the previous algorithms, and the original Python implementation is very procedural , which both slowed down the conversion to a more functional style. Anyways, I am now at a good point to share progress. The current version uses Sequent[...]

I have been obsessing about the following idea lately – what if I could run a FSI session from within Excel? The motivation behind this is double. First, one thing Excel is good at is creating and formatting charts. If I could use F# for data manipulation, and Excel for data visualization, I would be a happy camper. Then, I think F# via FSI could provide an interesting alternative for Excel automation. I’d much rather leverage existing .NET libraries to, say, grab data from the internet, than write some VB[...]