‘Tis the season. While the season means different things to different people, its most common theme is people buying things for people. Things that become presents when they are covered in wrapping paper. Two retailers have been running television commercial campaigns this season about how presents are wrapped. One campaign
I recently posted an article about self-similar structures that arise in Pascal's triangle. Did you know that the Kronecker product (or direct product) can be used to create matrices that have self-similar structure? The basic idea is to start with a 0/1 matrix and compute a sequence of direct products
Well, Analytic Hospitality Executives, the year has once again flown by, and here we sit just before the holidays looking back on 2014, and figuring out what it all means for 2015. I traveled even more than usual this year (if that’s even possible), spending a significant amount of time
When it comes to exchanging gifts at Christmas, my brother and I have a tradition of buying each other books. Even when he lived away in Chicago, and everyone else in the world was buying eBooks, I could always count on a big, heavy box delivered to my house each
The impact of mental illness on individuals, families, the health system and even the economy is broad and significant. In this, the latest post in my mental health series, I’d like to talk about what can be done to help. Prevention and early detection are just parts of an integrated
I have a question --- do we need a logical data model for a conversion? Here are my thoughts. I believe the answer is yes if the conversion has any of the following characteristics: The target application is created in-house. This application will more than likely be enhanced in the
Flexibility and nimbleness are terms synonymous with small and mid-sized businesses. They have the ability to react quickly to changing market conditions as they are made aware of them. Traditionally these businesses have lived in the world of spreadsheets - and why not? They are easy to use, very affordable
In the last post we looked at the use case for master data in which the consuming application expected a single unique representative record for each unique entity. This would be valuable in situations for batch accesses like SQL queries where aggregates are associated with one and only one entity record.
"Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother's house we go" ... and how much should we expect to pay for gasoline during the trip? Read this blog to find out! I recently wrote a blog post about some of the factors that impact the price of gasoline. The blog had
Every time I pick up a new article about analytics, I am always disappointed by the fact that I cannot find any specifics mentioned about back-end processing. It is no secret that every vendor wishes they had the latest and greatest parallel processing capabilities, but the truth is that many
Data. It's everywhere. It can reside in many places through replication, accessibility needs or infrastructure costs. For reporting, that same data can be structurally changed (denormalized or aggregated) into additional reporting and analytic data repositories. Over time, new sources of enrichment of that data become available through traditional data sources
Like most programming languages, the SAS/IML language has many functions. However, the SAS/IML language also has quite a few operators. Operators can act on a matrix or on rows or columns of a matrix. They are less intuitive, but can be quite powerful because they enable you perform computations without
The first sensors appeared many decades ago, and have been around for quite some time in various forms, even though they’ve really only entered the popular vocabulary over the past few years thanks to the Internet of Things. How do sensors work? A sensor detects events, or changes in quantities, and
The idea of "management by walking around" has been around for a while. First brought to prominence in Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s best-seller In Search of Excellence, the concept is that managers get out of their offices and meet employees in their work areas to get a sense of how
Last week, I spoke to Suneel Grover, senior solutions architect for digital intelligence at SAS, about how better data and integration can drive improvements in web analytics. This week I wanted to see how this could be applied for a hospitality company. We decided to tackle a frequently debated topic in
The Forecasting Savant Suppose you received an email from a self-proclaimed forecasting savant, advising you of a big upset in the upcoming mayoral election...and it turns out to be correct. You then get an email picking the underdog in the next championship boxing match...which is right again. Over the course
Getting universal buy in for Hadoop needn’t be an uphill struggle. In many cases, it only takes one pilot project to realize the benefits of low cost storage combined with powerful analytics. The Hadoop topic provoked passionate conversatoin at a recent roundtable discussion attended by over 25 people from a range
El mundo digital está conformado por datos, que alimentan su ecosistema y abre un campo más de investigación para las empresas. Actualmente no sólo se analiza el comportamiento de los consumidores en las tiendas o a través de estudios de mercado, sondeos, encuestas persona a persona, también se analiza el
.@philsimon on the stickiness of data
Last year during Computer Science Education Week, some in the corporate community participated in The Hour of Code. To those who visited classrooms, thank you! Telling students about the exciting careers in computer science not only inspires leaders of tomorrow, but it also leads to more graduates equipped to innovate
I don’t know why I’m on this medical theme lately – maybe it’s because my parents are aging. They talk about bits falling off, take lots of naps and describe how body parts don’t work like they used to. They’ve gone to pre-packaged pills – dividing up their medications by
I recently saw an interesting infographic (see partial screen-capture below) about the top 10 most annoying airline seatmate behaviors. But the infographic was one of those *long* spread out ones, that you have to scroll forever to see the whole thing. I decided to try to create a more efficient SAS
La grandeza de sus datos probablemente no es la característica más importante. De hecho, puede que ni siquiera figure dentro de los aspectos relevantes por los cuales usted debería preocuparse. La calidad, la integración de los silos, la manipulación y la extracción de valor de los datos no estructurados siguen
In my previous post I explained that even if your organization does not have anyone with data steward as their official job title, data stewardship plays a crucial role in data governance and data quality. Let’s assume that this has inspired you to formally make data steward an official job title. How
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, One year a fractal made thee! O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, A heat map can display thee! From Pascal's matrix we define! Reflect across, divide by nine. O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, Self-similar and so divine! Eventually I will run out of
Last time I suggested that there are some typical use cases for master data, and this week we will examine the desire for accessibility to a presumed “golden” record that represents “the single source of truth” for a specific entity. I put both of those terms in quotes because I
According to broker’s “best” and “worst” verbatim responses in this year’s Insurance Times Broker Service Survey, insurers who act quickly to verify and settle claims are their preferred partners. This year’s importance scores reveals brokers are placing a stronger emphasis on claims in comparison to previous surveys. Those instances where
December is all about traditions. Some of mine include holiday shopping, baking (I really mean eating) Christmas cookies and putting together my annual list of most read blogs on the SAS Training Post. So as traditions go… here’s my list of the top 10 most read blogs in 2014. How
Last week I discussed factors that threaten access to mental health care. However, better access to care doesn’t always mean better quality of care. Overworked mental health professionals and overcrowded ERs are forced to expend efforts and limited resources where they have the most impact. This forces compromises in care.
To perform a successful data conversion, you have to know a number of things. In this series, we have uncovered the following about our conversion: Scope of the conversion Infrastructure for the conversion Source of the conversion Target for the conversion Management for the conversion Testing and Quality Assurance for
