There are numerous algorithms used in forecasting, and each of those algorithms is optimized for a certain class of data. How does a business analyst know which forecasting algorithm to use? With the new version of SAS Visual Analytics, you don’t have to know – the product does all the
To optimize a Structured Query Language (SQL), the database professional must befriend this order and perhaps even embrace it. Who is your best friend? I’m talking about the order in which SQL processes your statements. Simply put, in what order does SQL do your work? (From my previous post you
When I travel to San Francisco in April for SAS Global Forum 2013, it will make my 12th time to attend the international SAS users group conference, and my 7th consecutive year. A lot of people assume that I automatically go every year, but the truth is that SAS employees
I wanted to write a blog post about the "Table distribution" in SAS. The Table distribution, which is supported by the RAND and the RANDGEN function, enables you to specify the probability of selecting each of k items. Therefore you can use the Table distribution to sample, with replacement, from
How many analytical projects have foundered due to lack of problem definition and other soft skills? As my SAS colleague Sascha Schubert writes, people and process matter, in addition to great technology. Great technology is a great first step, but having the right people following the right process is critically important.
This week's tip is from Gerhard Svolba and his book Data Quality for Analytics Using SAS. Gerhard is a product manager and pre-sales consultant at SAS in Austria, where he specializes in analytics and customer intelligence. Visit his author page to learn more about him and his work. The following excerpt is
I recently shared with you my 2013 industry predictions. With the anticipated increase in streaming data, social data, big data BI and analytics and the growing focus on Hadoop clusters, one thing is certain: big data is here to stay. Knowing how to best tackle that data while maintaining brand
With all due respect to Microsoft, I am not talking about that type of ppt, but instead I am referring to people, process, and technology (PPT). SAS helps to solve all types of problems because we bring more to the table than technology; we help our customers get answers to
For decades, researchers and programmers have used SAS to analyze, summarize, and report clinical trial data. Now Chris Holland and Jack Shostak have written the first comprehensive book on applying clinical research data and metadata to the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) standards. What does this mean for you—the
We had some fierce wind storms all across the United States yesterday, which even spawned some tornadoes! It looks like we weathered the storm OK here in Cary (but I still need to run out to the lake and make sure my pontoon/houseboat is still there, agh!). Anyway ... as with other
I've got a new trick that you can use to track progress in a long-running SAS program, while using SAS Enterprise Guide. I've previously written about the SYSECHO statement and how you can use it to update the Task Status window with custom messages. SYSECHO is a "global" statement in
This post originally appeared in our SAS Voices blog, published by my colleague and fellow blogger Courtney Peters. It's a great story about how Oberweis Dairy harnessed the power of marketing analytics to cultivate loyalty. That effort has helped them grow from a family-owned dairy farm to a major regional food manufacturer
Over the holidays I was having a discussion with my cat, Ms. Trixie Lou. A question that often arises during the first programming class is the following: how do I find the variables that are in common to these two or three data sets? As it turns out, Ms. Trixie
To read more ongoing tips and insights for small and midsize businesses, follow our SAS4SMB blog series or visit SAS for Small and MidSize Business. We all wish we could predict the future. After all, when a company knows its sales for next week, next month and next year, it
The global marketplace has been volatile, fragmented, and dynamic and is predicted to continue. Subsequently, supply processes have become more mature than demand as industries focused on operational excellence over the past two decades. As a result, there is a larger gap to fill in the redefinition of demand processes
The SAS/IML language secretly creates temporary variables. Most of the time programmers aren't even aware that the language does this. However, there is one situation where if you don't think carefully about temporary variables, your program will silently produce an error. And as every programmer knows, silent wrong numbers are
Amazon, Apple, eBay, Facebook and Google – known as the Tech Titans to some – continue to set the agenda with their continuous stream of mobile business initiatives. In fact, consumers embrace and, in some cases, expect many of the same mobility resources they’ve experienced through the Titans from the
SAS has several kinds of special data sets whose contents are organized according to certain conventions. These special data sets are marked with the TYPE= data set attribute. For example, the CORR procedure can create a data set with the TYPE=CORR attribute. You can decipher the structure of the data
The idea of customer centricity in marketing is as "old as dirt" - it's probably been around as long as people have been interested in buying or selling things to each other. So why are we still talking about it, and why is it so seemingly elusive for some organizations? The
Last year I published an example application for searching your SAS Enterprise Guide project files (EGP files). The example shows off some of the cool features of the automation API, and it's a useful tool. As neat of an example as that was, it had some limitations. It worked only
This week's SAS tip is from Kirk Lafler and his book PROC SQL: Beyond the Basics Using SAS. A SAS user since 1979, Kirk often takes his expertise on the road and is a frequent speaker at SAS conferences. He's also currently working on a second edition of the book. If
Analytics is a key piece in nearly all 31 recommendations outlined in The Innovative DOT: A Handbook of Policy and Practice. Crafted by the State Smart Transportation Initiative, in partnership with Smart Growth America, the handbook provides 31 recommendations for state transportation officials looking for ways to increase efficiencies and
"Correlation does not equal causation"; this is true across all data analytics, including human capital analytics, and it's a concept that coauthors Gene Pease, Boyce Byerly, and Jac Fitz-enz discuss in their new book, Human Capital Analytics: How to Harness the Potential of Your Organization's Greatest Asset. "How can we
My predictions for "big data" in 2013 were recently published in the Fourth Quarter 2012 issue of Loyalty Management Magazine, and I wanted to share them here too: Streaming data from gadgets, cars and other devices will become an even bigger and more important data source. Social data will be used
I like to be efficient in my SAS/IML programs, but sometimes I get into bad habits. Recently I realized that I was reshaping a bunch of SAS/IML row vectors because I wanted to write them to a SAS data set. This is completely unnecessary! The SAS/IML language will create a
I have been privileged to have had the opportunity to contribute to the recently published, “Positioned – Strategic Workforce Planning that gets the Right Person in the Right Job”, co-edited by Rob Tripp, Workforce Planning Manager at Ford Motor Company. The list of contributors is a Who’s Who of strategic
It was a moonless night in April 1912 when the pinnacle of ocean travel technology and luxury, the RMS Titanic, collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,500 passengers and crew. A primary cause of the tragedy was that the captain and
Welcome to my new blog series, The Book Writing Business. Throughout the year, I will introduce topics and questions related to writing a book. Oftentimes, I'll give you my take on them. But more importantly, you'll hear directly from our authors. They'll tell you why they write for SAS Press
Or... How will you enhance integration in 2013? Teachers want to more effectively integrate classroom technology. The question is how to achieve that goal, that “resolution.” Teaching is an individual art. Over the past few years, professional learning communities and vertical teaming has improved collaboration. But in the end, an
Sometimes I need to "disassemble" a SAS data set into a DATA step program. It's kind of like creating a "freeze-dried" version of the data that you can carry around and use anywhere, re-hydrating it in the SAS session where you next need it. Some example uses for this: Build
