Event Highlights


  • In a pre-conference dinner, members of the Steering Committee gathered with JMP staff members and event speakers. Tadashi Mitsui of Toshiba Semiconductor Service & Support described how JMP software has helped in his success.


  • No matter where in the world they may be, Discovery Summits have several things in common: brilliant people, curious conversations, delicious food.


  • Steering Committee Member Prof. Takenori Takahashi, Keio University, said Discovery Summits are like "melting pots" of people and ideas. He encouraged attendees to meet new people and learn new ways to use JMP.


  • Host Jeff Perkinson set the stage for an action-packed day, so that the 300-some data explorers could get as much from Discovery Summit as possible.


  • Discovery Summit is as much about attendees sharing ideas and best practices with one another as simply taking in talks. To get sharing started, JMP Customer Care Manager Jeff Perkinson asked attendees to take 30 seconds to meet someone new.


  • "There is no substitute for knowledge," said SAS Senior VP Jon Weisz. No matter how good the statistical visualization software, some statistical knowledge is a must to understand what your data are telling you.


  • SAS Senior VP Jon Weisz and JMP Product Manager Dan Valente tag-team to introduce a new JMP graph-sharing platform: http://public.jmp.com


  • Baseball statistics guru Sig Mejdal's World Series champion ring catches the light as he prepares to step onto stage to give the closing keynote. Mejdal helped the St. Louis Cardinals and the Houston Astros build championship teams.


  • "Divorce yourself from your gut and trust the math," said Sig Mejdal during his keynote talk about making decisions based on real data – not simply gut instinct. He likened sports to some businesses, where at times the culture can be slow to completely embrace analytics.


  • Every year for five years, Discovery Summit Japan has been held at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi Hills, just steps away from the SAS Japan office. The hotel offers an elegant backdrop for visualizing complicated data.


  • During a dedicated session, poster presenters talked through their research and findings. Topics for this year's poster session varied from understanding medical complications to predicting the perfect marriage proposal


  • Scientists, engineers and other data explorers lined up to get a seat in their preferred paper presentations, four of which happen concurrently.


  • Kelci Miclaus, Senior Manager of Life Sciences products for JMP, drew a crowd for her talk on early efficacy analysis and visualization in oncology clinical trials.


  • Papers at Discovery Summit Japan were selected by the conference Steering Committee. Attendees choose between four concurrent talks.


  • In pre-conference training, students learned about the benefits of designed experiments the hard way: they painstakingly built paper helicopters and recorded the results.


  • Discovery Summit doesn't let language get in the way of knowledge-sharing. Simultaneous translation allows speakers to keep a good pace and flow, while audience members keep up in real time via headsets.


  • JMP users lined up to ask Kyoko Takenaka questions during an Ask the Experts session. As one of the first employees of JMP Japan and current manager of the Systems Engineers here, Takenaka has many answers.


  • When talks are not in session, JMP asks for feedback on upcoming new releases as well as software production. The opportunities to suggest improvements are many, and those product enhancement requests make their way back to developers at SAS World Headquarters.


  • Discovery Summits are known for their lively conversations and bright attendees. Sometimes they're known for colorful desserts too.


  • In an after-conference celebratory dinner, attendees tasted sake and craft beer specially selected from various parts of Japan.


  • JMP staff members traveled from China, South Korea and the United States to help their JMP Japan colleagues host 300-plus Discovery Summit attendees.

    Sharing, learning are themes for Discovery Summit Japan 2018

    Information-packed papers, posters and plenary sessions full of best practices in analytics. Great conversations over food and beverage. And thought-provoking concepts about how to make organizations more efficient and effective in achieving their goals. In other words, you could say 2018 Discovery Summit Japan fed the mind, body and soul.

    “I’m proud to say that this year, we welcomed nearly 350 customers to Discovery Summit in Tokyo,” said JMP® Japan Country Manager Noriki Inoue. “This event is growing not only in the number of guests but also in the variety of presentations and posters we see each year.”

    "There is no substitute for knowledge," said SAS Senior VP Jon Weisz to an audience of scientists, engineers and other data explorers in attendance. Weisz used the opening plenary session to encourage a more-than-surface understanding of data analysis, referencing famous statisticians like George Box and Stuart Hunter – both of whom have been Discovery Summit speakers – to make his point. "No matter how good the statistical visualization software, some statistical knowledge is a must to understand what your data are telling you," Weisz said.

    Plenary time was also used to present tips and tricks for using JMP 14 more completely and efficiently, and to unveil an exciting new graph-sharing platform to JMP users: public.jmp.com.

    JMP user Sig Mejdal closed the conference with his story of moving from a job at NASA to a career as a team statistician for Major League Baseball. It was difficult getting hired as a baseball analyst, he said. "I was selling something that was a threat to those in power. I thought what I was selling was going to be good for the organization, good for the decision makers and good for me." Once Mejdal broke through the analytic adversaries, however, he began to achieve great results – first for the St. Louis Cardinals and then for the Houston Astros, helping both teams win the World Series.

    Mejdal likened his quest and challenge to those of data analysts in all industries. He had to help people understand the value of replacing gut instinct with real information based on real data.

    Host Jeff Perkinson, Manager of the global JMP Customer Care initiative, mentioned a famous line from the movie Field of Dreams: "If you build it, they will come." That was about a baseball field, but Discovery Summit is not dissimilar, he said. "We heard that you needed this kind of analytic conference, and you are here. For that we are grateful."