RapidMiner

RapidMiner is the best tool to build models on textual data. It is rich in ML algorithms and reduces the need to manually tune the parameters. It automatically optimizes them, thus providing a better solution. RapidMiner again extends great capability for data preparation, its insane connections to almost every data source pulls in the data easily into one environment. And it can comfortably perform data cleaning and process tasks over that.

RapidMiner is not so good with image, audio or video data. These data points cannot be used directly in their raw form. They must be transformed into some intermediate form for performing analytics over it. Moreover, there are no connectors to directly pull data from their varied sources. For example, we don't have a connector to read audio data directly from a switch and then convert it to text (although Google speech API is available for audio to text conversion.)

RapidMiner has been used as a teaching aid in my classes, and I found it effective in educating data mining and analytics students. RapidMiner is well suited for any descriptive and predictive analytics because it has a pervasive set of machine learning algorithms, i.e. classification, regression, clustering, association rule mining, and other applications such as text mining. However, RapidMiner Studio is not yet designed for prescriptive analytics (i.e. solving optimization problem) such as solving scheduling, logistic route planning or bin packing problems. It has a great facility to find an optimal parameter for an algorithm but not yet for solving automatic scheduling and planning problems.

It's great for getting results quickly. It's not so great for companies that are on very tight budgets.

Suited For:

• Small to average data sets: Best suited for a moderate-sized data set
• Good Data Modelling Algorithm Implementation: Can implement most of the possible machine learning algorithms in rapidminer
• Data Cleaning & Data Transformation: RapidMiner is also the best ETL tool which gives good competition to Pentaho and Informatica

Less Appropriate For

• Big Data: When I tried using a big data IDE it gets stuck and takes a lot of time to fix it.
• Data Visualization

RapidMiner Studio was very helpful when we were training our new hires as it allowed them to play around with the data and help us pull the information that we need and it gives them a better understanding of what we really do. Some areas it is less appropriate are when we are trying to work on different data sets and other data rapid miner takes up a lot of processing power and you are unable to do multitasking unless you have a really expensive computer.