Whether to engage sales people in the forecasting process remains hotly debated on LinkedIn. While I have no objection in principle to sales people being involved in the process, I'm very skeptical of the value of doing so. Unless there is solid evidence that input from the sales force has improved
Teller, the normally silent half of the magician duo Penn & Teller, revealed some of magic’s secrets in a Smithsonian Magazine article about how magicians manipulate the human mind. Given the big data-fueled potential of data science to manipulate our decision-making, we should listen to what Teller has to tell
Last month I blogged about defining SAS/IML functions that have default parameter values. This language feature, which was introduced in SAS/IML 12.1, enables you to skip arguments when you call a user-defined function. The same technique enables you to define optional parameters. Inside the function, you can determine whether the
Los tiempos en que el presidente o el gerente general de una compañía tenía que pedir la información crítica del negocio al área encargada y esperar varios días su respuesta, son ahora cosa del pasado. La agilidad que exige el mundo moderno aceleró los procesos administrativos internos de las organizaciones,
Weiterhin bewacht er den Eingang, aber er brüllt nicht mehr, der Löwe vor der Münchener Halle auf der diesjährigen CeBIT. Auf mich wirkt er 2014 eher nachdenklich. Ähnlich geräuschlos wird das Leitthema der diesjährigen Cebit aufgegriffen: Datability, also die Fähigkeit, große Datenmengen in hoher Geschwindigkeit verantwortungsvoll und nachhaltig zu nutzen.
Once again I'll be at SAS Global Forum this year. The 2014 location is Washington, D. C., so I am looking forward to greeting many friends in the government and consulting sectors. I always enjoy talking with SAS customers about statistics, simulations, matrix computations, and the SAS/IML product, so here's
The SAS Global Forum 2014 is just around the corner starting Sunday, March 23 and I am eager to attend creative presentations from SAS users on ODS Graphics. Adoption of SG procedures, GTL and ODS Graphics Designer is growing among users and I see many promising papers. Papers by users: Something for Nothing!
After decades of trying to "manage" and "control" quality, manufacturers continue to struggle with consistently achieving quality excellence. To conquer the realities of today's marketplace and achieve quality excellence, manufacturers need to adopt an analytic approach to quality. The basic objective of manufacturers hasn't changed since the beginning - produce
For the third year now, I'll be hosting the SAS Tech Talk shows at SAS Global Forum. (Since I've been invited back I can assume that I'm more of an Ellen DeGeneres than a Seth MacFarlane.) These shows feature SAS technical experts (mostly from SAS R&D) who are prepared to
The SAS/IML language has several functions for finding the unions, intersections, and differences between sets. In fact, two of my favorite utility functions are the UNIQUE function, which returns the unique elements in a matrix, and the SETDIF function, which returns the elements that are in one vector and not
A recurring question among business forecasters is how to incorporate input from the sales force. We discussed this last year in The BFD post "Role of the sales force in forecasting." But the question came up again this week in the Institute of Business Forecasting discussion group on LinkedIn, where
The odds may not be in your favor, but SAS Analytics could help you win a huge prize. As you may have heard, billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert have teamed up to offer $1 billion to anyone who can create a perfect NCAA March Madness
Many geeky mathematical people celebrate "pi day" on March 14, because the date is written 3/14 in the US, which is evocative of the decimal representation of π = 3.14.... Most people are familiar with the decimal representation of π. The media occasionally reports on a new computational tour-de-force that
Did you know that this Friday is Pi Day? How are you planning to commemorate this special day? :) Next year's Pi Day might even be more special than usual, being that it will contain: March 14, 2015 - 9:26:53. And if you realize the coolness of that (3.141592653), you might be
In my last post in the Ask the Statistician series, we heard statisticians at the Analytics 2013 conference discuss what types of statistical techniques they use to solve their business problems. Given that these concepts are technical in nature, I wanted to better understand some of their best practices for sharing
Were you a mother who listened to classical music during your pregnancy, or a parent who played classical music in your newborn baby’s nursery because you heard it stimulates creativity and improves intelligence? If so, do you know where this “classical music makes you smarter” idea came from? In 1993, a
Last week I showed how to find parameters that maximize the integral of a certain probability density function (PDF). Because the function was a PDF, I could evaluate the integral by calling the CDF function in SAS. (Recall that the cumulative distribution function (CDF) is the integral of a PDF.)
