SHA256 and other hashing functions in SAS
SHA256 and other hash functions are supported in SAS 9.4 and SAS Viya. It's better than MD5 as a cryptographic hash!
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Forecasting new products (Part 5): Model, forecast, override
We ended last time having selected a cluster of surrogate products -- a subset of the original selection of like-items that had the same attributes as the new product. Judgment has been used throughout the process so far, in specification of the relevant attributes, filtering the original candidate pool of
Video: Transforming data into a corporate asset
Watching the news recently it occurred to me that many of the stories involved data in some way. Many of the reports from the recent Consumer Electronics Show showcased products to enable users to create and use ever-growing personal collections of data. Want data on how well you sleep? No
SAS #2 in Fortune Best Companies to Work For
Seems like we've been here before. It is January, so time again to announce the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For in the US. This year SAS is at #2, our fifth straight year in the top 3, over which our average rank has been 1.8. We've covered this topic
Forecasting new products (Part 4): Query, filter, and cluster
The Query step begins by selecting like-items based on the appropriate product attributes, then reviewing historical sales of past new product introductions. Continuing with the DVD example, suppose the new release is an R-rated horror movie. For like-items, we would query our database and pull the history of all prior
Say hello to SAS Analytics 13.1
Late last month, while many of us were sipping eggnog and decking halls with boughs of holly, SAS released the 13.1 version of its analytical products. Readers of Maura Stokes' newsletter, SAS Statistics and Operations Research News (Nov 2013), have already been alerted to new features in products such as
Find out what 'holiday' your birthday is on!
Every day of the year is an official 'national day' for something - here's a SAS chart to help you find which bizarre 'national day' falls on your birthday! I recently read an article that lists weird and unconventional national days. It was very interesting, but I found the data
New look and new insights at sas.com
If you’ve been over to sas.com at all in the last week, you’ve probably noticed our relaunched site. The changes are kind of hard to miss. But it’s not just the home page that’s changed. And it’s not just a cosmetic redesign. The whole site has been revamped with a goal toward
How to vectorize time series computations
Vector languages such as SAS/IML, MATLAB, and R are powerful because they enable you to use high-level matrix operations (matrix multiplication, dot products, etc) rather than loops that perform scalar operations. In general, vectorized programs are more efficient (and therefore run faster) than programs that contain loops. For an example
Forecasting new products (Part 3): By structured analogy
In the previous installment we were reminded of the potential abuses of forecasting by analogy. People are naturally reluctant to forecast that their new product idea is going to flop. Therefore, there is an inclination to ignore similar items that failed in the marketplace, or apply less weight to the failures than
Let's reach for the stars
So Ed and I have started the new year right by taking a trip. We’re in Washington, DC for the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society. (These dudes have been getting together for a long time.) Here’s the fun part: we’re showing off a cool new eBook that SAS
Forecasting new products (Part 2): By analogy
The real estate market provides a good example of the use of analogies. To determine a reasonable listing price for a property (such as this dump on the right) that is new on the market, the sales agent will prepare a list of "comps" (comparable homes) that are currently on the market or
Creating 'pretty' maps with SAS
When you create maps, you are typically plotting data for analytics -- but you can also use SAS to create 'pretty' maps for background decorations (for posters, slides, presentations, etc). This blog shows you a few examples... A few years ago I noticed that the CNN Situation Room had a decorative
13 popular articles from 2013
In 2013 I published 110 blog posts. Some of these articles were more popular than others, often because they were linked to from a SAS newsletter such as the SAS Statistics and Operations Research News. In no particular order, here are some of my most popular posts from 2013, organized
What to do when a table’s not enough?
Sure, you have a great looking table and you produce it with PROC TABULATE. And then, bam! Your boss comes along and decides that since your output looks so good in Word, that he’d like that boilerplate paragraph inserted automatically. Currently, you produce the tables and then pass the RTF
Adding Google Web Fonts to your SAS reports
Because I began my SAS career in the Publications division, I like to think that I have a keen eye when it comes to SAS documentation. When I first visited the SAS 9.4 online documentation, I immediately noticed that it had a different look. Examine the image below; can you
Forecasting new products (Part 1)
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
SAS Federation Server, data virtualization and the logical data warehouse
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
Common tactics for kickstarting data governance
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
Buchrezension: Das Ende des Zufalls
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
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
Closing the "LIBNAME loophole" with metadata-bound libraries
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,
Behavior architecture
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
Mehr Wissen - Fazit aus einem Jahr Corporate Blog
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.
SAS Tech Talk: Developing the SAS Visual Analytics Explorer
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
How to plot a forecast and confidence interval
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
Why can’t we predict the weather?
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
A Christmas tree matrix
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
Behavior modeling
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
Big data management precision, pace and partnerships: Cloudera Impala, Hadoop and Teradata
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
