Heat maps have many uses. In a previous article, I showed how to use heat maps with a discrete color ramp to visualize matrices that have a small number of unique values, such as certain covariance matrices and sparse matrices. You can also use heat maps with a continuous color
Sin datos no hay experiencia del cliente, sin calidad de datos no hay lealtad verdadera, y sin integración de datos no hay esperanza de una experiencia omnicanal. Y es a través de esta experiencia, que las empresas buscan conectarse con el cliente y crear una estrategia personalizada que cubra sus
Find out which state you'll live in, if the US state borders are redrawn so we have 50 states with equal population! (Don't worry! - This is just a fun/hypothetical "what if" blog!) To get you in the mood for this topic, here's a picture of one of the many
In my industry of data and computer science, precision is typically regarded as a virtue. The more exact that you can be, the better. Many of my colleagues are passionate about the idea, which isn't surprising for a statistical software company. But in social media, precision is a stigma --
Nowadays we hear a lot about how important it is that we are data-driven in our decision-making. We also hear a lot of criticism aimed at those that are driven more by intuition than data. Like most things in life, however, there’s a big difference between theory and practice. It’s
One of the things I enjoy about blogging is that I often learn something new. Last week I wrote about how to optimize a function that is defined in terms of an integral. While developing the program in the article, I made some mistakes that generated SAS/IML error messages. By
After the 2014 FIFA World Cup, one thing’s clear: here at SAS, we love football (soccer in the US!). To wrap up the popular 2014 World Cup data visualization series on the SAS Visual Analytics Community, we created a presentation that’s chocked-full of interesting insights. From the trillions of pieces
I’m sitting here staring at a book on my shelf entitled, “Impending Crisis”. Even knowing the copyright date, 2003, it could still be about any one of several possible crises: healthcare, financial, energy, education, environment. But no, in this case the impending crisis in question is provided by the subtitle: “Too many jobs,
A SAS customer wrote, "I have access to PROC IML through SAS OnDemand for Academics. What is the best way for me to learn to program in the SAS/IML language? How do I get started with PROC IML?" That is an excellent question, and I'm happy to offer some suggestions.
This week’s author tip is from Michele Burlew and her new book SAS Macro Programming Made Easy, Third Edition. Burlew chose this tip because she says the %SYSFUNC and %QSYSFUNC functions allow you to use SAS language functions in macro programming. Access to these functions greatly increases macro programming power
It is a mild summer evening in July at Lake Neusiedl here in Austria. The participants of the traditional YES Cup Regatta are sitting with beer and barbecue chops on the terrace of our clubhouse. The mood is relaxed, and everyone wants to tell their story after two eventful races.
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
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.
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
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
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
