What is your first reaction to this question: “How would you like to take an exam today?” If you are like most people, you probably responded in a not so positive way. Maybe your brow furrowed, you physically leaned away from your computer (and this article), or your stomach knotted
Healthcare IT News recently published an article on 18 health technologies poised for big growth, a list culled from a HIMSS database. The database is used to track an extensive list of technology products that have seen growth of 4-10 percent since 2010, but have not yet reached a 70
Healthcare IT News recently published an article on 18 health technologies poised for big growth, a list culled from a HIMSS database. The database is used to track an extensive list of technology products that have seen growth of 4-10 percent since 2010, but have not yet reached a 70
We're wrapping up our “Meet the Team” blog series with SAS Solutions Architect Keith Renison. I was introduced to Keith earlier this year and was immediately impressed with his knowledge of advanced analytics and his enthusiasm for technology. He describes himself best: “I’m a combination of a data visualization snob
New York City is a pioneer in use of technology in many ways. For instance, the work of the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics has been cited repeatedly as an example of smart city innovation. But the innovation doesn’t stop there. Two projects that used SAS data visualization and data
It’s been an amazing journey with Hadoop. As we discussed in an earlier blog, Hadoop is informing the basis of a comprehensive data enterprise platform that can power an ecosystem of analytic applications to uncover rich insights on large sets of data. With YARN (Yet Another Resource Negotiator) as its
In October I will be at the Analytics 2015 conference in Las Vegas. I’ve never been to Las Vegas before. People tell me that if you are better than average in forecasting where a small ball will end up after it’s been spinning for a while in a dish with
The need for fast and easy access to high-powered analytics has never been greater than it is today. Fortunately, cloud processing still holds the promise of making analytics more transparent and ubiquitous than ever before. Yet, a significant number of challenges still exist that prevent more widespread adoption of cloud
.@philsimon on the new role of IT.
My blog posts focus on visual data analysis, and many of them use geographical maps. Therefore I hope you will have fun with a quick geography quiz, which I created using SAS/Graph ... And what, you might
Occasionally a SAS statistical programmer will ask me, "How can I construct a large correlation matrix?" Often they are simulating data with SAS or developing a matrix algorithm that involves a correlation matrix. Typically they want a correlation matrix that is too large to input by hand, such as a
A week from today, we'll be in New York City for Strata + Hadoop World, where we’ll kick things off at the Opening Reception. Be sure to stop by booth 543 to meet the team IRL (in real life)! They are excited about the event and eager to talk with attendees.
A new version of SAS® Text Miner and SAS® High-Performance Text Mining has recently been made available and I want to demonstrate some of the performance improvements that can be gained with this release. I’ll use a topic analysis that discovers the main themes in a document collection and consists
It’s rather appropriate that the rock band Europe recorded the hit “The Final Countdown”, because today, September 22nd, represents 100 days until the much anticipated (and delayed) European insurance legislation Solvency II will come into effect on January 1st 2016. Designed to introduce a harmonized, EU-wide insurance regulation, Solvency II
At California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo the Statistics Department offers two courses on preparation for the Base SAS Certification and Advanced SAS Certification exams, respectively. Each of these courses is 10 weeks long and the topics covered follow the content offered in the certification guides offered by SAS.
These days many devices (such as smart phone apps, Fitbits, Apple watches, dog tracking collars, car gps, hiking gps, teen/car trackers, etc) can track your location, and provide you with standard/canned ways to analyze the data. This blog post shows how I created a custom SAS map of the tracking
.@philsimon on the new challenges of an old problem.
A Vermont Department of Children Families (DCF) worker was murdered last month. The lead suspect is the mother of a child that was previously removed from her care and placed in foster care. This tragedy illustrates the challenges and risks that workers have in the field of serving at risk
Dear Rick, I have a data set with 1,001 numerical variables. One variable is the response, the others are explanatory variable. How can I read the 1,000 explanatory variables into an IML matrix without typing every name? That's a good question. You need to be able to perform two sub-tasks:
Do you want to know what will happen in the future? To gain true predictive insight, skip the tea leaves and look toward your data. SAS instructor Jeff Thompson is a high-energy data mining expert who will be demonstrating how to gain predictive insight from your data in his new
It’s me again!! We're at the halfway point of meeting our Strata + Hadoop World dream team. So far, you’ve met machine learning guru Patrick Hall; data management expert Clark Bradley; and advanced analytics specialist Rachel Hawley. Next up … Dan Zaratsian! I met Dan a few years back while preparing for Analytics 2013
Last weekend I realized I wanted something very specific: a great-looking lawn by mid-October that would require minimal effort from me. This meant that the output I needed to produce this desired outcome was the target date on which I needed to have aeration and over-seeding done in my yard.
Even though the first papers in machine learning were in the 1950s, one could argue it goes back further to the work of Alan Turing and other early computer scientists. So why has this way of modeling seemingly become so popular now? Because data has become a commodity. Large amounts of many different
I read an article recently discussing how runners inevitably slow down with age, particularly after 50. Data from the New York Marathon and Boston Marathon back this up with generally flat average finishing times for ages 20-49 followed by a steady, almost exponential, increase after 50. I haven’t reached the
I just returned home from an expedition/adventure boat trip to Cuba, and Talk Like a Pirate day is coming up this Saturday - what a combination for an interesting blog! I hope you enjoy a few pictures, and a bit of data analysis on these topics! A couple of weeks ago,
In the UK, technology trends move a little slower than for our US counterparts. It was about 5 years ago when I first met a data leader at a conference on this side of the pond who was actively engaging in large scale big data projects. This wasn’t a presenter
A core SAS team of thought leaders, developers and executives will be in New York City on September 29 at Strata + Hadoop World, mixing and mingling with people like you who live and breathe analytics. We’d love to be a part of your Strata + Hadoop World agenda. Last week, I introduced
Among the tightly held cards, piles of chips and bright lights, there have been stories that have unfolded in Las Vegas that have been forever preserved in time, never seeing the light of day. But what if what happened in Vegas…could be shared with excitement with your friends and family?
Last week I discussed ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models and showed how to illustrate the assumptions about the conditional distribution of the response variable. For a single continuous explanatory variable, the illustration is a scatter plot with a regression line and several normal probability distributions along the line. The
Data integration, on any project, can be very complex – and it requires a tremendous amount of detail. The person I would pick for my data integration team would have the following skills and characteristics: Has an enterprise perspective of data integration, data quality and extraction, transformation and load (ETL): Understands
