I recently attended the Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) Conference in Austin, Texas. The MMIS conference is an annual event for federal and state HHS agencies to share programmatic and technology initiatives in Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs (CHIP). While I have attended numerous MMIS conferences in the past, I
Dr. Yachen Lin, Chief Risk Officer of China Guangfa Bank Credit Card Center (CGB), was interviewed while at the 2011 Premier Business Leadership Series in Singapore. He discussed the analytics culture at CGB - explaining how CGB uses analytics to know its customers and manage risk. There are only 14
New in 9.3, stored processes can be assigned to run on the 'Default Server' server type. Developers can still force the stored process to run on only one server type but choosing the 'Default Server' allows the client application to specifically call the best server type to run on. Another cool
I previously showed how to generate random numbers in SAS by using the RAND function in the DATA step or by using the RANDGEN subroutine in SAS/IML software. These functions generate a stream of random numbers. (In statistics, the random numbers are usually a sample from a distribution such as
You’ve gotten to know Stacey Hamilton; now it’s time to learn more about SAS Press acquisitions editor John West! John West typically works on programming and statistics titles and has been with SAS Publishing for 22 years: He started at SAS as a proofreader, then moved into technical editing where
At least, that's according to my colleague, Rick Wicklin. In a recent blog post, Rick points out that estimating popularity based on results of Google searches is a bad idea. Well, that just disqualified my claim that PROC REPORT is more popular than PROC TABULATE, as measured via a GoogleFight.
While talking to SAS users in Australia earlier this month, I often demonstrated the capabilities of the new Map Chart task in SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3. Creating map charts has never been easier: select your map data source, then select your response data source, and click Run. Voila! You've got
Nobody wants to rub people the wrong way. We've all done it, even if word never got back to us that it happened. Having ample first-hand experience with this, I deeply appreciated the opening keynote by MIT's Michael Schrage at the 2011 Disney Analytics & Optimization Summit. Schrage, research fellow
Was the SAS Insight Series in New Zealand and Australia a prelude to the Rugby World Cup? Perhaps it was, even if you cannot find it on the list of official events. But consider these coincidences: Like the Rugby World Cup, my trip was also sponsored by MasterCard. (Okay...not
There is some sweet new functionality in 9.3 stored processes. One of them I particularly like is the additional option to store the SAS code within the metadata rather than in a separate .sas file. This is extremely beneficial when allowing the stored process to run on multiple application servers. It also could
Most health care organizations either intentionally or due to some inability don’t use outside information (not just referals) in their search for fraud. There are great numbers of valid reasons for this: HIPAA, security, usable/current data sources, inflexible information systems or processes, restrictive compliance & IT departments, and the list
One of the highly visible changes in SAS 9.3 is the fact that the old LISTING destination is no longer the default destination for ODS output. Instead, the HTML destination is the default. One positive consequence of this is that ODS graphics and tables are interlaced in the output. Another
Bengt Persson, the Senior Vice President of Quality and Tech Support, presented a session about driving quality across the globe during the 2011 Premier Business Leadership Series in Singapore. Persson told the story of how Volvo Trucks uses analytics and data flow to standardize and optimize warranty claims across Volvo’s
This week's SAS author's tip comes from a large green book that many of you are familiar with: A Step-by-Step Approach to Using SAS for Univariate & Multivariate Statistics, Second Edition by Norm O'Rourke, Larry Hatcher, and Edward J. Stepanski. Despite its massive size, this isn't an intimidating text. The authors ease you
There is a lot of talk hither and yon about a “double-dip” recession. Not at all uncommon when you consider past recessions. Let’s take a look at some data from the June 2011 survey of senior financial executives from the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI to dig into the double dip theories. MAPI
Chris mentions in his FAQ post on 9.3 and Enterprise Guide that the new stored processes and other new metadata can not leverage all of the functionality in the new 9.3 release. EG is nice to remind us of that fact when we open the SAS Folders view with the
The promise of high-performance analytics, as I understand it, is this: Regardless of how you store your data or how much of it there is, complex analytical procedures can still access that data, conduct a series of calculations on that data and provide answers quickly, accurately and using the full
Exploring correlation between variables is an important part of exploratory data analysis. Before you start to model data, it is a good idea to visualize how variables related to one another. Zach Mayer, on his Modern Toolmaking blog, posted code that shows how to display and visualize correlations in R.
Notwithstanding the need to differentiate their value proposition in today’s highly competitive world, companies are sometimes forced to plagiarize even when it comes to public events. For attendees, it is generally the same ole, same ole agenda and faces, staffers drained of passion and exhibitors looking out of place while searching for a
I'm pleased to share a new installment of our “Nuts & Bolts of Social Media” video series. In this video, SAS’ Deb Orton talks with Charlotte Sibley, of Sibley Associates, about how engaging in social media can benefit the life science industry with regards to better patient outcomes and return on
We had a tornado in April, an earthquake on Tuesday, a drought all summer, and a hurricane arrives on Saturday. All I can figure is that Cary, NC has way too many sinners per capita. What's next -- pestilence? The BFD Makeover The BFD (and all SAS blogs) will now be
After a couple of solid days speaking to business leaders, listening to some of the world’s thought leaders and leading a panel discussion with the analytics leaders from DBS Bank, Allianz and Volvo Trucks, what have I learned about business analytics and what it takes to succeed? The first clue
The recent budget debate between President Obama and Congress reminded me of many of the discussions I observed during my years as State Controller and Deputy State Budget Officer in North Carolina. These discussions are related specifically to principles adhered to in budget development and budget deliberations by elected officials.
According to the SAS Documentation http://support.sas.com/resources/thirdpartysupport/v92m3/browsers.html Windows 7 machines should use Internet Explorer 8. Unfortunately Microsoft will no longer allow installations of IE 8 on Windows 7 machines. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/downloads/ie-8 I was able to get all the web applications to work on Google Chrome however the BI Dashboard appears but not all
You can generate a set of random numbers in SAS that are uniformly distributed by using the RAND function in the DATA step or by using the RANDGEN subroutine in SAS/IML software. (These same functions also generate random numbers from other common distributions such as binomial and normal.) The syntax
The highway system traversing the United States quietly hit a milestone last month with the 55th anniversary of the Federal Aid Highway Act. In 1956 President Eisenhower had a vision for our nation’s infrastructure; he knew that building an interstate highway system was vital, and expressed that “Together, the united
World Statistics Conference, Dublin More than 2200 statisticians from over 120 countries have descended upon Dublin, Ireland for the 58th World Statistics Conference of the International Statistical Institute (ISI). SAS is the Premier Sponsor of this biennial event being held this week through Friday, August 26th. SAS is also exhibiting,
Users who have eagerly anticipated the arrival of this new SAS Press book will not be disappointed! In Multiple Comparisons and Multiple Tests Using SAS, Second Edition, authors Peter Westfall, Randall Tobias, and Russell Wolfinger have improved upon the features that made their First Edition so popular, and added new
In this day and age, you hear a lot in the news about education. You hear about dropout rates, low graduation rates, technology use, 21st century learning, college and workforce readiness, etc. During my many years at SAS working with the education industry, I have heard and witnessed a lot.
At the first panel discussion of the Premier Business Leadership Series on Tuesday morning, host Mark Jeffries introduced attendees to a new feature - the Clikapad wireless voting keypad. During each panel presentation throughout the conference, audience participation will be facilitated with polls via the keypads. Jeffries started the first panel discussion with this
