All of us are familiar with common fraud types. Insurance fraud, credit card fraud, identity theft, and tax evasion are among the most recognized areas. But, there are many other fraud types that have a big impact on our daily lives, yet receive little attention in the media and among
Is fraud like a snowflake, and every one is unique? Not really. There is, however, an increasing number of methods and schemes that show up and expand the range of issues we need to look for every day. To celebrate International Fraud Awareness Week this year, I'm going to spend
Big data is already dead!!! Long live big analytics! In good writing, apparently, someone needs to die in the first line and big data is a sensational, front-page victim. Some trends indicate that the “big data hype” has already peaked. Regardless of whether this is true and a post-hype hangover
For most people, this time of year means celebrating cherished, personal traditions… helping those less fortunate…flocking to stores in droves…the company holiday party… For the SAS Security Intelligence team, it means identity theft…benefits fraud…unemployment insurance fraud...insider threats. Why? Because next week is International Fraud Awareness Week! And we’re celebrating by
Earlier this week I managed to catch up briefly with Christoph Sporleder, Vice President Centers of Excellence for EMEA & Asia Pacific, to talk Hadoop, big data and get some of his views on where we might be headed with big data. Mark Torr: Is big data just a buzz
It's time for a fall fraud roundup. Bad deeds swirl around like so many dry leaves, and I'd like to highlight a few of them this week. It can happen anywhere, even in sports, and no, I'm not picking on those shoplifting Dallas Cowboys here. An MLS referee was suspended for workers' compensation
This post will violate the “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” rule, because last week I had the pleasure of attending and participating in the Analytics 2014 event there and want to share some of what I heard for those who couldn’t attend. I was joined by over 1,000
Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend the Insurance Networking News Analytics Symposium. This great event had several engaging speakers. As analytics becomes more prevalent within insurance, it was refreshing to see that many organizations discuss their successes and share best practices in this essential aspect of the business.
The tail of a probability distribution is an important notion in probability and statistics, but did you know that there is not a rigorous definition for the "tail"? The term is primarily used intuitively to mean the part of a distribution that is far from the distribution's peak or center.
Is the type of car you drive more likely, or less likely, to get a speeding ticket? Let's analyze some data to find out! Do red cars attract more attention from the police, and get more tickets? How about cars with a 'racing stripe'? Or cars with a big chromed motor,
People often talk about the customer experience and the engagement model. This is an easier task when a business has regular interactions with its customers like banks and retailers. However, for insurers, this is a challenge. First of all, insurers have infrequent interactions with their customers. When there is interaction,
The first time I used the Internet it blew my mind. As a diplomat brat, at any point in time everyone I knew was everywhere but where I was. Thanks the miracles of Gopher, Veronica, IRC and email, the tyranny of distance didn’t seem so oppressive any more. When I
Stress testing is not new to the risk world but has been a major focus since the GFC (Global Financial Crisis). For a number of years now, stress testing has helped analytical specialists quantify various aspects of potential loss. What is new is the introduction of regulatory stress tests which
In the morning at 6am my iPhone buzzes. But it is not the alarm clock, rather it's important information from an app. What is this, I think to myself and look sleepily at the screen: "Danger of black ice! Already 15 km traffic jam on the A3 towards Cologne!
Let’s go back in time to the summer of 2007. The original iPhone had just been launched. Miley Cyrus was Hannah Montana. The San Antonio Spurs were NBA Champions, and LeBron James was the savior of Cleveland Cavaliers. Insurance Executives were only concerned about legacy replacement systems. On the surface,
It is estimated that a typical organization loses 5% of its revenues to fraud each year (www.acfe.com). The total cost of insurance fraud (non-health insurance) in the US is estimated to be more than $40 billion per year (www.fbi.gov). The advent of Big Data & Analytics has provided new and
In my last three posts on data ethics, I explored a few of the ethical dilemmas in our data-driven world. From examining the ethical practices of free internet service providers to the problem of high-frequency trading, I’ve come to realize the depth and complexity of these issues. Anyone who's aware of these
As you might have guessed, this is a blog post about cold temperatures, and ice! Sometimes ice is a great thing. Here's a picture of my freezer, for example (don't judge - I'm a bachelor!) .. And sometimes ice is a beautiful but dangerous thing, as this picture of my
The US health care industry is always getting a bad rap. It takes heat for being too expensive or not efficient enough or just too complicated. We know we need it, and that living long and healthy lives requires it. But we also know we love to complain about it
Jill Dyché, internationally recognized speaker, author and business consultant, spends her days talking to businesses about big data – how they’re using it, challenges, successes, strategies, plans and more. What she’s hearing again and again from IT leaders is that they have to innovate with big data, move quickly and
With all the changes the Affordable Care Act brings, including new care and payment models, there is an increase in provider’s need for data. While some large health systems are able to learn much about a patient’s full course of treatment by integrating their systems, the majority of health care
While at SAS Global Forum 2014 I attended a talk by Jorge G. Morel on the analysis of data with overdispersion. (His slides are available, along with a video of his presentation.) The Wikipedia defines overdispersion as "greater variability than expected from a simple model." For count data, the "simple
Teacher pay, and the possibility of a raise, has been a hot topic in North Carolina lately. So I decided to look around and see if I could find any good data related to teacher salary, and then try to determine the best way to present that data graphically. I found that
As we near the heights of this festive holiday season, children have thoughts of sugar plums dancing in their heads and adults look forward to a long winter’s nap, but we elves of the SAS media relations team reflect on the fruits of a year’s worth of labor. This is
Trend (vom englischen trend; aus mittelhochdeutsch: "trendeln", „kreiseln“, „nach unten rollen“) steht für eine besonders tiefgreifende und nachhaltige Entwicklung, siehe Trend (Soziologie) [...]." Ein Blick auf den wikipedia-Eintrag des leider inflationär gebrauchten Begriffs "Trend" zeigt: Es muss eigentlich um etwas Großes gehen, wenn von man einem Trend spricht. Etwas das die Gesellschaft erfasst
Working at SAS, I consider myself fortunate to have the best employee benefits in the industry. That is one of the factors placing SAS as one of the best companies to work for worldwide, and often THE best company to work for in USA. Given that, I was curious to know the kind
Don Wedding played a baseball simulation game called Sports Illustrated/Avalon Hill Superstar Baseball back when he was in grade school in Toledo, Ohio. The game involved rolling specialized dice, and then referring to cards representing the performance of the greatest baseball players of all time. The problem was Wedding knew
I had the chance to interview Natalie Kortum and Jack Chen of Dell at the Analytics 2013 conference in Orlando about how analytics is taking over business today and in the future. They both think we’ll see some big changes in the next five years. One of the most interesting
Vor einigen Tagen sprach mich ein alter (und jetzt ferner) Bekannter an, ob er ein defektes Mobiltelefon über meine Versicherung ersetzt bekommen könnte. Dabei war ich mir keiner Schuld bewusst, der letzte ausgiebige Besuch eines Brauhauses lag auch so weit zurück, dass dieser als Grund nicht infrage kommen würde. Etwas
When we announced the SAS Global Forum 2013 Best Contributed Paper winners on our blog, the response was huge! I asked the authors to comment on whether or not their paper topics had any broader applications. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Seems like these winning SAS findings are Swiss army
