Geoff Hollis | PubMed Health

PubMed2006

NUANCE: Naturalistic University of Alberta Nonlinear Correlation Explorer.

In this article, we describe the Naturalistic University of Alberta Nonlinear Correlation Explorer (NUANCE), a computer program for data exploration and analysis. NUANCE is specialized for finding nonlinear relations between any number of predictors and a dependent value to be predicted. It searches the space of possible relations between the predictors and the dependent value by using natural selection to evolve equations that maximize the correlation between their output and the dependent value. In this article, we introduce the program, describe how to use it, and provide illustrative examples. NUANCE is written in Java, which runs on most computer platforms. We have contributed NUANCE to the archival Web site of the Psychonomic Society (www.psychonomic.org/archive), from which it may be freely downloaded.

Behavioral Research↗

PubMed2006

NUANCE 3.0: using genetic programming to model variable relationships.

Previously, we introduced a new computational tool for nonlinear curve fitting and data set exploration: the Naturalistic University of Alberta Nonlinear Correlation Explorer (NUANCE) (Hollis & Westbury, 2006). We demonstrated that NUANCE was capable of providing useful descriptions of data for two toy problems. Since then, we have extended the functionality of NUANCE in a new release (NUANCE 3.0) and fruitfully applied the tool to real psychological problems. Here, we discuss the results of two studies carried out with the aid of NUANCE 3.0. We demonstrate that NUANCE can be a useful tool to aid research in psychology in at least two ways: It can be harnessed to simplify complex models of human behavior, and it is capable of highlighting useful knowledge that might be overlooked by more traditional analytical and factorial approaches. NUANCE 3.0 can be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data at www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Electronic Data Processing↗