What is data good for? Absolutely nothing without the right people and the right tools, says Angela Watson, Vice President of Analytics at Overstock.com, an online retailer that offers brand-name merchandise at discounted prices. It’s common for organizations to have “analysis paralysis” where not all departments use data, analytics to
Prolific blogger and author of SAS for Dummies Chris Hemedinger knows maybe a little too much about his Facebook friends. Presenting his paper titled “Social Networking and SAS: Running PROCs on your Facebook Friends,” Chris shared basic techniques to analyze your friends using SAS and how to harvest your own
I am at the Forrester's Marketing Forum in San Francisco and today’s keynote presentations included two of Forrester’s Principal Analysts, Chris Stutzman and Emily Riley. Their presentation was provocatively titled, How to Succeed in a Decade of Digital Disruption: ADAPT to the CORE, which tied to the show’s theme, “Innovating
Goutam Chakraborty, Professor in the department of marketing at Oklahoma State University, said he begged, borrowed, stole and cajoled to get his students – 24 in all, ranging from first-year students to those in graduate programs – to SAS Global Forum this year. "This is my show of strength,” he
The federal government is more aggressively pursuing health care fraud, and helping the states do the same, by proposing funding changes and investing in new technologies. A newly proposed rule would allow 90 percent Federal Financial Participation (FFP) for data mining initiatives in state Medicaid Fraud Control Units (MFCU’s). Another
The federal government is more aggressively pursuing health care fraud, and helping the states do the same, by proposing funding changes and investing in new technologies. A newly proposed rule would allow 90% Federal Financial Participation (FFP) for data mining initiatives in state Medicaid Fraud Control Units (MFCU’s). Another proposed
It was not your average stage entrance. With a full Roman entourage and a majestic portable throne, SAS Global Forum 2011 Chair Debbie Buck, smiled broadly as she made her way to the stage in front of 2,500-member crowd at Opening Session. Her message for conference attendees: “In the words
Suppose that friendship is a 2-way relationship: Either two people are friends with each other, or they are not. (By this definition, X cannot be a friend of Y if Y is not a friend of X. Also, you cannot be a friend of yourself -- no matter how attractive
Yesterday I was in the Big Room for the rehearsal of the Technology Connection, the part of SAS Global Forum where SAS shows off its wares: what's been released recently and what's coming. I believe that customers are going to love what they see. And just about every product that
…will come home with you. This week, as many of you know, SAS Global Forum is taking place in Las Vegas. Many of our SAS Training Instructors are there teaching classes, presenting papers, hosting workshops and answering your questions in the Demo Hall. We hope the knowledge you learn at
In my article on computing confidence intervals for rankings, I had to generate p random vectors that each contained N random numbers. Each vector was generated from normal distribution with different parameters. This post compares two different ways to generate p vectors that are sampled from independent normal distributions. Sampling
While talking to fellow SAS users at SAS Global Forum 2011 this week, I'll be discussing how SAS programmers can "play" with social media data that they can access on Facebook and Twitter. I always refer people to my blog for more information, and so I've prepared this blog post
The Director of SAS Publishing, Sean Gargan, will celebrate his 25th year at SAS on April 7th, 2011. Most of you have heard the accolades given to SAS for being the best place to work. Dr. Goodnight always says it’s the people at SAS that make it so great (he’s
This morning Rick Wicklin announced his (hostile?, nah...) takeover of the technical blog space at SAS. I'll admit that it took me by surprise when I awoke in Siberia this morning. It's so cold here; I can't feel my fingers as I type. This is probably a punishment for the
Editor's Note: This article was an April Fool's prank from 2011. The entire article is fake. Today, SAS, the leader in business analytics announces significant changes to two popular SAS blogs, The DO Loop (written by Rick Wicklin) and The SAS Dummy (previously written by Chris Hemedinger). The two blogs
"Twitter, thou art nought but data." So sayeth the SAS programmer. Many data analysts now recognize Twitter for what it is: a tremendous source of data covering almost any topic, from Justin Bieber's hair to political uprisings to technical conferences to company brands. SAS offers sophisticated solutions to harness this
In SAS 9.2, internal accounts can be created and utilized within the metadata and then do not require host (or domain) accounts defined elsewhere. By default, the sasadm@saspw is one such internal account. Unless you specifically declare an exception, the server-level policies for routine password resetting and locking (such as
I’m happy to announce that Web Development with SAS by Example, Third Edition by seasoned SAS Press author Frederick Pratter will be available in June! Frederick has worked tirelessly to update the book, which has substantial changes from the second edition. In Frederick’s words, “practically everything has changed since the
This week, I posted the 100th article to The DO Loop. To celebrate, I'm going to analyze the content of my first 100 articles. In December 2010, I compiled a list of The DO Loop's most-read posts, so I won't repeat that exercise. Instead, I thought it would be interesting
Tomorrow, we welcome the newest member of the SAS Press Team, Aimee Rodriguez. Aimee is joining our team to provide one-on-one marketing support for our authors and books. Aimee has over 10 years of experience in publishing and marketing, including marketing and promotions at Algonquin Books, event planning and promotions,
Let’s start with a quiz. Which of the following is the Programmer’s Rule # 1? 1. Expert knowledge of multiple languages, like SAS and Java 2. Talent to maneuver with complex algorithms 3. Innate ability to draw flowcharts 4. None of the above Dear reader, as a savvy programmer, you
After talking about SAS products and development roadmaps with industry experts at the SAS Analysts Conference in Steamboat Springs earlier this month and now as we're preparing for SAS Global Forum next week, I have to say how proud I am of the SAS Research and Development and Product Management
In a previous post, I described how to compute means and standard errors for data that I want to rank. The example data (which are available for download) are mean daily delays for 20 US airlines in 2007. The previous post carried out steps 1 and 2 of the method
Lurkers have earned a bad rep. They are the lepers in the social media community… outsiders who don’t participate…they lurk in the shadows quietly consuming content but, never contributing, never sharing. They are the plague in the social media world. Who needs that, right? Well…everyone…actually. In a recent discussion at
Take your pick. The NCAA men’s final championship game, the Academy of Country Music Awards, and SAS Global Forum 2011 all sweep in early next week—representing the pinnacle of their respective organizations. Rather than stay on the sidelines, I’m sure that many of you will actively participate in some of
Many SAS users love "undocumented features" within SAS software that they have found or heard about. Sometimes they can be really useful, and the fact that they are undocumented adds to the mystique. Some users have written entire conference papers on the subject. After 35 years of evolution, SAS contains
Recently, my friend and colleague Will Waugh published Lead Management Automation – How We Did It and What we Learned, the first in this series of Lead Management Automation posts. While Will focused on outlining the digital marketing challenges we faced at SAS, I focused on solving those challenges. Here
When you create a character matrix in SAS/IML software, the initial values determine the number of characters that can fit into any element of the matrix. For example, the following statements define a 1x3 character matrix: proc iml; m = {"Low" "Med" "High"}; After the matrix is defined, at most
Do Exchange Rates Matter? Contributed by Robert Rowan, an International Finance Controller at SAS and author of new book Foreign Currency Financial Reporting from Euro to Yen to Yuan: A Guide to Fundamental Concepts and Practical Applications Until 2008 General Motors (GM) reigned as the world’s No. 1 automaker. GM
I recently posted an article about representing uncertainty in rankings on the blog of the ASA Section for Statistical Programmers and Analysts (SSPA). The posting discusses the importance of including confidence intervals or other indicators of uncertainty when you display rankings. Today's article complements the SSPA post by showing how
