It's hard to believe that the summer season is winding down and cooler weather, fall leaves and football (Go Panthers!) is around the corner! Around SAS, we are gearing up for the fall conference season. I recently asked the fans of our Facebook page if they have ever attended a
Did the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles regain its sanity? Or was this just another tease? As you recall from last year, my application for “THE BFD” personalized license plate was accepted – then rejected – even though that extra $30 fee could have eased at least some of
The long awaited winners of the second round of Race To The Top were announced yesterday. Race To The Top is about education reform to improve schools and is based on four assurances: 1) Raising standards and improving assessments. 2) Recruiting, retaining and supporting effective educators and ensure equitable distribution
The last two years have been one long, downhill-only roller coaster ride for state and local governments. Budget crises that are the result of decreasing revenues at every level have left state legislatures, governors and local government leadership struggling to maintain effective services for their citizens and, in some cases,
Self-anointed as The Aristocrat of forecasting related blogs, The BFD takes its public service role seriously (or at least as seriously as anyone who self-anoints on a regular basis can be taken). Among the services The BFD provides, both publicly (on webcasts or speaking engagements) and privately (by phone, email,
SAS allows for three different cube storage mechanisms: 1. MOLAP The traditional SAS OLAP Cube will all aggregations / nway stored on a physical file structure accessible by the SAS OLAP Cube Server. 2. ROLAP A relational OLAP cube - where no aggregations are stored and SAS points to the
In 1829, Sir Robert Peel laid the foundation for the modern day professional police force. In shaping the conceptual framework for policing, Peel put forth: “The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.” While Peel described a proactive ideal, many police agencies are struggling
Today's Australian news journal features an article about how Dr. Jim Goodnight swept into Australia for the SAS Forum event, delivered his remarks and pressed a few palms, and then was on his way back home -- according to the article -- on the very same day. That's not exactly
It's been a very busy week for me here in Sydney, Australia. For starters, I led a two-day course about SAS Enterprise Guide for experienced SAS users. We used SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3, which is just about to ship from SAS. I told my students that they were the first
This week I received an urgent text message from a good friend and former colleague in the consulting business: Mike, I am down 24 pages in your book and [besmirching my trousers]. Is there no hope for consultants like me? My response was to not let the book ruin a
I just returned home from Vancouver, British Columbia, where I attended the 2010 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM). I heard that more than 5,300 statisticians attended this year, including about 40 or so from SAS. I stayed busy. I gave a presentation on techniques for visualizing time series, gave a two-hour
I've completed my first day of teaching a two-day course about SAS Enterprise Guide. I'm in Sydney, Australia...but my biological clock is still tuned into Cary, North Carolina time. I woke up at 1 a.m. today and even though I tried to convince my body that it was still time
"Goals are dreams with deadlines." Diana Scharf Hunt If you had told me a year ago at this time that I was would be training for triathlons and studying for the Base SAS Certification test, I probably would have said you’re crazy. But, late last summer a good friend of
An alarming percentage of major software implementations fail to be delivered on time, on budget, or even at all. Implementations of new forecasting software, or of new forecasting processes, are not immune from this legacy of failure. Why does this happen, and is there anything we can do about it?
I received this offer in the post the other day: "University apparel just for you, featuring the name HEMEDINGER!" Yes, the offer has it correct. This would be just for me, because I can't think of anyone else who might order it. I regret that I didn't receive the offer
Last week, I got a chance to meet up with authors and San Francisco JMP colleagues Curt Hinrichs and Chuck Boiler while they were in Cary, NC, on business. Despite their super hectic schedules, they kindly agreed to get together at 8 a.m. in the lobby of the swanky Umstead
What if you need someplace to store static files for web consumption. Things that might come to mind: Images HTML Static Title Pages JavaScript PDF Documentation (such as how-to instructions) An ideal place would be a HTML server, since these aren't active files. However in a standard 9.2 installation, there
I recently met with five people who have been in state and local government for a combined total of over 100 years. It was a group that covered multiple areas of government including Health and Human Services, Courts and Corrections, Finance and Emergency Management. Everyone came to the table with
There is a long running debate among forecasting professionals, on whether to use Forecast or Actual in the denominator of your percentage error calculations. The Winter 2009 issue of Foresight had an article by Kesten Green and Len Tashman, reporting on a survey (of the International Institute of Forecasters discussion
Contributed by Gert H. N. Laursen and Jesper Thorlund In Business Analytics for Managers, we emphasize that analytics and BI initiatives are complex processes that involve parties all across an organization. And those processes are only as strong as the weakest link. What good will it do for a company
When viewing OLAP cubes in Web Report Studio, there comes a time when the user might want to view all the levels within the hierarchy, without the cumbersome process of selecting and expanding each individual item. In 9.2, there is a quick solution. When you right click on the level-heading
Art Carpenter offers tremendous advice to SAS programmers who want to maximize their job security: make your programs impossible for others to read and understand. In his published papers, Art (in his tongue-in-cheek manner) presents practical examples for how to accomplish this. I'm afraid that with our new code formatter
The Summer 2010 issue of Foresight is now available. Here is Editor Len Tashman’s preview: For so many years, we forecasters have developed and refined models for demand forecasts – forecasts for product and item sales, orders, shipments – without paying adequate attention to the details of how these forecasts
Contributed by Gert H. N. Laursen and Jesper Thorlund Our book, Business Analytics for Managers: Taking Business Intelligence Beyond Reporting, was published last month. The book is the latest in the Wiley and SAS Business Series. When people ask us why we wrote the book, we usually give them one
The %STPBegin and %STPEnd macros are pretty powerful pieces of code for SAS Stored Processes. They embed all sorts of information on devices, where content is located, and just make everything work. However for creating those fancy custom HTML forms or layouts, ods html is needed instead. I've written about
Contributed by Christine Kjellberg and Stacey Hamilton “It's weird...you know the end of something great is coming, but you want to hold on, just for one more second...just so it can hurt a little more.” --author unknown As interesting as this journey toward the certification exam has been, it—like all
Better forecasting can, of course, help address many business problems. We want to believe that more accurate forecasts are always possible. “If only,” management bemoans, “if only we had bigger computers, more sophisticated software, more skilled forecast analysts – or if the analysts we have just worked harder!” Unfortunately, there
Using ActiveX in SAS graphics provides users with more functionality, options, and pretty colors than Jpeg, gif, etc (check out these examples). The issue is that ActiveX requires a device driver installed on the viewing machine, similar to Flash. In SAS 9.2, the sasgraph.exe is available within the SASWEB component deployed
Have you ever inherited a SAS program from a "gifted" SAS programmer? By "gifted", I mean a person who regards line feeds and white space as a waste of precious bytes, who knows that his program is worth the tremendous effort it might take to read and understand it, as
I come across many government agencies that are tackling very important issues (i.e. fraud & improper payments, bio-surveillance, patient outcomes, etc.) using rules, basic analytics and intuition. These are techniques that have been used successfully for years especially when government was smaller, the dollars involved were less significant, and the
