Despite an increase in the availability of data in the federal government over the past few years, data and analytics could be doing even more for federal agencies. A strategic approach to managing and analyzing the data is needed. And, like many technology challenges – that’s a people problem. A
"You show me a successful complex system, and I will show you a system that has evolved through trial and error." ~ Tim Harford TED Talk link: http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford Karl Marx died thinking that the first communist revolution would occur in Great Britain, driven by the long hours and unsafe
Die Data Science und die Nachfrage nach entsprechenden Experten hat gewaltig Fahrt aufgenommen. Aber bei näherer Betrachtung zeigt sich, dass es fast ebenso viele unterschiedliche Ausprägungen des Begriffs gibt, wie offene Stellen zu besetzen sind. Das zeigt unter anderem der Persönlichkeitstest, den wir gemeinsam mit einem englischen Psychologenteam entwickelt haben. Wir laden daher
This week’s author tip is from Robert Virgile and his book SAS Macro Language Magic: Discovering Advanced Techniques. Virgile chose this tip because even good programmer’s make errors. We hope you find this tip useful. You can also read an excerpt from Virgile’s book. Even good programmers make errors. In
Mobile World Congress is quickly approaching. Attendees and exhibitors are feverishly scheduling meetings, doing research, and determining their areas of focus to maximize their experience of the event. If you're hoping to learn more about big data analytics at the conference, here are some helpful insights and resources to help you
Sports provide us with many familiar clichés about playing defense, such as: Defense wins championships. The best defense is a good offense. Or my favorite: The best defense is the one that ranks first statistically in overall defensive performance, after controlling for the quality of the offenses it has faced. Perhaps not
After the legalization of recreational marijuana use in Colorado in 2012, it has been a much more frequent news topic than before - even from a data analysis perspective... I was recently looking for 'interesting' data to analyze with SAS, and I noticed some articles about the increasing potency of marijuana in
SAS procedures usually handle missing values automatically. Univariate procedures such as PROC MEANS automatically delete missing values when computing basic descriptive statistics. Many multivariate procedures such as PROC REG delete an entire observation if any variable in the analysis has a missing value. This is called listwise deletion or using
Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1979, after an extensive vaccination campaign in the 19th and 20th centuries. This blog post contains a visual analysis of the final years of this disease in the US ... In my previous blog post, I imitated and improved infectious disease graphs from a recent Wall
It's that time of year: Awards season. While we on the SAS Social Media Team will be happily following along this Sunday for the 87th Annual Academy Awards (via Twitter, naturally), we thought it only appropriate to use this as a time to celebrate our customers in social from 2014. From
Many states are starting to crack down on the serious abuses of government programs, cutting down on outright fraud as well as reducing abuses and errors. I wanted to highlight one of those, now that they've been on this path for a few years. North Carolina, where SAS is headquartered,
As the point person for SAS joining the new Open Data Platform (ODP) initiative, I want to make it clear why SAS is involved with ODP, and why we think it’s important to our customers, and the Hadoop and big data ecosystem as a whole. SAS is not in it to
Hadoop is increasingly being adopted as the go-to platform for large-scale data analytics. However, it is still not necessarily clear that Hadoop is always the optimal choice for traditional data warehousing for reporting and analysis, especially in its “out of the box” configuration. That is because Hadoop itself is not
The Institute of Business Forecasting's FVA blog series continued in January, with my interview of Shaun Snapp, founder and editor of SCM Focus. Some of Shaun's answers surprised me, for example, that he doesn't compare performance to a naïve model (which I see as the most fundamental FVA comparison). But he went
How many of us have heard or even said the phrase, "If it's not broke, don't fix it." While on rare occasions this may be the correct approach, it is a statement that stops innovation and creativity in its tracks. You might as well say, "Because we've always done it that
The role of insurance is to bring some predictability, manageability and stability to a chaotic and uncertain world. In essence, it is a risk mitigation tool. The role of the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) is to manage the overall risk strategy for the insurance company. They are responsible for defining
Tucked in the SAS Enterprise Guide Query Builder there is a text box unhelpfully labelled 'Options'. To find it select Options -> Options for this query -> General, and it is about halfway down the screen. I am going to show you how to use that text box to make your tables smaller, and how
When you have a long-running SAS/IML program, it is sometimes useful to be able to monitor the progress of the program. For example, suppose you need to computing statistics for 1,000 different data sets and each computation takes between 5 and 30 seconds. You might want to output a message
The Wall Street Journal recently published some graphs about seven infectious diseases, and I tried using SAS to improve the graphs ... it's a veritable infectious disease (graph) bake-off! Let's start with Measles ... here's a screen-capture of WSJ's measles graph: In general, their graph is eye-catching, and I learned a lot
When asked what his movement wanted around a century ago, the iconic American labor leader Samuel Gompers famously gave a one-word answer: "More." This annoyed his opponents at the negotiating table and many in the business community. He was not demanding a specific wage increase or fighting for a distinct cause like
Imagine choosing one application for Linux that worked on the version you currently use. You choose another program but find that it doesn’t work on that version of Linux. A third application? It works with another version of Linux. Luckily, that rarely happens. In 2001, the Linux Foundation established Linux Standard
To develop a custom task for use in SAS Enterprise Guide (or SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office), you need a few things: A working knowledge of SAS and SAS Enterprise Guide Microsoft Visual Studio (the free Express edition will do, though the Professional edition is better) Some experience with C#
This isn't such a brilliant article because we learn something new from it -- we really don't. But it is amazing to find, from someone in 1957, such a clear discussion of forecasting issues that still plague us today. If you can get past some of the Mad Men era words and
Katherine Grainger paid a heart-felt tribute to the support staff who have been a pivotal part of her success in her opening speech ahead of last month’s World Sport Science and Medicine conference. The event was hosted in the UK jointly by British Rowing and FISA, the international rowing federation. “My career
If you are looking for a way to fund your data quality objectives, consider looking in the closets of the organization. For example, look for issues that cost the company money that could have been avoided by better availability of data, better quality of the data or reliability of the
Data Management has been the foundational building block supporting major business analytics initiatives from day one. Not only is it highly relevant, it is absolutely critical to the success of all business analytics projects. Emerging big data platforms such as Hadoop and in-memory databases are disrupting traditional data architecture in
Friends have to look out for each other. Sometimes this can be slightly embarrassing. At lunch you might need to tell a friend that he has some tomato sauce on his chin. Or that she has a little spinach stuck between her teeth. Or you might need to tell your
For hotel companies, it is challenging to find new ways to differentiate in an ever evolving marketplace. There is a lot of talk in our industry about the increasing numbers of third party channels and distributors to have entered the marketplace, and how that impacts the hotel company’s core business.
Once upon a time: The toy industry has invited me to the world‘s largest toy fair, which took place recently in the city of Nuremberg. With close to 3,000 exhibitors the toy fair is bigger than ever before. Success is the theme of the event, and most German retailers cannot complain with consecutive
Combining Statistical Analysis with Subjective Judgment (continued) After summarily dismissing regression analysis and correlation analysis as panaceas for the business forecasting problem, Lorie turns next to "salesmen's forecasts."* He first echoes the assumption that we still hear today: This technique of sales forecasting has much to commend it. It is based
