Introducing Metis, the intelligent analytical assistant

Do you wish data analysis was as straightforward as asking a question? Do you know what you want to get out of your data but are blocked by the time it takes to configure the analytical tools? We've seen thousands of scientists struggle with complex tools and waste time clicking through legacy software. At Sphinx, our goal is to get you from data to decision as quickly as possible -- so you can spend more time on science.

With our latest release of Metis for Analysis, you can now leverage an intelligent assistant that streamlines analysis creation. Metis generates analyses, visualizes data, and offers recommendations on the most effective ways to utilize your data. This gives you more time to spend with your data, ask deeper scientific questions, and do meaningful science.

In our previous blog post, we introduced Metis for data import, and today we’re excited to share new enhancements. Using Metis will allow you to move faster, act with greater confidence and create powerful analyses.

Get started today at https://app.sphinxbio.com!

The Power of Assistance

You designed the experiment. You spent hours, days, or weeks actually running it in the lab. Now you have your results and the last thing you want to do is waste hours copying and pasting data or Googling for obscure R errors.

Metis is designed to support you throughout the entire data import and analysis process. Here's how it adds value:

• Data Extraction: Metis extracts data from various sources, ensuring you have all the information you need during data import. See more in our earlier blog post – Towards a universal scientific data importer.
• Analytical Capabilities: Metis can generate analyses, create graphs, and suggest next steps in your data analysis. Metis has access to the full suite of analytical capabilities, transforming your requests in single point changes or complete sequences of actions to create an analysis.
• Feature Discovery: Metis finds and utilizes the most relevant methods for analysis, based on your goals. You can have Metis explain each step, helping your learn as your work.

Metis can accomplish a wide range of tasks, taking actions and reporting back on their status.

Metis can also support multi-step analyses. For example, let's imagine you ran a dose response experiment and you want to get to normalized, fitted curves. You might not know the ins and outs of a piece of software that can do that. With Metis, you don't need to learn a new tool -- you can simply ask Metis to perform each step and provide an explanation for the actions taken. This can be done all at once:

I want to analyze this dose response data. Perform the following actions to analyze the data.

* Sort the data with the smallest response first.
* Filter out response values less than 3.
* Make a transform that fits a dose response activation curve for each drug. The doses are not log-scaled.
* Plot a dose response curve using the dose response fit data.

This approach works for many kinds of data -- not just dose response curves! Metis is capable of a wide range of actions and can chain multiple requests together – making complex analysis possible with a single request.

Metis Principles

Metis allows you to create analyses without outside assistance – leading to faster and more robust analyses. However, it's important that we're not sacrificing reproducibility or interpretability. That's why, in every analysis you create in Sphinx, each action Metis (or you) take is tracked. No more "but it worked on my machine" -- every analysis is fully reproducible. And, unlike other AI assistants, Metis takes actions directly in Sphinx. There's no need to read or debug code. If you want to tweak something Metis has done, you can add a follow-up or you can just edit the results directly in the Sphinx interface.

Evolution is a Journey

Over the past year, we've shared our progress through a series of blog posts, each focusing on how to enhance the journey from data to analysis.

• How to extract data using Plate chain – a universal plate parser.
• Discussed the implementation of AI to enable chart creation.
• How we think about bringing data into Sphinx.
• Beta of Metis, showcasing intelligent Data import,

Metis now integrates all of these together into a single, powerful assistant. We believe that better tools and magical experiences are the natural evolution of a software landscape that has previously required tedious interactions to make optimal analyses.

Looking Ahead

As we continue to develop Metis, we're excited about the possibilities it opens up for data analysis. In the coming months, we'll be exploring:

• Further advancements in automating tasks so that you can focus on the novel parts of data import and analysis creation.
• Improved mechanisms to create analyses with multiple criteria.
• Enhanced statistical knowledge to provide more robust analyses.
• Improved data joining capabilities to help connect disparate datasets.

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If you're a scientist who wants to analyze their data faster with full reproducibility, sign up for free here: https://app.sphinxbio.com/signup. Or, if you are a biotech company looking to leverage AI to increase your efficiency, let's find a time to chat.

Reach out with any questions to hello@sphinxbio.com and thanks for reading!

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P.S. If you are an engineer who is excited by working on these kinds of problems and want to build better software for scientists, we're hiring! You can see our latest code on GitHub at https://github.com/sphinxbio.