With the increasing emphasis on responsiveness, resiliency, flexibility and agility, I suppose it was only a matter of time before the “agile” concept caught up with strategy itself. While I may have hinted at this idea four years ago in two of my earliest posts for the Value Alley, “Strategy
La tendencia del big data hoy refleja una dura realidad: las compañías tienen grandes cantidades de datos, pero luchan por convertirlos en conocimiento y valor. Nuevas tecnologías permiten a las organizaciones alcanzar ese desafío. La gestión de datos posibilita que las compañías, agencias gubernamentales y universidades puedan consolidar y transformar
It is always important to continue to sell the value of analytics within your organization, especially to your leaders. Usually, these type of results are delivered via reports, dashboards, or emails. However did you know that analytics: Detects when expensive machinery like electrical submersible pumps (ESP) or oil platforms need maintenance before
Viel zu lesen, aber wenig Zeit? Wenn es um das Leitthema der CeBIT 2014 geht, helfen wir hier: Ein Team von Experten stellt begleitend zur Messe, die aus ihrer Sicht wichtigsten Beiträge in einem Magazin bei Flipboard zusammen.
In a previous blog, I wrote about the top ten fallacies of why data governance is perceived to be too burdensome and costly. Hopefully I dispelled the preconception that data governance is slower and less nimble than today's informal data management practices. In this post, we'll examine the concept of governance
On most Mondays I blog about a function, programming technique, or resource that is useful for programmers who are getting started with SAS software. Recently I learned that my colleagues in the SAS education division have been hard at work developing a series of short videos that explain basic tasks
Eine News geht um die Welt: An der University of California in Berkeley haben sich im Frühjahr erstmalig mehr Frauen als Männer für den Einführungskurs Computer Science eingeschrieben. 106 junge Frauen und 104 junge Männer nehmen am Kurs teil. Das ist keine überwältigende Mehrheit, aber dennoch eine Nachricht wert. Warum?
"30 Prozent der Unternehmen haben bereits Big-Data-Initiativen" - so eines der Ergebnisse der gerade vorgestellten Studie "Big Data Analytics" des Analystenhauses BARC. Die Experten von BARC haben Unternehmen in der gesamten DACH-Region befragt und zeichnen ein aktuelles Bild des Status quo: Fast ein Drittel aller Unternehmen gibt wenig auf Pauschalurteile
Imagine you're a business analyst who just discovered a pattern or trend that could significantly help your organization. What do you do next? You share it. Using SAS® Visual Analytics, you've published your results to the Web and mobile device before, but this time you'd rather work with your findings in
In the Breaking Bad TV series, Walter White has an impressive lab where he secretly makes the illegal drug methamphetamine (meth). Wouldn't it be cool to use SAS to show the locations of all the clandestine meth labs in the US?!? Let's do it!... In this blog, I show you
Gerne erinnere ich mich noch an die Zeit, als ich mit dem Begriff Memory zunächst nur ein einfaches Kartenspiel assoziert habe. Diese frühe Form des "Gehirnjoggings" hat mich übrigens nie besonders lange begeistert. Ähnlich begrenzt wie meine Geduld damals sind heute viele Hardware-Systeme in Bezug auf die wachsenden Anforderungen. Zwar wächst
SAS programmers use the SAS/IML language for many different tasks. One important task is computing an integral. Another is optimizing functions, such as maximizing a likelihood function to find parameters that best fit a set of data. Last week I saw an interesting problem that combines these two important tasks.
To build accurate predictive models you need clean data. Having a good understanding of the data helps you to interpret the models correctly and enables you to make sound intelligent business decisions. SAS Enterprise Miner can help you to achieve the twin goals of improving the quality of data and
