Why the Attraction for the Offensive Paradigm? In addition to the reasons provided by Green and Armstrong, I'd like to add one more reason for the lure of complexity: You can always add complexity to a model to better fit the history. In fact, you can always create a model
Fresh from chairing the Foresight Practitioner Conference on “Worst Practices in Business Forecasting,” hosted two weeks ago at the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University, Foresight editor-in-chief Len Tashman previews the Fall 2016 issue. Preview of the Fall 2016 issue of Foresight In the provocative article, “The
A previous post discusses how the loess regression algorithm is implemented in SAS. The LOESS procedure in SAS/STAT software provides the data analyst with options to control the loess algorithm and fit nonparametric smoothing curves through points in a scatter plot. Although PROC LOESS satisfies 99.99% of SAS users who
Implications for the Offensive Paradigm The worldview promulgated by the Offensive paradigm is that if we only had MORE – more data, more computational power, more complex models, more elaborate processes – we could eventually solve the business forecasting problem. But this just doesn’t seem to be the case. Operating
Utility leaders are struggling with a world that's quickly changing and barely recognizable from the one they knew growing up. Many of the old assumptions are gone, and the business model upon which careers have been built is on the verge of disappearing. So what does the internet of things
Hadoop may have been the buzzword for the last few years, but streaming seems to be what everyone is talking about these days. Hadoop deals primarily with big data in stationary and batch-based analytics. But modern streaming technologies are aimed at the opposite spectrum, dealing with data in motion and
Have you seen this error when running a program in SAS Enterprise Guide? ERROR: You cannot open WORK.YOURDATA.DATA for output access with member-level control because WORK.YOURDATA.DATA is in use by you in resource environment IOM ROOT COMP ENV. Or maybe: ERROR: A lock is not available for LIB.YOURDATA.DATA. NOTE: The
With the US Affordable Care Act (ACA) and other health topics in the news lately, I wondered how much people spend on healthcare in various countries. Of course spending varies from person to person, so I decided to take a look at the average per capita spending in each country (it's
Open. The very word evokes a sense of happiness and possibility. When you’re hungry at an odd hour and everything around you seems to be closed, that lone neon sign glowing in a restaurant window is a most welcome relief. When a shop or service you’ve longed for finally builds
In Part 1 of this series, we defined data governance as a framework – something an organization can implement in small pieces. Data management encompasses the disciplines included in the data governance framework. They include the following: Data quality and data profiling. Metadata (business, technical and operational). Data security. Data movement within the enterprise.
Is Complexity Bad? It’s necessary to point out that Goodwin’s article is not arguing against complexity per se, and I’m not either. When you have a high value forecast, where it is critical to be as accurate as possible, of course you are going to want to try every technique
Loess regression is a nonparametric technique that uses local weighted regression to fit a smooth curve through points in a scatter plot. Loess curves are can reveal trends and cycles in data that might be difficult to model with a parametric curve. Loess regression is one of several algorithms in
SAS programmers often resort to using the X command to list the contents of file directories and to process the contents of ZIP files. In centralized SAS environments, the X command is unavailable to most programmers. NOXCMD is the default setting for these environments (disallowing shell commands), and SAS admins
Anomalies: The Beginning of a Crisis While even trained scientists can fail to see things that fall outside what they are looking for, anomalies eventually start to get noticed. But still, for a long time, anomalies within an existing paradigm are seen as mere “violations of expectation.” The response within
Today’s IT department isn’t your grandfather’s IT department. It’s not even your father’s IT department. When people talk about Information Technology Departments of the past, it's usually broken into three distinct periods: The Mainframe; PCs; the Internet/post PC. The IT department was seen as the hardware support arm of an
.@philsmion says that even the "best governed" organization today isn't safe from inquiring minds.
Das ist der dritte Beitrag zur Blog-Serie Big Data Governance. Bisher sind erschienen Wie Big Data Unternehmen durcheinanderwirbelt und Mit Data Governance gegen den Datensumpf. Zum Abschluss möchte ich 5 Tipps abgeben, die ich selbst von Pionieren in Sachen Big Data übernommen habe. Meine erste Empfehlung lautet, Data Governance bereits zu Beginn der
In 15 Monaten tritt die EU-Datenschutz-Grundverordnung (General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR) in Kraft. Nicht nur Unternehmen mit Sitz in der Europäischen Union bereiten sich darauf vor, sondern auch Firmen mit Sitz im Ausland sind betroffen, die personenbezogene Daten von europäischen Bürgern nutzen. Welchen Einfluss hat GDPR auf Analytics und Datenmanagement?
The Current Paradigm for Business Forecasting So what is the current paradigm that we, the community of business forecasting practitioners and researchers, are operating under? I’d argue that for at least the last 60 years, since 1956 when Robert G. Brown published his short monograph Exponential Smoothing for Predicting Demand,
Could you imagine running a business with a 35-90% annual turnover rate? What if the average time to fill a position was anywhere between 3-12 months? This alone would cripple most organizations, but is a common reality in state and local child welfare agencies. High turnover and vacancy rates are
In a February 2015 post Offensive vs. Defensive Forecasting, I sought to distinguish two very different approaches to the business forecasting problem: Offensive: The "offensive" forecaster is focused on forecast accuracy -- on extracting every last fraction of a percent of accuracy we can hope to achieve. The approach is
A friend and I were recently debating how much caffeine is in various drinks. I felt like my hands were tied behind my back, since I had no graphs to show them. Of course, the first thing I did when I got to work was create some caffeine graphs! They turned out
Who cares about sports and data? Not just athletes, coaches and fans. It turns out that many companies outside of sporting organisations are also associated with the sports industry. For example, financial services organisations are actively involved in sports sponsorships. Retailers sell fan merchandise. Telcos build social engagement strategies around
Editor's Note: SAS' e-book, Your guide to becoming a modern marketer, provides additional guidance on the skills you need to become a modern marketer. This e-book provides a plan of action and documents lessons we've learned at SAS while modernizing our marketing organization. Today, the need to take an analytical approach to business challenges no
Data integration teams often find themselves in the middle of discussions where the quality of their data outputs are called into question. Without proper governance procedures in place, though, it's hard to address these accusations in a reasonable way. Here's why.
Die EU-DSGVO (im Englischen GDPR) ist ab Mai 2018 von allen Unternehmen anzuwenden. Sie bereitet den Boden für den zeitgemäßen Schutz persönlicher Daten – denn jegliches Merkmal, das direkt oder indirekt auf die Person, den realen Kunden schließen lässt, gehört geschützt. Das kann eine IP-Adresse sein oder auch eine Ortsangabe
How far away is the nearest hospital? How far is the nearest restaurant? The nearest gas station? These are commonly asked questions whose answers depend on the location of the person asking the question. Recently I showed an algorithm that enables you to find the distance between a set of
Last December, The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law to ensure opportunity for all students in the United States. As part of this federal legislation, states now have the flexibility to design their own accountability systems following certain parameters outlined in ESSA. These accountability systems include academic and non-academic indicators. By
This past weekend, Hurricane Matthew came through the Carolinas. Some areas had record flooding, while other areas didn't. I was anxious to get back to work today, so I could use SAS software and create a custom map showing who got how much rain. But before we get to the official
Data governance must encompass management of the full life cycle of a data policy – its definition, approval, implementation and the means of ensuring its observance - David Loshin, Data Policies and Data Governance I was checking out my Google stats on Data Quality Pro recently and observed that "How
