Stop at any fast food restaurant in America, and no matter what you order, you’ll likely be asked, “Would you like fries with that?” Fries are the traditional accompaniment to any fast food entrée. More recently, fast food restaurants have begun to broaden their menu and offer healthier choices in
This week's SAS tip features scatterplots of ice cream data. Geoff Der and Brain Everitt and their book Basic Statistics Using SAS Enterprise Guide offer up many intriguing examples. Besides analyzing ice cream consumption, the authors use heights and resting pulse rates, horse race winners, and brain tumors to illustrate statistical techniques. Emphasizing the practical
According to Warren Murray, Facebook is an opportunity. Warren is the head of business decision support at eBucks, South Africa’s leading multi-partner rewards program. More people have Twitter and Facebook accounts. More people are following others. Warren sees these channels becoming more of a marketplace, reducing the reliance on the
In the summer of 2010, the LA Times made national waves by publishing Los Angeles Unified School District’s teacher names and value-added estimates. The New York Times followed suit in February, 2012, ranking New York City’s teachers based on their value-added ratings. While these bold actions may satisfy some parents
In the SAS/IML language, a user-defined function or subroutine is called a module. Modules are used to extend the capability of the SAS/IML language. In my blog posts, I usually define a module in a PROC IML session and then immediately use it. However, sometimes it is useful to store
It's something that's important to almost every human being: drug development. But it's doubly important for those who work in the pharmaceutical industry: their lives depend on it, but so does their livelihood. SAS Press is looking for books that discuss best practices, guidelines, and examples around SAS Drug Development.
My Brush With Glory The 2012 Summer [quadrennial international sporting event that isn't the World Cup] in London is just around the corner, and it's sure to be an exciting time for all. I had the good fortune to be living in the great state of Utah during the 2002 Winter [quadrennial international sporting event that
In my last post, we discussed the best way to process and deliver reports to stakeholders. So now that that you have launched the portal and users are happily using it, the work doesn’t stop there. Almost immediately, you need to start gathering feedback from users about how they are
We just completed our largest annual event for Financial Services, the SAS Financial Services Executive Summit, where the theme was using analytics to drive innovation and create change. Even in the earliest stages of planning, it was clear that the customer would loom large in our content because that’s what’s
We're at stop #3 on the crash analytics highway. We've introduced the topic of the Four E's and have discussed the role of analytics in Enforcement. Now let's talk about Engineering. Safety, reliability and accessibility are all key components in road design. Traffic engineers work to make the driving environment
In the SAS/IML language, a user-defined function or subroutine is called a module. Modules are used to extend the capability of the SAS/IML language. Usually you need to explicitly load modules before you use them, but there are two cases where PROC IML loads a module automatically. Modules in IMLMLIB
Yesterday’s SAS Financial Services Executive Summit included a session titled “Big Data for the Next Big Idea,” which was moderated by SAS CMO and EVP Jim Davis , and included executives from organizations whose size tells me these people know exactly what big data is: Aditya Bhasin from Bank of America, Robert
Kirk Lafler and his book PROC SQL: Beyond the Basics Using SAS are the source of this week's tip. PROC SQL was the very first book that I promoted when joining SAS. Kirk was the perfect first SAS Press author to work with and he remains a favorite. And his book continues to appeal to users--whether they're online or at conferences.
Some of you might be wondering what I’m planning to spend my time on as the new VP of Big Data at SAS. I think there are three equally important segments: First off I will be talking with customers who are really pushing us hard in the big data space,
As a marketer, one of the highlights of the SAS Financial Services Executive Summit has been the interactive session titled "Exploring and Exploiting Trends to Really Understand Today's Customer." The session involved all participants engaged in case studies, which included a facilitator and graphic artist from Matter Solutions. This session provided
Today's second annual SAS Financial Services Executive Summit included a great panel discussion moderated by Lori Bieda from SAS, and featuring Greg Holzwarth, SVP and Managing Director, Customer Information Management at SunTrust Bank, Harvey Koeppel, former CIO and SVP of the Global Consumer Group at Citigroup, and Joseph Grillo, VP of
SAS is hosting the second annual SAS Financial Services Executive Summit today at SAS global headquarters with executive leaders from the banking, insurance and capital markets industries. The theme of the show is "Ignite," which references coming together, sparking innovation and inspiring change. The keynote speaker is a very well known change agent
In evolutionary biology there is an interesting concept called “punctuated equilibria,” which is used primarily to explain why the fossil record seems to abruptly change after long periods of apparent calm, or ‘stasis’ as it is called. To understand this better, think of a stairway where the length between each
Back in 2009, I announced that SAS was developing a version of its business analytics platform for use on the Nintendo Wii. I think I gave our legal department a heart attack with this news, until they realized that I had posted it on April 1. At SAS Global Forum
Conversations are dynamic and free flowing. One idea begets another. As people interact and knowledge is shared, perspectives can change … and with them, expectations. Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group a leading research-based advisory firm with a focus on disruptive technologies, and the author of the New York Times
Last year I was given an iPad. At the time I was rather ho-hum about my new toy, but my fourteen-year-old daughter was ecstatic about it. I now know why. Today, I am writing this blog post from my iPad and I am lost when I leave it at home.
The future of business is the martial arts CEO, the jujitsu strategist. Far too many organizations approach business with an American football mentality, complete with scripted plays, huddles and time outs, but the real world isn’t quite so convenient and accommodating. The real business world is 7x24 with no time outs
In a previous blog, I showed how to use SAS/IML subscript reduction operators to compute the location of the maximum values for each row of a matrix. The subscript reduction operators are useful for computing simple statistics for each row (or column) of a numerical matrix. If x is a
SAS Dress Code In addition to providing great software for forecasting (and business analytics in general), SAS is also renowned as a great place to work. (See #1, #1, and #3 rankings the past three years in the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For.) Part of this greatness is due
Sales figures are in for our bestselling books at SAS Global Forum. Books on a variety of topics made the list. New titles were (not surprisingly) very popular with users, as well as books written by authors presenting at the conference. If you didn’t get a chance to browse our bookstore
On the SAS-L mailing list, a participant posed this question (paraphrased): How can I tell which date format my Windows session is using: European format (with day first) versus USA format (with month first)? I'm reading in output from a Windows file listing, and need to know how to interpret
We had the good fortune to have Ralph Thomas, Ph.D., VP of Strategic Analytics and Database Marketing from Seminole Gaming, participate in our integrated marketing management panel at the 2012 SAS Global Forum Executive Conference along with his colleagues from Office Depot and Best Buy. Each panelist presented a short
The other day I encountered an article in the SAS Knowledge Base that shows how to write a macro that "returns the variable name that contains the maximum or minimum value across an observation." Some people might say that the macro is "clever." I say it is complicated. This is
It's Friday, and on SAS Voices they are posting fun stuff about dogs who work at SAS. I'm posting about PROC SQL and MySQL. You tell me - which of us knows how to ring in the weekend with style? I've been working with MySQL data sources lately, and SAS/ACCESS
This week's tip comes from SAS powerhouse Art Carpenter and his book Carpenter's Complete Guide to the SAS REPORT Procedure. SAS user Kim LeBouton called this book "the single best resource for PROC REPORT." And in his review, SAS user Charles Patridge said "This is a must-have book if you are a SAS
