The “Market Simulation nodes by Scientific Strategy” is a plugin that runs on top of the KNIME Analytics Platform.

There are two types of Market Simulation nodes:

• Free “Market Simulation” nodes
• Premium “Market Optimization” nodes

The free “Market Simulation” nodes provide all the tools needed to create a market and predict customer behavior.

The premium “Market Optimization” nodes provide additional tools to automatically convert real-world data into markets. The Market Optimization nodes also provide deeper analysis and broader visualization of the results.

Unlike the other plugins, the Market Simulation software is not loaded through the regular KNIME “update site”. A link to a new “update site” has to be created.

• From within KNIME, go to [File][Preferences]
• Select [Install/Update] then [Available Software Sites]
• Add a new site called “Scientific Strategy Update Site”
• Set the Location of the new site to be:

http://knime.scientificstrategy.com

Don’t try and click on this link as only KNIME understands what to do with the contents.

The Market Simulation nodes are found in the KNIME Partner Extensions section of Install New Software. To install, follow the steps below. Click on the image to the left for step-by-step instructions.

• Click [Help] then [Install New Software…]
• [Work with]: “KNIME Partner Extensions”
• When the list of available software is shown, select “Market Simulation nodes by Scientific Strategy for KNIME”
• You may need to unhide items that are already installed if the software does not appear in the list
• Finish installing the software
• You will need to restart KNIME before you can see the new Market Simulation nodes
• Scientific Strategy’s “Robotic Hand” will appear on the KNIME splash-screen if the software has been loaded correctly

If you haven’t already done so, while you are browsing the Available Software you may wish to install more plugins. In particular, the JFreeChart plugin is required by many of the example Scientific Strategy workflows available for download from this website.

Follow the same steps as before:

• Click [Help] then [Install New Software…]
• [Work with]: “KNIME Analytics Platform Update Site”
• When the list of available software is shown, search for “JFreeChart” to narrow your choices
• Select to install the “KNIME & Extensions” plugin – do not install the source code as this is only useful to backend developers
• Finish installing the software and restart KNIME

When there is a new version of the Market Simulation nodes available you will want to update your software.

But before you do, you may need to go back to the “Available Software Sites” (described above), select “KNIME Partner Update Site”, and then click the [Reload] button. This will trigger a discovery of what new software is available.

You can now go to [Help] and [Install New Software…] to upgrade as before.

Now that you’ve got a new bunch of nodes installed, you are probably wondering what all of the icons mean.

Explore the next blog article to learn more.