SAS programmers can often be (um...let's see...how best to put this...) set in their ways -- at least when it comes to their SAS work. This is due in part to the nature of SAS. The SAS program that you wrote 20 years ago in Version 5 probably still works
Today I welcome guest blogger Len Tashman, Editor of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. I’ve been a big fan of Foresight since its inception in 2005, and the Spring 2009 issue contains a special feature on a topic close to my heart -- assessing forecastability. Here is Len’s
AnnMaria's blog describing her acceptance of SAS Enterprise Guide, despite the shortcomings she's found, reminded me of this Irish Spring commercial. I'd like to take the time to craft a more thoughtful response to her post, but that will have to wait for a less-hectic day. In the meantime, I
SAS-sponsored podcasts, including a few from yours truly, are available on www.sas.com. Interested in hearing from a variety of SAS authors? There are dozens of interviews available on the SAS Press site. For example, listen to the authors of the "Little SAS Book" series, Susan and Lora, as they reveal
The content for this post comes from David Henderson, lead software developer for the SAS Web Parts for Microsoft Sharepoint. David talks about these and other ideas for SAS-Sharepoint integration in his SAS Global Forum paper. We are pleased to announce the availability of SAS Web Parts 1.1 for Microsoft
Tricks aren’t just for kids (or Louisiana senators or New York governors for that matter). Tricks are the lifeblood for many a forecasting software salesperson. Why admit that forecasting is difficult, that most things can’t be forecast as accurately as we would like, or that your software has the statistical
Here is the first of what I hope to be many guest postings from my colleagues here at SAS. Today Snurre Jensen, Business Advisor from SAS Denmark, writes about his recent encounter with a blog about dealing with demand changes in SAP APO. From Snurre: In my ongoing quest for
"…the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians…" That's a quote from Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist. It surfaced in an online interview months ago, but it's been getting a lot of play lately. Mr. Varian goes on to say: The ability to take data—to be able
What do men really want? What do women really want? If you seek answers to these eternal questions go watch Oprah or Dr. Phil – I don’t really care. They are not nearly as interesting as the question: What do forecasting software buyers really want? Organizations spend millions of dollars
This morning kicks off F2009, the fourth annual Business Forecasting Conference held at SAS world headquarters in Cary, NC. We are again hosting a broad mix of thought leaders, academic researchers, and industry and government practitioners. Pre-registration included 230 attendees spanning 79 commercial organizations, government agencies, and universities, from an
Did Hippocrates really say this? Probably not, for among other reasons he spoke Ancient Greek and not Modern English. However, such mere technicality should not distract us from the importance of this oath for forecasters. Please place your hand over your heart and say with me: First, do no harm.
Think of this as consumer protection for the business forecaster. The Business Forecasting Deal is a new blog exploring the dark side of the forecasting profession. Its purpose is to expose the snake oil and shoddy practices of those who either don’t understand the realities of forecasting, or who can’t
Just last week I posted about Jim Davis joining the blogging fray, and now here comes SAS Exceutive VP Mikael Hagström with his own blog, ominously titled "In the Final Analysis". If this keeps up, my entire SAS Dummy blog will be spent announcing other SAS blogs. Well, you don't
You might be the sort of person who loves to wait indefinitely. You visit the DMV regularly to tweak your auto registration. You queue up in the supermarket checkout line behind the customer most likely to require "price checks". You map your daily commute along the routes that offer the
Jim Davis, Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer at SAS: welcome to the SAS blogosphere. Jim is a great communicator and has a tremendous rapport with SAS customers; I'm sure that his blog will prove that out. I remember first meeting Jim way back shortly after he joined SAS. This
NCSU statistics students: welcome to SAS Hall, your new home for higher learning. I'm glad they named it SAS Hall; "Sall Hall" is a bit too rhymey and "Goodnight Hall" might encourage classroom sleepiness.
Question: What do you get when you cross your Facebook friends with SAS analytics? Answer: Insight, probably more about yourself than anything else. You can tell a lot about yourself by looking at your friends. And I'll bet that so can Facebook and those who advertise on it. Data from
AnnMaria artfully qualifies her use of the word "lovely" as she describes her experience with one of our SAS customer representatives. The whole reason for the encounter: AnnMaria needed to get the correct sort of software order so that she and her colleagues can run SAS 9.2 and SAS Enterprise
Recoding values is one of the most common data prep tasks that folks need to do before they can analyze and report on data. In SAS, the most elegant way to handle this is by applying a SAS format. A SAS format allows you to "bucket" a bunch of raw
The SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2 tutorial is going global, with translated versions now hitting the SAS support site. First up, after the English version, are Italian and German. Other languages will soon follow. Update 22Apr2009: just added French and Spanish as well. This represents a couple of firsts for us:
The mainstream press never misses an opportunity to point out how our children are falling behind in math skills and won't be able to compete in the global marketplace. But I don't believe it, and I'll tell you why. For centuries, children have used counting rhymes to select a person
Thanks for reading this far. I'm sure that you've realized it by now, but the "SAS on the Wii" announcement is my idea of a joke, as warped as that might seem. Happy April Fools' Day! As far as I know, SAS is not currently planning a new release for
Last week at SAS Global Forum, SAS demonstrated its commitment to bring powerful business analytics to customers wherever they choose to work, including on the desktop, on the Web, and on mobile devices such as the iPhone. In that spirit, SAS today announced plans to port its powerful analytics software
I really enjoyed this blog post by AnnMaria: "The Sea Monkey Effect prevents robot uprising". I think my reading experience was enhanced because I met* the author at SAS Global Forum yesterday. AnnMaria should apply for a grant and enter into the annals of improbable research. *(She told me that
Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration of a woman who is widely appreciated as "the first programmer". At SAS I work with a lot of programmers and other technical folks, many of whom are women (including my boss and my boss' boss). I tend to take this for granted,
During SAS Global Forum, I had the privilege of sneaking backstage at the Technical Session to meet with keynote speaker Dave Barry. I made it abundantly clear to everyone involved, this meeting was all about me and my opportunity to meet a literary legend. The fact that I was on
Right now I'm packing up my materials for SAS Global Forum. It's actually a lot easier than it used to be. My first SAS conference was SUGI 21 (1996), and we didn't have personal laptop computers or USB drives or fast network connections. Machines were staged weeks ahead of time
64-bit computing has arrived to the mainstream desktop (and even laptops). Can you even buy a 32-bit Windows PC anymore? I mean from a store (not a garage sale)? At work, I've just been issued a shiny new Windows box with the 64-bit edition of Microsoft Vista installed on it.
Useful charts can serve to persuade an audience of certain "truths", because they take real data and communicate it in a clear, visual medium. But what happens when you know something to be true, but you have no real data? Should you let the lack of hard data prevent you
Before it was considered cool to tweet information to the world, SAS users who were hungry for inside information came to rely on a Little Birdie -- as in "a Little Birdie told me..." sasCommunity.org has a nice history of the Little Birdie. The article mentions the "Jurassic period"; does
