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Advances in technology, evolution of the distribution channels, demographic shift, economic conditions and regulations changes. How does an insurer prioritize all these seemingly competing goals and create sustainable competitive advantage. One answer is analytics. Many insurance companies are just beginning to take steps toward becoming an “analytic insurer” – one

It may never crossed your mind, but there are real-life cases when reversing graph axes make sense. For example, when Y-axis represents a depth under the sea level or depth of oil well drilling, it makes perfect sense to have zero on top and positive numbers increasing from top down.

Is daylight saving time the ultimate in efficiency, or is it living a lie? Here are some graphs that might help facilitate a discussion on this topic ... With daylight saving time (DST), a whole geo/political area (such as a country) decides to set their clocks forward an hour during
One thing that always puzzled me when starting out with data quality management was just how difficult it was to obtain management buy-in. I've spoken before on this blog of the times I've witnessed considerable financial losses attributed to poor quality met with a shrug of management shoulders in terms

Es posible que escuchemos hablar de innovación muy seguido. La innovación se ha convertido en una de las preocupaciones más recurrentes en las organizaciones actuales. Hace apenas unos años la revista Forbes clasificaba la innovación en tres tipos: incremental, de plataforma y disruptiva. La primera, la más común en las

“Dear Cat, I got an email from my IT department that says: [We are nearing capacity on the Flotsam Drive. Please clear data from any folders you are no longer using so we can save disk space. Thanks, The IT Department] Doesn’t this strike you as a bit old-fashioned? I

I know I’m not the only who feels it’s been an endless North Carolina winter! What could be more wonderful than the emerging spring with its warmer temperatures, bright sun, Carolina blue skies and longer days to spend time enjoying every minute of it! One of my favorite activities in

When do analytics really provide value? All the time, of course. However, one of the best times for analytics to prove their value is when you are asked to do more with less. Often, the reason we are asked to do more with less is because of an economic downturn

Each year, SAS Global Forum conference organizers take your responses to surveys and pore over the suggestions and feedback you provide. Content and content delivery are bigger and better than ever at SAS Global Forum 2015 because of your feedback. Often, as good minds think alike, there will be trends
.@philsimon looks under the hood of 'analytics.'

Which is more important - having beautiful graphs, or accurate graphs? Let's explore this question using the locations of the world's richest billionaires... I recently saw a beautiful map on dadaviz.com that purported to show the cities with the most billionaires. Here's a screen-capture of that map: I decided to

In the previous article, I described the process to create a 3D Scatter Plot using a 3D Orthographic View matrix and the SGPLOT procedure. I posted a macro that can be used to create a 3D scatter plot from any SAS data set, using 3 numeric columns, one each for

With any software program, there are always new tips and tricks to learn, and nobody can know them all. Sometimes I even pick up tips or techniques from my students while they’re learning broader programming tips from me. Like fine wine, instructors only get better with age. Every customer interaction

With Pi Day coming up on 3/14, I wanted to make sure all you SAS programmers know how to use the pi constant in your SAS code... All you have to do is use constant("pi") in a data step, and you've got the value of pi out to a good many decimal places

This blog is not about the original movie The More the Merrier (1943) or its remake, Walk, Don’t Run (1966), which I’ve actually seen a couple of times. It’s actually about the wide variety of descriptive statistics available in SAS Visual Analytics—and when you want to examine the characteristics of