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
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
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
There are many ways to multiply scalars, vectors, and matrices, but the Kronecker product (also called the direct product) is multiplication on steroids. The Kronecker product looks scary, but it is actually simple. The Kronecker product is merely a way to pack multiples of a matrix B into a block
We are in the age of big data. But just because modern software makes it easy to handle large data volumes, it's worth asking: do you always need all that data? In other words, if your analytics software can accommodate and even thrive in this big data environment, does that mean
A colleague asked me a question regarding my recent post about the Pascal triangle matrix. While responding to his question, I discovered a program that I had written in 1999 that computed with a Pascal triangle matrix. Wow, I've been computing with Pascal's triangle for 15 years! I don't know
Here on the Data Roundtable we've discussed many topics such as root-cause analysis, continual improvement and defect prevention. Every organization must focus on these disciplines to create long-term value from data quality improvement instead of some fleeting benefit. Nowhere is this more important than the need for an appropriate education strategy, both in
In the long run we’re unemployable. Not because we’re lazy or incompetent. It’s because we’re replaceable. I’ve spent much of the eighteen months trying to impress on people how real this is. It’s not something that’ll happen “one day”. It’s happening now, everywhere we look. Once upon a time, I
As teachers across 35+ states are evaluated, and sometimes compensated, in part by the academic growth of their students, there may be an unintended consequence. Teachers may question whether to accept student teachers, in fear of the student teacher bringing down their value-added estimate(s) and overall evaluation rating. How can
A student in a SAS class recently asked if there were a way to eliminate data error notes from the SAS log and, instead, write them to a separate file. Of course there's a way! Here's a simple datastep. Notice the missing dollar sign to indicate the variable GENDER (M,
If you have SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS for Windows installed on a machine together, they should Just Work. There is no special setup required. But...what if they don't? I've posted an article in the SAS Enterprise Guide community about this topic. Read the article to learn: How to select
So much for a single version of the truth.
Last year, my SAS Simulation Studio R&D team began a discrete-event simulation modeling project of a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) with two doctors from Duke University’s Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine. After several initial meetings discussing such things as necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), patent ductus arteriosis (PDA), and
Earlier this year, I was speaking with an insurance executive and he said something that turned out to be my favorite quote of 2014: “Premium revenue is like heroin.” While this seems like an unlikely analogy or simile?. The point this executive was trying to make an interesting argument. Insurance
SAS University Edition has been available for free download for six months – in that time we’ve seen 50,192,670 PROCs or DATA steps executed globally – that’s almost 4,000 hours duration! Now, we were founded on stats so we thought we’d bring you some of the key metrics we’ve discovered over
There’s a lot of talk about modernizing hospitality marketing – and most of it is dependent on finally cracking the nut between online and offline guest data and bringing predictive analytics to play. But there is a fundamental problem hampering our ability to do this and it starts with how hospitality
Pascal's triangle is the name given to the triangular array of binomial coefficients. The nth row is the set of coefficients in the expansion of the binomial expression (1 + x)n. Complicated stuff, right? Well, yes and no. Pascal's triangle is known to many school children who have never heard of polynomials
SAS Support Communities provide a forum in which to engage and share with your fellow SAS experts, now in over 20 topic areas including Forecasting and Econometrics. This is the go-to website for your hard core modeling questions, such as "Holdouts in PROC ARIMA," "2-stage Heckman (1979) procedure," and the
As 2014 slowly winds down it’s time to gear up for the holiday shopping rush. As in recent years the Consumer Electronics Association reports tech gifts will again be high on everyone’s list this holiday shopping season. A new addition to the list this year are numerous Internet of Things
