How do you build a forecast when you have no historical data? This is a recurring challenge for businesses that update their product offerings, and a recurring question in online forecasting discussion groups (e.g. this one on LinkedIn). The bad news is that you probably can't expect to achieve highly
Lately, there's been lots of buzz around the logical data warehouse (LDW). In fact, Gartner is hearing LDW mentions as part of data warehouse (DW) inquiries almost 20% of the time and considers it a "megatrend." The definition usually includes some use of data virtualization or data federation capabilities to complement
One of the benefits of running an online data quality and data governance community is that over the course of many interviews, you start to see common threads and patterns emerging in the way practitioners create success in their data-driven programs. Data governance is a relatively new discipline, so it’s
Nein: Euphorie sieht anders aus. Der Medienprofi Rudi Klausnitzer gehört nicht zu den Menschen, die Big Data als das „neue Öl“ bejubeln oder in der Datenflut ein Allheilmittel sehen. Stattdessen wirft er einen kritischen, nüchternen, realistischen Blick auf die schöne neue Datenwelt – und pocht auf die an sich nicht
Twas the night before "big data," when all through the data center Not an IT supervisor was stirring, not even the help desk on-call. The servers where all humming along nicely in hopes Big data would soon be there. The business users were nestled all snug in their offices
My children learned this skill early in life: when you want to secure permission for a questionable activity (say, "watch 5 hours of Phineas and Ferb" or "eat a bowl of candy for breakfast"), you should approach the most lenient adult in the household. In my early days of fatherhood,
In the past few weeks I have presented training sessions on data governance, master data management, data quality and analytics at three different venues. At each one of these events, during one of the breaks a variety of people in my course noted that the technical concepts of implementing programs
Wir stellen hier nur einen Auszug unseres Fazits aus einem Jahr "Mehr Wissen" Blog vor - aber wir teilen auch gerne die vollständige Auswertung. Bevorzugt mit Betreibern eines Corporate Blogs im Austausch mit ihren Erfahrungen. Aber jeder kann sich die Auswertung bestellen und ist eingeladen die Ergebnisse mit uns zu diskutieren.
If there's anyone who represents the global nature of SAS software, it's Falko Schulz. He's a German who lives in Brisbane, Australia while he works for SAS R&D based in Cary, NC. Falko works on the team that produces SAS Visual Analytics, specifically the "explorer" portion of the tool. He
The farther you try to forecast into the future, the less certain you are -- how can you represent that graphically? One way is to draw a shaded/colored "confidence interval" around your forecast line, but this is something a lot of SAS users have trouble with. That's why I decided to create
This is the time of year when we like to make predictions about the upcoming year. Although I am optimistic about the potential of predictive analytics in the era of big data, I am also realistic about the nature of predictability regardless of how much data is used. For example, in
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, Last year a fractal made thee! O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, A heat map can display thee! O tree of green, adorned with lights! A trunk of brown, the rest is white. O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, A heat map can display
In my last post I introduced the term “behavior architecture,” and this time I would like to explore what that concept means. One approach is to start with the basics: given a business process with a set of decision points and a number of participants, the behavior architecture is the
The "Internet of Things" is the latest buzzword characterizing the machine-generated big data that has outstripped our ability to derive value from it. Think of UPS delivering 16 million packages every day through various hubs and all the logistics and decisioning that goes into that. But how does an organization
As I crossed the finished line, I could feel the tears welling up. “Don’t do it," I thought. "Athletes don’t cry." Somehow, I managed to pull myself together, but instead of my usual post-race celebration of high fives and cheering on other runners, I walked to the race result board
Recently a SAS/IML programmer asked a question regarding how to perform matrix arithmetic when some of the data are in vectors and other are in matrices. The programmer wanted to add the following matrices: The problem was that the numbers in the first two matrices were stored in vectors. The
While fancy new forecasting models will always be of interest to researchers, there is plenty of really interesting and practical new work being led by forecasting practitioners. Last month Steve Morlidge (who spent 30 years at Unilever, now with CatchBull), shared his promising new approach on the “Avoidability of Forecast
Data on punched-cards, SAS software delivered on tape, jobs in the queue on the mainframe, printouts on green-bar paper ... we really appreciate all our SAS users, but if any of the above are part of your "SAS memories" we especially appreciate you! I guess I'm a computer geek, because
Last week I covered some of the interesting graph-related papers presented at WUSS. There were quite a few, so I broke up the report into two parts. Here is the second installment. In the paper Creating Graphical Patient Profiles using SAS by William Garner of Gilead Sciences, the author describes how to create
Our blog editor extraordinaire Shelly Goodin brings you tips and information on technical content from our books that you can use immediately in your work. But what if you’re not there yet? What if you want to start with a 50,000-foot level view of analytics overall? Or learn how forecasting
For decades, data quality experts have been telling us poor quality is bad for our data, bad for our decisions, bad for our business and just plain all around bad, bad, bad – did I already mention it’s bad? So why does poor data quality continue to exist and persist?
A heat map is a graphical representation of a matrix that uses colors to represent values in the matrix cells. Heat maps often reveal the structure of a matrix. There are three common applications of visualizing matrices with heat maps: Visualizing a correlation or covariance matrix reveals relationships between variables.
When learning a new language, it is important to learn to interpret error messages that come from the language's parser or compiler. Three years ago I blogged about how to interpret SAS/IML error messages. However, many questions have been posted to the SAS/IML Support Community that indicate that some people
Liebe Blog-Leser, schon sind wir wieder mitten drin in dieser so besinnlichen, feierlichen und staden Vorweihnachtszeit, wo die meisten Menschen vor lauter Hektik nicht wissen, wo ihnen der Kopf steht. Jahresabschlüsse sind zu machen, Geschenke noch zu besorgen. Die Menschen um einen herum sind gereizt – und nach ehrlicher Selbstbeobachtung
As the International Year of Statistics comes to a close, I've been reflecting on the role statistics plays in our modern society. Of course, statistics provides estimates, forecasts, and the like, but to me the great contribution of statistics is that it enables us to deal with uncertainty in a
Writing a book about SAS (or any computer software) is both gratifying and frustrating. It's gratifying because there are so many SAS users in the world, and it feels good when you can share your expertise with them. It's also gratifying to have a volume that you can point to
Each year my siblings choose names for a Christmas gift exchange. It is not unusual for a sibling to pick her own name, whereupon the name is replaced into the hat and a new name is drawn. In fact, that "glitch" in the drawing process was a motivation for me
As the “Year of Statistics” comes to a close, I write this blog in support of the many statisticians who carefully fulfil their analysis tasks day by day, and to defend what may appear to be demanding behavior when it comes to data requirements. How do statisticians get this reputation? Are we
There are 2 kinds of people in the world -- those who dread change, and those who look forward to it. Which kind of person are you, when it comes to upgrading your SAS software?!? With most software (such as Windows OS, Facebook, Gmail, etc) I tend to fall into
Instituting an analytics program in which actionable insight is delivered to a business consumer will be successful if those consumers are aware of what they need to do to improve their processes and reap the benefits. As we have explored over the past few posts, success in the use of
