I’m part of a small group of mathematics enthusiasts in Kansas City who meet about once a month on Saturday mornings to drink coffee and discuss mathematics. This past weekend it was my turn to do a presentation to the rest of the group and I chose to speak on the mathematical foundations of the Support Vector Machine algorithm in Oracle Data Mining. While I wasn’t surprised that some in the group had a better handle on Vapnik-Chervonenkis theory than I and gently “guided” me a few times, I was somewhat surprised at their positive reaction to my characterization of the “Oracle” approach to data mining in contrast with the “SAS” approach.