This is a brief tutorial that will help you to quickly try VisiRex.

1. Run visi21.exe to install the program. Follow the on-screen prompts.

2. Begin VisiRex by clicking the desktop icon or using windows Start button under Programs.

3. Once VisiRex has loaded, select Iris.vrp as a typical project from the recent file list. You are delivered to Browse All Data which shows the entire Iris database.

4. Try right clicking on the blue column headers and experiment with the sort and find features. Notice how the previous column sorts provide secondary and tertiary sorting.

5. Try double clicking on a data row to set a check mark. Notice how the keyboard down arrow and spacebar can be used as a quick way to set check marks. Experiment with the Marks Menu to learn how to mark all, unmark all, and toggle all marks. These check marks are used to flag interesting data rows for export.

6. Try the available reports. These reports are based on a previous session of rule extraction. Notice how double clicking on a certain area of the flow chart, tree chart, or confusion matrix delivers you to a data browse for that region. Experiment with the Color Control while looking at the flow chart view.

7. Now it is time to try extracting rules for yourself. Click on the ! Extract Rules tool bar icon, and you are delivered into the three step rule extraction wizard.

8. "Field Selection" is the first wizard screen. Drag "PetalWidth" as the field to predict, and drag all the remaining fields as the fields to use. Press Next>> to continue...

9. "Row Selection" is the second wizard screen. You can drag the black numbers to desired setting, or you can double click the black numbers to type in desired setting. Notice how some data rows may be overlapped to appear in both sets. Some rows could be omitted from both sets. Select the first 100 rows as training set and all 150 rows as testing set. Press Next>> to continue...

10. "Rule Extraction" is the final wizard screen. This is the "FUN" screen. A flow chart will be created automatically when you enter this screen. The current settings for Prune Rate and Min Items will be used. Try zooming in on a region of the flow chart by mouse dragging a rectangle around the desired area. Try changing the setting for prune rate and min items, then press Extract Rules to adjust the flow chart. A higher setting of Prune Rate produces a simpler tree with less confidence in the predictions. A higher setting of Min Items produces a simpler tree with less confidence. Experiment with these two settings until you arrive at a simple tree with good confidence. It is up to your subjective judgement to decide how simple a tree you desire and how much confidence is acceptable. Your judgement will depend to the intended purpose for each particular project. Arriving at the desired settings for these two settings is an interactive, iterative process. As you play with the pruning, you will get a feeling for which fields are important. You may decide to go <<Back and adjust your field selection and/or row selection. When you have extracted an acceptable tree, press Finish>> to continue.

11. You may now visit all of the available reports to use the newly extracted rules. You can return to ! Extract Rules at any time to further tune the extracted rules. Many new projects can be created using the same source database.

12. Try experimenting with the other pre-built projects the appear on your recent files menu. You will quickly become familiar with using VisiRex.