Alison Bolen is an editor at SAS, where she writes and edits content about analytics and emerging topics. Since starting at SAS in 1999, Alison has edited print publications, Web sites, e-newsletters, customer success stories and blogs. She has a bachelor’s degree in magazine journalism from Ohio University and a master’s degree in technical writing from North Carolina State University.
What is SAS Global Forum if it isn't a conference that celebrates the ways that individuals can make a difference with data and analytics? Indeed, one of my favorite tweets from last night's opening session said: If the keynote sessions were just video biographies about how data people matter I would
Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that uses algorithms to iteratively learn from data and finds hidden insights in data without being explicitly programmed where to look or how to find the answer. Here at SAS, we hear questions every day about machine learning: what it is, how it compares to
Powered in equal parts by data, mobility and innovation, the collaborative economy has changed the way we think about automobiles, travel accommodations, office space, living space – and so much more. When anyone can open an app to borrow money from a crowd, order a gourmet dinner from a neighbor, or rent an
As American football teams prepare to select new team members later today, fans and pundits can only guess how the draft will turn out. Will your favorite professional team make good picks? And will your favorite college players go to good teams? With high stakes and billions of possible outcomes,
Like what you heard at SAS Global Forum? Want to stay in touch with the speakers you met or listened to there? Here's a list to get you started, but please add to it in the comments. Tell us which speakers you've found - and followed - on Twitter. For
If I were to show you a picture of a house, you would know it’s a house without even stopping to think about it. Because you have seen hundreds of different types of houses, your brain has come to recognize the features – a roof, a door, windows, a front
Math lovers, do you know what day it is? It's Pi Day, which we celebrate every year on March 14 because the date 3-14 matches the first three digits of pi, 3.14. This year, I'm celebrating with poetry, combining my love of math with my love of language. Word Spy explains that a pi-ku is
Companies in nearly every industry – from retailers and manufacturers to commercial airlines and health care providers – are all waking up to the opportunities in the Internet of Things. If you're still trying to understand how analyzing IoT data could benefit your business, read a few of the articles
By now, you’ve probably seen a video of a 3D printer discharging layers of plastic to create a model of a building or a plastic figurine. You may have heard stories about 3D printed guns, 3D printed airplane parts and even 3D printed body parts. While 3D printers are becoming more common, they are
Imagine you're an investigator sorting through 6,000 mug shots taken at different jails around the state. You are tasked with finding all the mug shots of a high-profile con artist who has been arrested in multiple cities using a number of different aliases over the last five years. How can
“Our job at the lab is to find technology that’s new, cutting edge and cool – and to give it to someone else to be brilliant with.” – Matthew Horn, Manager, SAS Emerging Technologies UI Lab If you’ve heard of Google Glasses or Occulus Rift, you’ve heard of augmented reality.
When I started college 25 years ago, we didn’t use email. I moved into the dorms my freshman year with a Brother Word Processor, convinced I would never have a single computing need beyond the necessity to type, save and print text. It’s incredible to consider how wrong I was.
How long have you been reading SAS blogs? And do you have thoughts on how we can improve them? In 2007, we launched the SAS blog program with just one blog and a handful of bloggers. Today, we have more than 30 blogs and hundreds of active bloggers. As we
How is it that some companies can come up with a big idea and implement that idea successfully in the market, while others never get past the idea phase? "In the case of innovation," says Jill Dyché, VP of SAS Best Practices, "big ideas aren't enough." It's also not enough
What is true customer loyalty? And how can you achieve it without compromising data privacy? According to Peter Hedberg, a senior customer relationship manager with SAS, true customer loyalty programs put the customer at the center of the relationship and use data in ways that are designed to please - not panic
If you read SAS blogs but never click through to the comment sections, you're missing some great information. Need proof? Check out some of these comments from the last few weeks. And then leave one of your own. Kelly McGuire has been studying the effects of negative hotel reviews online.
The Google Flu Trends application has received negative press since 2013 over its inability to accurately detect flu outbreaks. The latest critique, “The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis,” from Science magazine compares Google Flu Trends data to CDC data and dissects where the Google analysis went
~Contributed by Becky Graebe, SAS Communications Manager~ If there was any doubt in the minds of SAS Global Forum attendees that the computing landscape has changed remarkably in recent years, Vice President of Platform R&D Paul Kent and Research Statistician Developer Oliver Schabenberger set that idea squarely off the grid
~Contributed by Becky Graebe, SAS Communications Manager~ Did you know that you could save and export one, some or all of your keyboard macros/abbreviations in one simple operation? sasCommunity.org users do, thanks to today’s Tip of the Day, submitted by Arthur Tabachneck (better known as Art297 on the site). The
