I'm going to count for something in Australia

Chris Hemedinger
Chris Hemedinger|August 15, 2011

I’m currently enjoying the Australian “winter” as I travel around the region talking to SAS customers for the SAS Insight Series.  It just so happens that I was in Perth, Western Australia for Australia’s Census Night.   Because I was in the country on this special day, I was compelled [...]

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What SAS administrators should know about libraries, metadata, and SAS Enterprise Guide

Chris Hemedinger
Chris Hemedinger|June 21, 2011

We sometimes take it for granted, but the concept of the “SAS library” is just about one of the most awesome aspects of The SAS System. You can give your library a name (a library reference, or libref), tell the system how to get to your data (options on a [...]

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Smart Cats with blogs on stats

Chris Hemedinger
Chris Hemedinger|November 8, 2010

Let’s face it: ever since cats learned how to access the Internet, they’ve managed to besmirch their prestigious status as the “smarter-if-a-bit-aloof” pet. They’ve starred in many demeaning YouTube videos, bringing shame to their species for the sake of some cheap laughs. But I’m here to tell you: there are [...]

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Demystifying how text analytics can detect cyberbullying

Chris Hemedinger
Chris Hemedinger|October 22, 2010

Facebook now uses technology to help detect instances of cyberbullying before it gets out of hand. I heard this report on CNN last week, and the Facebook spokesman described their detection techniques as “background technology that I can’t really talk about.” We don’t know for certain what techniques Facebook employs [...]

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Statistics: why doesn't everybody love them?

Chris Hemedinger
Chris Hemedinger|October 20, 2010

I am not a statistician, but I love statistics. Statistics are facts, and when used for good, they are an important ingredient in sound decision making about almost any issue, whether it’s about government policy or your personal behavior. The use of statistics has gone way beyond counting things, computing [...]

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World Statistics, FTW!

Chris Hemedinger
Chris Hemedinger|October 9, 2010

Yesterday, I was in the #raganSAS audience as David Pogue told me What’s New and What’s Next in the world of technology. David is a great presenter, and he really had the audience engaged as he talked about augmented reality, his world according to Twitter, and an iPhone app that [...]

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Mashups that bring predictive analytics to the business analyst

Chris Hemedinger
Chris Hemedinger|September 3, 2010

This week, SAS introduced SAS Rapid Predictive Modeler, a component of SAS Enterprise Miner that allows a business user to drive the modeling from Microsoft Excel (via the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office) or SAS Enterprise Guide. It was made possible thanks to the close collaboration of R&D staff on [...]

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Bayesian analysis: how to be less wrong

Chris Hemedinger
Chris Hemedinger|June 7, 2010

“Less Wrong” is the name of the blog where I found this layman’s explanation of Bayes’ Theorem. As I’ve pointed out before, I’m not a statistician. But I can comprehend basic statistical explanations such as the explanation of the Monty Hall problem. Understanding the concepts and being able to apply [...]

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A Topical Topic: How Text Mining Determines Topics

Chris Hemedinger
Chris Hemedinger|May 27, 2010

I’ve known Jim Cox for a long time. He’s the SAS R&D manager for SAS Text Miner, and a gifted singer. We almost never talk about work stuff, because Jim is waaaaay too smart for me. That’s why I was so pleased to discover Jim’s series of blog entries about [...]

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This is your database...on SAS

Chris Hemedinger
Chris Hemedinger|May 10, 2010

Curt Monash posted a nice summary of the current and planned offerings that help to make SAS analytics more available “in the database” — allowing you to analyze your data quickly without having to move it around so much. If you use SAS with Teradata, Netezza, or DB2, much of [...]

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