What if a reckless driver adopted a more responsible approach because the car insurance pricing was based on driving habits? What if the senior from next door had the insurance payments based on kilometres driven, resulting in significant savings? This may be reality sooner than you think. The Internet of Things will revolutionise
.@philsimon on the need to play offense and defense with your organization's data.
When SAS Scotland gave students 48 hours to build a prototype computer system to help increase police effectiveness, nine teams accepted the challenge. The venue was the University of Glasgow's Hackathon, one of the largest student hackathons in the UK, attracting 200 attendees. SAS Scotland has co-sponsored the event for the past three
When I walk into my local chicken shop I always feel that Mary, the owner, has roasted chickens, prepared salads and put on extra rice pudding for my family’s Friday night meal. Mary welcomes me with open arms, greets me and my son by first name and always has an
Wer erinnert sich noch an seine Jugend und die Abende mit der Familie vor dem Fernseher, bei denen alle versucht haben, sich die Gegenstände in der Rudi Carell Show zu merken, die auf dem Band am Kandidaten vorbeizogen? Unter dem Druck der Bühne waren die Kanditen absolut zu bewundern, während
What strategy do you use to pick your lottery numbers? Do you suspect that the future winning numbers might be somehow related to the past winning numbers? If so, this blog's for you! The Powerball lottery jackpot is up to about $1.4 billion - the largest lottery jackpot there has
I began 2016 by compiling a list of popular articles from my blog in 2015. This "People's Choice" list contains many interesting articles, but some of my personal favorites did not make the list. Today I present the "Editor's Choice" list of articles that deserve a second look. I've grouped
When my band first started and was in need of a sound system, we bought a pair of cheap yet indestructible Peavey speakers, some Radio Shack microphones and a power mixer. The result? We sounded awful and often split our ear drums from high-pitched feedback and raw, untrained vocals. It took us years
Versicherungen sind konservativ und das nicht ohne Grund. Schließlich ist es das Geschäft mit der Sicherheit, die dem Deutschen ja angeblich so wichtig ist. Die Unternehmen der Branche müssen besonders hohe Anforderung an Solvabilität erfüllen und sichern sich auch für Katastrophenszenarien untereinander und mit den Rückversicherern in einem Vertragsgeflecht ab.
Has analytics become just a buzzword, the hype du jour? It’s great that analytics are now cool, but few people have taken then time to understand what analytics really are and how they can help solve their business problems. Last month at the the 30th Annual International Maintenance Conference, I
It’s hard to believe that another year is over. 2015 is behind us; 2016 is ahead. As I looked back over this year, I recalled starting last year at the National Retail Federation Big Show. I presented in the SAS booth on “Optimizing Pricing Decisions.” The presentation was simple and used the concept of
Weighted averages are all around us. Teachers use weighted averages to assign a test more weight than a quiz. Schools use weighted averages to compute grade-point averages. Financial companies compute the return on a portfolio as a weighted average of the component assets. Financial charts show (linearly) weighted moving averages
.@philsimon begins a four-part series on the need for a proper data strategy.
Superhelden gibt es viele, wie Batman, Robin, Spiderman, oder der Flash und fast alle haben das gleiche Problem – sie wollen nicht erkannt werden. Heute geht es um Superhelden und ihr Maskierungsproblem
Despite many experts touting 2016 as a significant year for innovation, IT is still chaotic, with many teams stuck in an old world. Organisations are implementing countless digital and data projects in an attempt to improve business models and streamline processes. Sadly, these rarely reflect any kind of coherent company-wide IT
In this two-part series, which posts as the calendar turns to a new year, I revisit the top data management topics of 2015 (Part 1) and then try to predict a few of the data management trends of 2016 (Part 2). Data management in 2016 The Internet of Things (IoT) made significant
2015 was a busy year for the hotel industry. ADR, Occupancy and RevPAR achieved record highs. We saw extensive merger and acquisition activity, culminating at the end of the year with the acquisition of Starwood by Marriot and Fairmont by Accor (and don’t forget Expedia’s Orbitz acquisition, of course). Favorable
Whether your New Year’s resolution is to get SAS certified or to become a more advanced SAS programmer, we’ve got you covered with these upcoming SAS Press books, many of which will be making their bookshelf debut at SAS® Global Forum 2016 in fabulous Las Vegas! The SAS® Programmer’s PROC
I wrote 114 posts for The DO Loop blog in 2015. Which were the most popular with readers? In general, highly technical articles appeal to only a small group of readers, whereas less technical articles appeal to a larger audience. Consequently, many of my popular articles were related to data
In this two-part series, which posts as the calendar prepares to turn 2015 into 2016, I revisit the top data management topics of 2015 (Part 1) and then try to predict a few of the data management trends of 2016 (Part 2). Data management in 2015 Big data continued to make
In my recent posts, I've been exploring the issues of integrating data that originates from beyond the organization. But this post looks at a different facet of extra-enterprise data management: data availability. In many organizations, there's a growing trend of making internal analytical data accessible to external consumers. I can
How many times have you gone onto a website, put a few things in a shopping cart, and then exited the Internet? I do it all the time. Sometimes when I log on to that site during my next visit, those same items are still in my cart – ready for purchase. I find
As an economist, I started at SAS with a disadvantage when it comes to predictive modeling. After all, like most economists, I was taught how to estimate marginal effects of various programs, or treatment effects, with non-experimental data. We use a variety of identification assumptions and quasi-experiments to make causal
Heilig Abend ist rum! Hier habe ich für alle, die Weihnachten verschlafen haben sollten, einen weltberühmten Weihnachtssong in SAS programmiert. Denn es ist nie zu spät für Weihnachten! Stimmen Sie sich doch noch ein mit diesem Liedchen.
Beim adventlichen Weihnachtsstern Basteln am vierten Advent hob ich schon warnend den Finger und hielt Sie gemäß des Mottos „Save a Tree“ dazu an, beim Ausdruck der Schnittmuster mit dem Papier ressourcenschonend umzugehen. Vor dem Hintergrund der in Paris erfolgreich verhandelten Begrenzungen des zukünftigen CO2-Ausstoßes, muss man sich ja auch noch
Jeff Stander passes along some of the lessons he's learned about third-party metadata collection.
I was reading through Deloitte University Press' 2015 Holiday Spending survey - the results were interesting, but their graph made you jump through mental hoops to understand the data. So of course I used SAS to create a simpler version of the graph, so you'll have more time for holiday shopping!
Der letzte Tag vor Heiligabend! Die Farbe an ein paar wenigen Geschenken trocknet noch, die letzten Geschenke werden verpackt und die letzten Schleifen gebunden. Ein letztes Mal setzt sich das Christkind mit seinen Auslieferungs-Engeln zusammen. Wird das Wetter mitspielen? Unsere bisherigen Themen: Business Analytics allgemein (1), Vergangenes analysieren – Künftiges
In today’s world of instant gratification, consumers want – and expect – immediate answers to their questions. Quite often, that help comes in the form of a live chat session with a customer service agent. The logs from these chats provide a unique analysis opportunity. Like a call center transcript,
My view of the world is shaped by where I stand, but from this spot the future of analytics for 2016 looks pretty exciting! Analytics has never been more needed or interesting. Machine learning established in the enterprise Machine learning dates back to at least 1950 but until recently has
