Here’s the thing, if you are a small or midsize business, you realize (better than anyone) how there is really nothing small or midsize about what you do. It is simply business ... and just like with all the Fortune 500 monster companies out there, you face the same dilemmas
The other day I was using PROC SGPLOT to create a box plot and I ran a program that was similar to the following: proc sgplot data=sashelp.cars; title "Box Plot: Category = Origin"; vbox Horsepower / category=origin; run; An hour or so later I had a need for another box
Facebook has millions of users, and therefore when people share an interesting graph on Facebook it can "go viral" and millions of people might see it. Some of the graphs are obviously a bit biased - especially ones that are trying to sway your opinion one way or another on a topic
At the beginning of a recent customer meeting I was involved in, I mentioned how easy it is to shut down idea generation by judging too soon or too harshly, to which a CIO at the meeting shared this story about five monkeys in a cage. You may have heard
The SAS/IML language supports user-defined functions (also called modules). Many SAS/IML programmers know that you can use the RETURN function to return a value from a user-defined function. For example, the following function returns the sum of each column of matrix: proc iml; start ColSum(M); return( M[+, ] ); /*
In case you've missed it, our friends from Down Under have written some great posts about customer intelligence on our sister blog, Left of the Date Line. Each one of our colleagues have a few posts, so here is a summary of my favorites, which I encourage you to read:
This week's SAS tip is from master user Phil Holland and his popular book Saving Time and Money Using SAS. If you're not yet familiar with Phil and his extensive work in the user community, start out by visiting his author page. If you're on LinkedIn, look for him on SAS Professional Forum
A senior manager in the analytics product management group, Tonya Balan sees herself as a bridge between SAS customers and R&D, ensuring that SAS products stay relevant to the needs of the customer. With a background in statistics and experience as a college professor, Tonya shares her excellent advice and
We have experimented with Twitter chats here at SAS, including a lively #statchat that we hosted two years ago for World Statistics Day. Likewise, our publications team has hosted a few fun Twitter chats with SAS book authors. Outside of SAS sponsored chats, I've also participated in and really enjoyed watching
Do you sometimes come across words and phrases in SAS software interfaces or messages that leave you wondering? New terms, and new meanings for old terms, are inevitable in the fast-paced world of analytics software. However, we would like to help our customers understand new or nuanced concepts quickly and
What's new about the current emphasis on big data? How does it differ from the large data volumes of the past? Paul Kent, VP of Big Data at SAS answers these - and many more questions in the video below. He starts with an explanation of Moore's law and continues
It is common to want to extract the lower or upper triangular elements of a matrix. For example, if you have a correlation matrix, the lower triangular elements are the nontrivial correlations between variables in your data. As I've written before, you can use the VECH function to extract the
It should be no surprise that our marketing department here at SAS has a strong culture of measurement and accountability. As a result, it should shock nobody that we actually use our own customer intelligence solutions to help achieve our continuous improvement. My colleague, Matt Fulk, heads up the team that has been
The recent JSM conference was a huge success. This was my fourth JSM, and I have to say I think this was the best one I’ve attended. More than 5,500 statisticians, consultants, students and the like descended upon San Diego. Despite the perfect, sunny weather, the SAS Books booth stayed
The project that I'm currently working on requires several input data tables, and those tables must have a specific schema. That is, each input table must contain columns of a specific name, type, and length in order for the rest of the system to function correctly. The schema requirements aren't
Recently, there has been lot of uproar and confusion about the Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Many were surprised by the ruling, and others, while happy it was upheld, are concerned about the constitutional questions that arose due to the way the ruling was
I'm working on a SAS programming project with a large team. Each team member is responsible for a piece of the overall system, and the "contract" for how it all fits together is The Data. For example, I've got a piece that performs some data manipulation and produces several output
17 days ago, I posted Olympic inspiration for marketers and in it I shared a few good lessons for marketers from the Games. With a long-term focus, discipline, results orientation and teamwork, all sorts of victories are possible - for both athletes and marketers. Those same lessons have been validated
In the course of my job, I get to have a lot of conversations with authors about their books. One of the aspects of those conversations I enjoy most is learning about their areas of expertise and knowledge—that could be certain SAS software or programming techniques, particular fields of analytics,
Sometimes a small option can make a big difference. Last week I thought to myself, "I wish there were an option that prevents variable labels from appearing in a table or graph." Well, it turns out that there is! I was using PROC MEANS to display some summary statistics, and
A weekly ritual at our house is to pore over the local Sunday newspaper print edition and drink big mugs of strong coffee. My wife and I take different sections, we discuss various items that strike us along the way, and we can often have the world's problems solved by noon. It's very
This final post in the series on how marketing solutions will fill a role in the organization of the future focuses on the idea of pervasive positive impact. Previously, we've examimed the first two elements of customer intelligence (CI) or integrated marketing management (IMM) solutions that will serve you well into the future - profitability and
This week's SAS tip is from Frederick Pratter and his book Web Development with SAS by Example, Third Edition. Frederick is extremely knowledgeable and a popular speaker in the user community. His latest book is filled with a multitude of SAS Web programming tools. I hope that you'll find this week's
Do you use SAS for analytics and Microsoft Excel for graphs? Why not use SAS for your graphs too?!? Then you could completely automate the entire process in one SAS program, with no manual steps! A lot of people use Excel to create their graphs because "it's what they know." What if somebody
I've seen analyses of Fisher's iris data so often that sometimes I feel like I can smell the flowers' scent. However, yesterday I stumbled upon an analysis that I hadn't seen before. The typical analysis is shown in the documentation for the CANDISC procedure in the SAS/STAT documentation. A (canonical)
This is the third in a series of four posts that focus on how marketing solutions can help marketing fulfill its role in the organization. In the first post, I outlined the three specific functions for the solutions to fulfill - to drive profitability, to increase productivity, and to be
With limited time and budget, you can still thoroughly test SAS reports built in SAS BI Dashboard and SAS Web Report Studio by considering how all the tools were used to build the end report. An understanding of the functionality within each part of the chain from raw data to
As summer comes to an end, I find myself getting excited about some of the regional user group conferences that take place every fall. This year, I’ll be presenting a paper at WUSS (Western Users of SAS Software) in Long Beach, CA, in early September. About one week later, I’m
Streaming video has been available on mobile devices for several years, but the London Olympics are the first truly worldwide use of wireless networks to stream video to millions of consumers, including me. It is not a substitute for watching on an HDTV, but is great for having a look
When the Western Users of SAS Software gather in Long Beach, CA this September, I'll be proud to be counted among the WUSSers. (You can learn more about WUSS here; don't look here.) The WUSS organizers must have some serious clout, because the line-up of presenters reads like a "Who's
