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
La tecnología ha cambiado la forma en que las empresas y los clientes se comunican con sus públicos. Estrategias de correos directos, interacciones a través de redes sociales y habilitación de servicios en páginas web son algunas de las vías con que las compañías se han venido aproximando a los
Data asset management and analytic processing associated with big data were main topics of interest at the recent Strata conference in Santa Clara, California. Hosted in Silicon Valley, the conference attracted some of the brightest and most intelligent data scientists from America’s top research and academic institutions. Yet, to my ears, the
My teenage daughter is a self-appointed anglophile. She's a big fan of British movies and TV shows such as Doctor Who and Sherlock, and although she has not yet visited the UK (an injustice for which she blames her father), she considers the place to be her homeland. In an
Liebe Leser, in dieser Woche war ich auf großer Deutschlandtour mit der Enterprise Guide Roadshow „EG on Tour“. Vielleicht habe ich ja einige von ihnen dort gesehen. Sollten Sie diese Gelegenheit verpasst haben: Die nächste "EG on Tour" ist schon in Arbeit. Die Tour führte von Berlin über Hamburg nach
One of the biggest impediments to (and failures of) a new data governance program is the perceived level of “extras” required. Let’s enumerate some of the concerns that I hear consistently from our clients: Extra people will be required to staff the implementation. Extra budget money will be needed to fund the
A colleague sent me an interesting question: What is the best way to abort a SAS/IML program? For example, you might want to abort a program if the data is singular or does not contain a sufficient number of observations or variables. As a first attempt would be to try
One of the big problems with data migration projects is that, to the outside sponsor, they appear very much like a black box. You may be told that lots of activities and hustle are taking place, but there isn’t a great deal to show for it until the final make-or-break
What's the differences between predictive analytics and basic reporting? Predictive analytics provides insight about what will happen in the future. Basic reporting only looks at past performance. Why is this difference difficult to grasp? It's partly because transitioning to predictive analytics requires change. And most people don't embrace change. Take
Michele Ensor recently posted a wonderful blog with a graph of the 2014 Winter Olympics medal count. I'm going to further refine that graph, making it an Olympic graph ... on steroids! :) Here is Michele's graph: First, let's give it a few simple cosmetic changes. I always like to have
My last blog post described three ways to add a smoothing spline to a scatter plot in SAS. I ended the post with a cautionary note: From a statistical point of view, the smoothing spline is less than ideal because the smoothing parameter must be chosen manually by the user.
From Gartner to IDC to the trade press, the watchwords in the supply chain for rest of this decade appear to be “resiliency” and “responsiveness”. It’s not going to be about promotion-based pull-through, and it’s most definitely not going to be about channel incentive-based push-through. What it’s going to be
Am 6. Januar 2013 erschien in Deutschland einer der ersten Artikel zu Big Data in einer allgemeinen Publikumszeitschrift: Die “ZEIT” fragte „Wer hebt das Datengold?“ Im Mai legt dann der SPIEGEL mit einer Titelgeschichte nach. Es ist also noch gar nicht so lange her, dass die Öffentlichkeit mit dem Begriff vertraut
Like many SAS programmers, I use the Statistical Graphics (SG) procedures to graph my data in SAS. To me, the SGPLOT and SGRENDER procedures are powerful, easy to use, and produce fabulous ODS graphics. I was therefore surprised when a SAS customer told me that he continues to use the
