Prerequisites

Software developers interested in using the PCAGinzu components to interpret PCA results should be familiar with Python. For a tutorial on Python, see http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html.

Users may also want to be familiar with key CompClust concepts, in particular, Datasets, Labelings, and Views. This tutorial will attempt to describe most of these concepts as they are introduced. If you'd like to learn more there are additional tutorials you might consider following. For additional tutorial references, including CompClust, see Section 9.

If you intend to use the CompClust software to perform the commands while you read the tutorial, we expect that you will be using either of the following versions of CompClust:

CompClustShell for Windows
This is a convienent Windows package which contains all of the software packages needed to begin to explore CompClust, including the PCA interpretation software. It is a Windows executable that provides a Python shell with CompClust and dependent packages pre-loaded.

CompClust Python Package
Software developers can download and install the complete CompClust source code distribution which contains the CompClust programming interface in Python. Note that the CompClust source installation requires additional Python packages, and so the installation can be involved.

If you're installing from source and have your own Python, we recommend the http://ipython.scipy.org/ enhanced interactive Python shell. Some of our examples take advantage of IPython's features.

Joe Roden 2005-12-13