There's recently been a "States I've Visited" application going around on Facebook, where users create a map showing all the US states they've visited, and then post it on their page for their friends to see. I wondered if SAS could do a better job?... Here's a screen-capture of one
On a cold and wet December morning in 2008, at approximately 1:30 AM, I pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned supermarket in Arlington, TX. With sleet pelleting my windshield, I saw three additional sets of headlights enter into the parking lot from different directions. All three cars converged
Many vendors claim they have analytics, and a lot of users have embraced the belief that analytics is the way to go. But what does analytics really mean, especially to business users without statistics backgrounds, and how much do they need to know about analytics to be able to make
All of us are familiar with common fraud types. Insurance fraud, credit card fraud, identity theft, and tax evasion are among the most recognized areas. But, there are many other fraud types that have a big impact on our daily lives, yet receive little attention in the media and among
Perhaps nowhere is the saying “time is money” more true than in the construction industry. There is no better indicator of project cost and budget over/underrun than the number of days on-site. Reducing that number has a near 1:1 relationship with cost cutting, so it’s no wonder that days on-site
Is fraud like a snowflake, and every one is unique? Not really. There is, however, an increasing number of methods and schemes that show up and expand the range of issues we need to look for every day. To celebrate International Fraud Awareness Week this year, I'm going to spend
Big data is already dead!!! Long live big analytics! In good writing, apparently, someone needs to die in the first line and big data is a sensational, front-page victim. Some trends indicate that the “big data hype” has already peaked. Regardless of whether this is true and a post-hype hangover
Have you ever noticed that some SAS/IML programmers use the CALL statement to call a subroutine, whereas others use the RUN statement? Have you ever wondered why the SAS/IML language has two statements that do the same thing? It turns out that the CALL statement and the RUN statement do
Business forecasting is a highly politicized process, subject to the biases and personal agendas of all forecasting process participants. This is why many -- perhaps most -- human adjustments to the forecast fail to make it better. And this is why relative metrics, such as FVA, are so helpful in
Big data is of no use unless you can turn it into information and insight. For that you need big analytics. Every piece of the analytics cycle has been impacted by big data, from reporting, with the need to quickly render reports from billions of rows of data, through advanced
Perhaps forecasting is a little of both, crystal ball and competitive edge. It’s a crystal ball of sorts because it helps leaders get answers to questions like, “How many? Or, “How much?” to decide what actions best help the business. And it’s definitely a competitive edge when it results in
Are you a legitimate hard-working company that has been threatened with a lawsuit, by a patent troll? If so, the graphs in this blog should make you happy! Speaking of 'happy' and 'troll' - here's a picture of a happy Troll Doll from my friend Hannah. Don't you just hate
Laut aktuellem Gartner Hype Cycle ist der Hype um Big Data verglüht und die Phase der Ernüchterung ist eingetreten. Da höre ich schon viele in den Unternehmen sagen: "Hab ich ja gleich gesagt", "Das war total überbewertet", "Wir haben bei uns im Unternehmen keine Big Data", "Wir dürfen aufgrund des Datenschutzes
For most people, this time of year means celebrating cherished, personal traditions… helping those less fortunate…flocking to stores in droves…the company holiday party… For the SAS Security Intelligence team, it means identity theft…benefits fraud…unemployment insurance fraud...insider threats. Why? Because next week is International Fraud Awareness Week! And we’re celebrating by
Earlier this week I managed to catch up briefly with Christoph Sporleder, Vice President Centers of Excellence for EMEA & Asia Pacific, to talk Hadoop, big data and get some of his views on where we might be headed with big data. Mark Torr: Is big data just a buzz
What do the following have in common? A homeowner inflates the value of his home entertainment equipment stolen during a robbery. A parent states they are the primary driver for their child’s car. A doctor charges for a non-existent procedure. A construction company underreports payroll or misclassifies an employee’s duties.
¿Tiene datos muertos que se convierten en irrelevantes o no confiables? ¿Le pasa que los datos que extrae por lo general crean confusión en los informes y hacen difícil la toma de decisiones? Si la respuesta es sí y usted está viviendo alguna de estas situaciones en su empresa, es
There are times when I harken back to the classic television show M.A.S.H. For those of you too young to remember, the story centered around a mobile Army surgical hospital in the midst of the conflict in the Korean peninsula. While they weren't the first people to see the patient, the unit
Heute in Berlin: Die Welt der Cloud Services wird einer der Schwerpunkte der SAP TechEd und d-code und ist sicher auch für mich eines der spannendsten Themen in der IT. Sogar Fragestellungen, die den Einsatz analytischer Verfahren mit ansprechenden Namen wie Neuronale Netze oder Support Vector Machines voraussetzen, werden in Zukunft
My Mum could have been a doctor – most can’t read her handwriting. It’s only because I’ve been trained to read it, I can. The analysis of unstructured data is similar. Text analysts can be quickly overwhelmed to learn that you have to manually develop a training corpus. Reading a
When I studied high school geometry, I noticed that many homework problems involved right triangles whose side lengths were integers. The canonical example is the 3-4-5 right triangle, which has legs of length 3 and 4 and a hypotenuse of length 5. The triple (3, 4, 5) is called a
In his Spring 2014 article in Foresight, Paul Goodwin addressed the important issue of point vs. probabilistic forecasts. A point forecast is a single number (e.g., the forecast for item XYZ in December is 635 units). We are all familiar with point forecasts, as these are what's commonly produced (either
The Advanced Analytics division of SAS Research & Development has announced three Summer Fellowships in the areas of Forecasting and Econometrics. The SAS forecasting fellowships are open to doctoral candidates in mathematics, statistics, computer science, and related graduate departments in the United States. They offer the opportunity to work closely
Going Beyond Regulatory-Mandated Tests to Achieve True Risk Management I regularly hear banking customers talk about ‘sweating their assets’ - leveraging their substantial investments in expanded teams of risk analysts, re-engineered processes and new risk systems for Basel II and III compliance – to gain better insights into their business.
I love Christmas, but there is one thing I never seem to get right: the office Secret Santa. Every year I draw someone I’ve barely met and fruitlessly dig around for clues – only to find myself hastily wrapping a scented candle/novelty mug at the eleventh hour. Merry Christmas Sandra
I was recently asked about how to use the SAS/IML language to efficiently add a constant to every element of a matrix diagonal. Mathematically, the task is to form the matrix sum A + kI, where A is an n x n matrix, k is a scalar value, and I is the
By infusing analytics through every phase of the guest journey, hotel managers can help shore up the complicated balance between the guest experience and revenue and profit responsibilities – delivering memorable and personalized guest experiences, while maximizing revenue and profits. To accomplish this, hotels need to be able to collect,
It's time for a fall fraud roundup. Bad deeds swirl around like so many dry leaves, and I'd like to highlight a few of them this week. It can happen anywhere, even in sports, and no, I'm not picking on those shoplifting Dallas Cowboys here. An MLS referee was suspended for workers' compensation
My colleague Robert Allison has a knack for finding fascinating data. Last week he did it again by locating data about how blood types and Rh factors vary among countries. He produced a series of eight world maps, each showing the prevalence of a blood type (A+, A-, B+, B-,
Data has value IF you can analyze it, said participants at a big data analytics roundtable at the Premier Business Leadership Series in Las Vegas. In attendance were executives from some of the largest Communications companies in the world including from the US, Canada, Turkey, Japan, Australia and the Philippines as well
