Function Use Statistics

Some versions of PLS_Toolbox and Solo contain a feature which allows you to contribute anonymous "Function Use" information to the Eigenvector Research developers team. This information is ONLY used to help us better understand which features are most used and, therefore, where our development effort is best spent in making your experience better.

Opt-In

This feature is completely "opt-in" meaning that it will NOT collect or send any information unless you explicitly tell it that you want to participate. Once you've been asked once, it will not ask you again (unless you clear all program settings, for example, if you uninstall and re-install from scratch.) But under no circumstances will it ever send use information unless you have explicitly told it you want to do so.

What Information Is Not Collected?

The information collected by this feature includes absolutely NO information about: your data, you, your computer, your company/affiliated organization, your location, your IP address, your Eigenvector Research account or license number, nor any other personally-identifiable information.

What Information Is Collected?

This feature counts the number of times you execute "high-level" functions in the software and combines this with the product name (e.g. "PLS_Toolbox", "Solo", "Solo+MIA") and version number, and whether the given product is running with an expiring "Demo" license code. This information is periodically sent to Eigenvector Research (e.g. every 30 minutes) along with a completely random "session" code which allows combining all the submissions from that given session of using the software. The session key changes randomly each time you start up the software and can only be used to assure that all your use information is correctly accumulated for that session.

You have the OPTION to also submit reports with a random anonymous "user" code which will help us understand how individual users make user of the software. Even when this feature is enabled, your submissions will always be anonymous in that we can and will never connect any use information with a given physical end-user. This code is simply used to aggregate multiple sessions together with a given installation of the software.

Example Report

Below is an example of a report collected by one of the Eigenvector Research staff during a short period of time:

      user: ' '
   session: '7K11NUCBT27EUQAMF2LTFVJXY'
   product: 'PLS_Toolbox'
   version: '7.0.3'
    isdemo: 0

This information is followed by the actual "use" information:

         cumulative: 58
                pca: 6
               auto: 3
            normset: 1
     wlsbaselineset: 3
        wlsbaseline: 1
           baseline: 1
       poissonscale: 1
             flucut: 1
          evrimodel: 1
         evriscript: 1
            mdcheck: 8
          pcaengine: 3
      residuallimit: 2
              scale: 8
         plotscores: 2
     plotscores_pca: 2
   knnscoredistance: 4
       inheritimage: 1
         figbrowser: 2
            plotgui: 1
       classmarkers: 2
        peakfindgui: 2
    plotgui_toolbar: 2