On Facebook the other day a friend “liked” one of her friend’s posts, so it appeared in my news feed. I opened the link, read the article and started crying. You would have too. It was an article by a former social worker in Durham County, N.C. on what it was like
„Bluthochdruck, der leise Killer“, so lautete die knappe und ernüchternde Diagnose des Arztes. Gewiss, Bluthochdruck ist die häufigste Volkskrankheit in Deutschland. Die letzte Zeit war stressig, an Sport war schon lange nicht mehr zu denken - aber warum musste gerade mich das Schicksal dieser Krankheit treffen? Unter dem Eindruck möglicher
The SAS Middle Tier is all new for SAS 9.4, and you might not recognize it. Gone are the third-party web application servers. Gone is the third-party Java development kit. Missing major components like those may cause you to ask yourself, “Does SAS still have a middle tier?” With the
Es probable alguna vez en su vida haya hecho una matriz identificando debilidades, oportunidades, fortalezas y amenazas (DOFA) en su equipo de trabajo o en su organización y que por eso el tema le suene familiar. Sin embargo, realmente ¿ha hecho un análisis profundo para saber cuáles son sus amenazas?
The Amazon River starts as a small glacial stream, pictured at right, on a mountain called Nevado Mismi in the Peruvian Andes. This, and many other small streams, lead to over 1,000 named tributaries of the largest drainage basin in the world -- and the greatest diversity of life on
Many people, myself included, occasionally complain about how noisy big data has made our world. While it is true that big data does broadcast more signal, not just more noise, we are not always able to tell the difference. Sometimes what sounds like meaningless background static is actually a big insight. Other times
The SAS/IML language is used for many kinds of computations, but three important numerical tasks are integration, optimization, and root finding. Recently a SAS customer asked for help with a problem that involved all three tasks. The customer had an objective function that was defined in terms of an integral.
Today SAS began shipping the second maintenance release of SAS 9.4, colloquially known as "SAS 9.4M2". This is an incremental release, meant to build upon the already-solid SAS 9.4 platform. Even as a SAS insider, I cannot possibly keep track of every new feature that has been added in maintenance.
There are many ways to use SAS in Health & Life Sciences, and one of my favorite is using it to track the spread of diseases. This post demonstrates how to layer several customized maps to track the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa. In this blog post, I describe how I
It is estimated that a typical organization loses 5% of its revenues to fraud each year (www.acfe.com). The total cost of insurance fraud (non-health insurance) in the US is estimated to be more than $40 billion per year (www.fbi.gov). The advent of Big Data & Analytics has provided new and
Wisdom has built her house; She has hewn out her seven pillars. – Proverbs 9:1 At the 2014 Joint Statistical Meetings in Boston, Stephen Stigler gave the ASA President's Invited Address. In forty short minutes, Stigler laid out his response to the age-old question "What is statistics?" His answer was
You may have heard the phase that big data is the new oil. Well (pun intended), if that is the case, then analytics should be thought of as the fracking technique used on data to improve the value you get from this new oil. Fracking is actually just one
You are the new SAS Administrator. After the initial shock or excitement, you sit back and wonder, “What does that MEAN???” In an enterprise environment there are often divisions of duties. The SAS Intelligence Platform is no exception. Just take a look at the architecture. Just looking at this picture,
In SAS software, you can use the QUAD subroutine in the SAS/IML language to evaluate definite integrals on an interval [a, b]. The integral is properly defined only for a < b, but mathematicians define the following convention, which enables you to make sense of reversing the limits of integration:
For those of you who are classic rock fans, you may remember Alice Cooper’s title track “School’s Out for Summer” on the album “School’s Out.” That song captures students’ excitement of a taking a hiatus from the classroom. But for professors, summer is a time to continue their own education
With Discovery Channel's Shark Week starting on August 10, I decided to sink my teeth into some shark-attack data - I even found there were some shark attacks in the Midwestern US! Read on to learn the details... To get you into the shark mindset, here is a photo of an
This week’s author tip is from Jack Shostak’s new book SAS Programming in the Pharmaceutical Industry, Second Edition. Shostak has been using SAS for nearly 30 years. In that time, he’s co-authored two other books, Common Statistical Methods for Clinical Research with SAS Examples, Third Edition, and Implementing CDISC Using
In July, we trained our 1 millionth user. It’s a significant milestone for SAS. In celebration, we want to recognize our customers and say “thank you” for making a commitment to us for your learning. Now through Aug. 31, we are offering a special Buy One, Get One 50-percent off
What insights can be gained from the massive amounts of data that allow us to make decisions that deliver the best results? Data vs. information is an ongoing battle. Many people look for more data to make confident decisions. However, what most people seek is insight. Retailers always have tracked
Para ganar en el mercado, las organizaciones deben estar innovando todo el tiempo, esto significa moverse rápido, entrar en nuevos mercados estar más accesibles para los clientes, lanzar nuevos productos y tener precios cada vez más competitivos. Pero entre más innoven y compitan, mayores son los riesgos que deben enfrentar
We often hear from retail bank customers that they aren't satisfied with the revenue captured through digital channels. It was therefore with great interest that I embarked on the mission to understand Chris Skinner’s book Digital Bank. Why we need digital banks The book starts by painting the landscape of
A few years ago I discussed the idea of analytic resources as ‘all-stars’ rather than ‘rock stars.’ While this previous blog certainly touched on the team aspect of analytic work, recently I’ve been thinking about just how much teamwork is required to make an analytics project successful. From extracting data,
In my last three posts on data ethics, I explored a few of the ethical dilemmas in our data-driven world. From examining the ethical practices of free internet service providers to the problem of high-frequency trading, I’ve come to realize the depth and complexity of these issues. Anyone who's aware of these
Unless you diligently read the "What's New" chapter for each release of SAS software, it is easy to miss new features that appear in the language. People who have been writing SAS/IML programs for decades are sometimes surprised when I tell them about a useful new function or programming feature.
Perhaps you're a big data expert who is fluent in Pig, Hive, MapR and all the technologies associated with the open source big data framework. Or maybe your role hasn't yet been touched by the increasingly popular Hadoop system. It's certainly worth a few minutes of your time (or perhaps
David Loshin defines reference data and sets up a working definition for his next set of posts.
We’re not sure about you, but we just had the most thrilling, suspenseful, and fun month we’ve had in a while. The 2014 FIFA World Cup may be over, but we’re still amazed by not only the game outcomes and level of athleticism, but also by the wealth of interesting
In a previous blog post, I described how to generate combinations in SAS by using the ALLCOMB function in SAS/IML software. The ALLCOMB function in Base SAS is the equivalent function for DATA step programmers. Recall that a combination is a unique arrangement of k elements chosen from a set
When I started working at business analytics leader SAS, I had no idea I’d be helping the Great Britain Rowing Team plot their way to Olympic glory. While I haven’t, yet, got in a boat and started rowing, I have started working with them on how they can make better
In this blog post, I put some classic rock song data under the SAS Analytics microscope, to see if I could get a better picture of exactly what is considered 'classic rock' these days... Michael Raithel recently pointed me to an interesting article/study about 'classic rock' music, and invited (or is
