What’s your favorite time of day? For me, it’s the morning with a cup of coffee, just as the sun starts to appear on the horizon, emitting a pleasant warm glow. My least favorite part of the day? Mornings without coffee when that same big ball of light makes a more glaring, more annoying entrance. Preparation makes all the difference in how we meet an event. This is the case when challenges and decisions arise in our companies. If you have the right analytics strategy in place, critical decisions can be met with confidence rather than with hesitation.
Join us at the Analytics Experience 2017 conference at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Washington, DC September 18th-20th to grow your knowledge of analytics. The conference agenda is packed with great speakers, networking opportunities and over 150 presentations to learn how other companies are using analytics.
SAS will also be offering deeply discounted training and certification exams for attendees at the event. Certification exams, including an opportunity to earn the newest credential, SAS® Certified Visual Modeler Using SAS® Visual Statistics 7.4, will be available at 50% off to attendees prior to the start of the conference. Training will be offered both before and after the conference. Several training offerings, including the SAS Viya Visual Journey courses, will be making their debut at the conference as well.
Robert Blanchard will be one of the SAS instructors teaching at Analytic Experience. He is developing a new course specifically for the conference titled Neural Networks: Essentials. Robert recently answered a few questions about his new course:
What was the motivation for creating a course for this conference covering Neural Networks?
It is an exciting time to learn neural networks. Recent advancements in neural networks that pertain to deep learning have allowed for the creation of new applications that have previously been infeasible. Think of self-driving cars, autonomous drones, wellness detection from facial images and the list goes on. The pace of innovation can be daunting, but I see SAS as making it easier than ever to learn and begin to use deep learning tools.
Why should someone take your new course?
SAS users that are interested in deep learning should understand the basics of neural networks. For this reason, SAS Education has put together a Neural Networks: Essentials course to give the user the applied fundamentals of neural networks, including when to change the error and activation functions. In addition, methods used to improve neural network generalizations will be demonstrated and practiced. SAS courses are known to give participants not only the knowledge, but the hands-on training to begin building models immediately.
I hope you’ll be able to join both Robert and me at Analytics Experience in September to learn about the creative and exciting ways people are using analytics to solve problems in their industries.
