You've probably heard of a random walk, but have you heard about the drunkard's walk? I've previously written about how to simulate a one-dimensional random walk in SAS. In the random walk, you imagine a person who takes a series of steps where the step size and direction is a
This SAS author tip is from Robert Virgile, author of “SAS Macro Language Magic: Discovering Advanced Techniques”. It actually came about when a reader posted a comment on one of Virgile’s blogs. Thank you to that reader for their comment! Technically, %INCLUDE is not part of macro language. Yes, it
Congratulations! You are part of a prestigious and exclusive club! A club of innovators and forward thinkers. A club of manufacturing professionals dedicated to data and the power of analytically driven decisions to make your organization the best that it can be - you are a SAS user. The best
As you travel around the world, do you know where English, French, Spanish, and Arabic are spoken? This blog will help you quickly answer that question, with some cool SAS maps! But first, here's a picture of my friend Joy posing beside an interesting sign during one of her international
Yes. But since this post needs to be more than a one-word answer to its title, allow me to elaborate. Data governance (DG) enters into the discussion of all enterprise information initiatives. Whether or not DG should be the opening salvo of these discussions is akin to asking whether the
What does the future of analytics look like in your organizations enterprise architecture? Does it include thinking about a two speed approach to analytics which includes both: An agile rapidly changing analytics platform for innovation (a lab) seperated from operations and broad enterprise audience usage A slowly moving systematic enterprise analytics platform (a factory)
SAS/IML software is used by many SAS programmers, primarily for creating custom algorithms and macros that implement statistical analyses that are not built into any SAS procedure. I know that PROC IML is used regularly by pharmaceutical companies, by the financial and insurance industries, and by researchers in medical colleges
On May 7, 2015, Conservatives defied the polls and won the UK general election, handing Labour and Liberal Democrats a surprising defeat. Now, with Chancellor George Osborne presenting his budget in a few days' time (July 8), the new Conservative government is tackling how it will deliver on its campaign promises. That means
The SGPANEL procedure makes it easy to create graph panels that are classified by one or more classifiers. The "Panel" layout is the default and it places the classifier values in cell headers at the top of each cell. When using LAYOUT=Latice or RowLattice, the row headers are placed at
If your organization is large enough, it probably has multiple data-related initiatives going on at any given time. Perhaps a new data warehouse is planned, an ERP upgrade is imminent or a data quality project is underway. Whatever the initiative, it may raise questions around data governance – closely followed by discussions about the
Yes, its true. Education has big data and always has. One perfect example? Statewide longitudinal data systems. Every state has one that tracks information on students from preschool until they enter the workforce (so some states call them P-20W). Think about all the schools and all the students across your state, now
Update: This blog has been updated with the 2016 map. You can use SAS for just about anything - that includes finding a great fireworks show to watch during the US Independence Day holiday! Here's a fireworks-locator map I created using SAS (see technical details below). The red dots represent
Summertime has arrived! Here are some fun, serious and what some might think are absurd questions about water safety. Take the quiz and test your knowledge.
When you count the outcomes of an experiment, you do not always observe all of the possible outcomes. For example, if you roll a six-sided die 10 times, it might be that the "1" face does not appear in those 10 rolls. Obviously, this situation occurs more frequently with small
I’m not a big gambler, but there is something I would put my money on – analytics. Analytics is helping companies turn information into value. And yes, I mean money. If you want to learn about the latest analytics trends and get in on some of that “value” – attend
In recent years, we practitioners in the data management world have been pretty quick to conflate “data governance” with “data quality” and “metadata.” Many tools marketed under "data governance" have emerged – yet when you inspect their capabilities, you see that in many ways these tools largely encompass data validation and data standardization. Unfortunately, we
What is it that people like so much about motorcycles? The thrill/excitement/freedom of riding them, the 'biker image' portrayed in movies, or great songs such as Little Honda by the Hondells? I'm not a biker per say, but I do have a couple of motorcycles, and am a known associate
A strong quote from John Tukey explains the essence of data visualization: “The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.” Tukey was a famous American mathematician who truly understood data – its structure, patterns and what to look for.
When I am computing with SAS/IML matrices and vectors, I often want to label the columns or rows so that I can better understand the data. The labels are called headers, and the COLNAME= and ROWNAME= options in the SAS/IML PRINT statement enable you to add headers for columns and
Greece has been in the news lately, trying to secure funds to repay 1.5 billion euros to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by the end of the month. And as luck would have it, there is some data available and some graphs to be created ... I love this job!
Double negatives seem to be everywhere, I have noticed them a lot in music recently. Since Pink Floyd sang "We don't need no education", to Rihanna's "I wasn’t looking for nobody when you looked my way". My own favourite song with a double negative is "I can't get no sleep" - Faithless. This
Nope - we're not digging up mummies in pyramids and analyzing the gender - this blog is about population pyramid charts and "digging into data"! But since the title might have lured in some pyramid fans, here's a picture of my friend Angela posing beside a pyramid - pretty cool, eh?!?
If you buying or selling a house. The relator will tell the value of the property is all about location, location, location. For insurance companies location is just as important. For an underwriter assessing the risk on a property is essential that they consider the location of the property. How
After doing some recent research with IDC®, I got to thinking again about the reasons that organizations of all sizes in all industries are so slow at adopting analytics as part of their ‘business as usual’ operations. While I have no hard statistics on who is and who isn’t adopting
In just one weekend Shang-Hua Wu went from a SAS user to a super SAS user by getting not just one, but two SAS certifications – SAS Certified Base Programmer and SAS Certified Advanced Programmer. Wu wanted to earn his certifications to position himself for new career opportunities in the
In my article about finding an initial guess for root-finding algorithms, I stated that Newton's root-finding method "might not converge or might converge to a root that is far away from the root that you wanted to find." A reader wanted more information about that statement. I have previously shown
If you use a GPS system or a mapping app on your phone, you're familiar with geospatial intelligence. But did you know this same technology can be used to map the spread of diseases, to understand the spread of wildfires, to visualize environmental issues - and much more? The proliferation
The SAS Global Certification program is proud to announce the release of a new credential: SAS Certified Visual Business Analyst Using SAS Visual Analytics. This credential is designed for analysts who are using SAS Visual Analytics to explore data and create insightful data visualizations. With SAS Visual Analytics now deployed in over
Big data. Streaming data. Complex data. We’ve all heard the reasons why organizations feel like they’re facing an insurmountable data challenge. Now, it’s time to do something about it. For the past few years, SAS has helped some of the world’s leading companies make sense of an avalanche of data.
Discovery Channel's Shark Week starts July 5, 2015 - and I've created a special SAS map & graph of shark attacks in North Carolina to get you in the mood for their week of shark education! But first, to get you in the mood for my blog, here's a picture
