It’s common at the start of a new year to create a long list of resolutions that we hope to achieve. The reality, of course, is by February those resolutions will likely be a distant memory. The key to making any resolution stick is to start small. Create one small
We now live in the era of ‘big data’, where data and its analysis have become crucial to the modern economy. In fact, "big data is the new 'corporate gold'," according to Mark Wilkinson, managing director of SAS UK & Ireland. A recent study by Cebr found that companies in
A common task in SAS/IML programming is finding elements of a SAS/IML matrix that satisfy a logical expression. For example, you might need to know which matrix elements are missing, are negative, or are divisible by 2. In the DATA step, you can use the WHERE clause to subset data.
It’s that time of year again when we look back and consider how accurately and extensively the SAS story was covered in the media over the past year. It’s not always a simple or predictable story, but it is usually interesting. Consider some of these threads: How did companies or
To get into the mood for this blog post, you should first listen to the music video of The Who singing My Generation... I guess everybody has 'their generation' and here in the U.S. the most famous generation has been the Baby Boomers. Many companies have tried to design products they
While perusing the SAS 9.4 DS2 documentation, I ran across the section on the HTTP package. This intrigued me because, as DS2 has no text file handling statements I assumed all hope of leveraging Internet-based APIs was lost. But even a Jedi is wrong now and then! And what better
In December the Institute of Business Forecasting published the first of a new blog series on Forecast Value Added. Each month I will be interviewing an industry forecasting practitioner (or consultant/vendor) about their use of FVA analysis. The December interview featured Jonathon Karelse, co-founder of NorthFind Partners. Among his key
Outside, the Cary, NC sky is gray and winds are blowing freezing rain, but a group of statisticians at SAS are channeling warm green hills and the soft, gold light of a California evening. Team conversations alternate between distributed processing, PROC IMSTAT and how many pairs of shorts to pack.
After working in the data quality industry for a number of years, I have realized that most practitioners tend to have a rather rigid perception of the assertions about the quality of data. Either a data set conforms to the set of data quality criteria and is deemed to be acceptable
As a blogger, I often wonder whether my blog posts are 'successful' - and being a graph guy, I like to visually analyze the data, to try to answer that question. The most common measure of a blog post is probably the number of times it was viewed, so I guess
This isn't Kansas anymore. Oz has become a sprawling, smart metropolis filled with sensor data. How do we make sense of, clean, govern and glean value from this big data so we can get Dorothy home? The answer is SAS Data Management. With the latest portfolio updates, customers will be
Over the past decade in insurance, the rise of the aggregators (organisations that compare quotes between different insurers) and direct channels has had a profound impact on personal lines distribution in the UK. However, personal lines brokers remain a critical route to market, especially at a time when many insurers
Here’s a great way to kill a conversation at the next cocktail party you attend. Start talking about the US budget deficit. You remember the deficit, right? It’s the difference between what the government collects and what it spends. In 2014, the US federal government spent $488 billion more than
Is this blog post about techniques to use on difficult graph legends, or is it about goats? The answer is both! But first, to get you into the proper mood, here is a picture my friend, Mark, took of some cute goats. And some links to YouTube videos about goats
The other day I was creating some histograms inside a loop in PROC IML. It was difficult for me to determine which histogram was associated with which value of the looping variable. "No problem," I said. "I'll just use a TITLE statement inside the loop so that each histogram has
Sudoku solvers have been written in SAS using a variety of methods (e.g., the DATA step, PROC SQL, and PROC CLP). Surprisingly, SAS/IML appears to have been overlooked for this purpose. On a challenge from a coworker, I wrote this blog post to demonstrate the flexibility of SAS/IML in the
Special Investigation Units (SIU) are extremely process-oriented and follow well-documented procedures to decide when a claim should be referred for investigation and what actions should be taken. Most of the staff are seasoned investigators who may be more inclined to trust their experience and tried-and-true processes than analytical techniques that
James Surowiecki wrote a book about The Wisdom of Crowds. Jeff Howe, who co-coined the term crowdsourcing, wrote a book about Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. In this blog series, I explore if it’s wise to crowdsource data improvement, and if the power of the crowd can
“Let’s assume a normal distribution …” Ugh! That was your first mistake. Why do we make this assumption? It can’t be because we want to be able to mentally compute standard deviations, because we can’t and don’t it that way in practice. No, we assume a normal distribution to simplify
I recently read an article that listed the 100 best restaurants in the US - but the article didn't have a map. I decided to use my SAS skills to change that! When it comes to restaurants, I eat out a lot (and by 'a lot' I mean I never
I began 2015 by compiling a list of popular articles from my blog in 2014. Although this "People's Choice" list contains many interesting articles, some of my favorites did not make the list. Today I present the "Editor's Choice" list of articles that deserve a second look. I've highlighted one
Zwischen den Jahren hat man Zeit für Familie, Freunde und Hobbies. Dass eines meiner Hobbies "TV-Serien" ist, hat vielleicht mit den in meiner Kindheit beliebten Weihnachtsserien zu tun. (Mein Favorit: Jack Holborn. Kennen Sie die Serie noch?) Aber die Zeiten ändern sich und wir uns mit: Die ZDF-Produktion war gestern, heute lebe das
.@philsimon on the different folks you'll encounter in many large organizations.
~ This article is co-authored by Binod Jha, Global Product Manager for Insurance Solutions at SAS, and Amol Kokane, Senior Development Manager for Insurance & Risk Management Solutions at SAS ~ How might insurance policies change if sensor data could be automatically transmitted and analyzed from your car, your home and even your
By now you have seen dozens of articles with trends and predictions for what the hospitality industry should expect in 2015. I’m not going to add to those, or rehash them exhaustively here. You’ve all probably read them yourself and gathered the highlights: optimism, more acquisitions, transaction volumes will stay
A popular DATA step programming technique frequently used by SAS users is the ability to identify the beginning and ending observation in by-groups. The way it works is whenever a BY statement is specified with a SET statement, two temporary variables are created in the Program Data Vector (PDV), FIRST.variable
I cannot speak from experience, but predominately an Insurance CEO has three primary objectives: Grow the business Reduce expenses Ensure compliance. Let’s individually consider each of these objectives in more detail. Grow the Business How does an insurance company grow from a $2bn to a $3bn organization? Essentially, insurance has
A SAS programmer recently posted a question to the SAS/IML Support Community about how to compute the kth smallest value in a vector of numbers. In the DATA step, you can use the SMALLEST function to find the smallest value in an array, but there is no equivalent built-in function
Can you guess the 5 most common New Year's resolutions? Compare your guesses to the survey results!... Being a data meister, I'm always on the lookout for seasonal data. I recently did a Web search for "new year's resolutions" and found an interesting article on the You Gov UK website.
Happy New Year to you, your families, and your colleagues! This is the time of year when people make all types of New Year's resolutions. According to the USA.Gov web site, the most popular resolutions are: Lose Weight Volunteer to Help Others Quit Smoking Get a Better Education Get a
