One would expect analytics in government to be a hot topic at a SAS government event. What the crowd didn't see coming was Margaret Weichert, Acting Director of the US Office of Personnel Management and Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget, touting her ability to
With the recent midterm elections here in the US, I frequently saw congressional district maps popping up in the news. And being a GraphGuy, I wanted to fully understand these maps, to see if I might could improve them. If you're interested in congressional district maps, follow along as I
With today being an election day here in the US, I see a lot of people wearing the 'I Voted' sticker. This got me wondering if I could create my own sticker ... using SAS software and simple graphics primitives. :-) So I started by using Proc Gslide to create
Artificial intelligence often seems misunderstood, especially in fraud. The same is true of machine learning. One of the amazing things about them is they ask the unasked questions. This occurs as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) go about their daily work. So, what is the unasked question? Too
President Donald Trump - people seem to either love him or hate him. Which makes for an interesting data-analysis topic ... tracking Trump's approval rating. Follow along as I explore some data! I'll start with what I consider the 'best' approval-rating graph I've found so far. Here's a screen-capture of
The other day I was playing around with the voter registration data for all ~8 million registered voters in North Carolina (yes - this guy knows how to have fun!), and I got to wondering what last names were the most common. I summarized the data by county, and the
I've been recovering for 15 years now, after a lengthy career caring for critically ill patients. Now, I’m part of a team at SAS that’s working to transform health care – and that's important to me because of something that happened when I was an ICU nurse. It changed my
Have you noticed a lot of graphs popping up lately, about politicians, voters, and elections? ... Well of course - it's an election year! If you follow my blog posts, then you're probably a bit "smarter than the average bear" when it comes to scrutinizing graphs. And election graphs election
Here in the US, we recently had a new Supreme Court Justice appointed. This is a very important position, and judges usually serve until they retire or die. My buddy Rick gave me a heads-up that there was a table of all the past & present justices on Wikipedia, and
An abundance of data does not equal an abundance of wisdom. At the SAS Government Leadership Forum, leaders from federal, state and local agencies will discuss how analytics can bridge the gap between data and wisdom to make meaningful changes in how government operates. Analytics, however, is not just about
El Estudio de Evasión Fiscal Global, realizado por la Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), por encargo del SAT, revela que la evasión fiscal le cuesta a México alrededor de $510,000 millones de pesos, particularmente en rubros como el impuesto sobre la renta, el impuesto al valor agregado y combustibles
Once a disaster is over, and the frenzy of news stories and social media posts has subsided, it can seem like the crisis has passed. However, for those Hurricane Florence survivors left with ruined homes and businesses, damaged schools and buildings, there remains a struggle to return to normalcy. As
En un mundo que a diario se transforma con los datos y los avances tecnológicos, cada vez son más las organizaciones que están adoptando la Analítica y la Inteligencia Artificial para fortalecer sus procesos y entregar mejores resultados a sus clientes. Este escenario no es ajeno al sector gobierno, que
About two-thirds of the way through her Analytics Experience presentation, Dr. Tricia Wang showed a video from Frans de Waal, a world-renowned primatologist. The video showed two monkeys receiving rewards for giving a researcher a rock. Each time a monkey handed over a rock it received a piece of cucumber.
Here in North Carolina, a hurricane recently moved very slowly across our state, causing major flooding, and even closing miles of interstate highways for longer than a week. There is data available online for gauges along the river (or gages, as they call them), but I doubt many people know
"We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin' rain, and big ol' fat rain, rain that flew in sideways, and sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath." Was that a quote from the Forrest Gump movie, or something said regarding Hurricane Florence? Could be either one! Hurricane Florence recently came through
Nothing says you are wasting your time and energy more than referring to a process as plowing a field with a fork. I liked to use this phrase as a manager and auditor, especially in government. Good data analytics makes a big difference in problem solving. Does anyone think a
The data I was analyzing was about “trust.” Maybe that’s what got me thinking about Stephen Sondheim, the Broadway composer and lyricist of musicals like Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods and the lyricist for West Side Story. Trust is a heavy emotional topic. Developmental psychologists
Many of the most beautiful areas in the US are owned by the government, to preserve them and allow access for everyone to enjoy them. And most US schools are traditionally closed during the summer, which provides families a great opportunity to go visit state and federal lands (parks, forests,
El Gobierno colombiano está alineado con los avances en el sector de tecnología y telecomunicaciones y ha sido enfático en ello, tanto así que en el encuentro más importante del sector en Colombia, Andicom, celebrado hace unas semanas, el nuevo gobierno señaló que era imperativo contar con políticas y acciones
Showing the most popular jobs in each state is interesting (as I showed in my previous two blogs 1, 2) ... but not that interesting. How about something a little more quirky?!? ... Let's determine the most disproportionately popular job in each state! Their Map I got the idea for
A lo largo de los últimos años, el mundo financiero se ha sometido a los cambios regulatorios impuestos por Basilea II, III y ahora IV, modificaciones que incluyeron la redefinición en la medición de los Activos Ponderados por Riesgo y los requerimientos de capital de calidad, en las que la
Using small multiples is a neat way to display a lot of information in a small amount of space. But depending on how deeply you want to analyze and scrutinize the data, you need to be careful in choosing just how small you make your small multiples. Let's look at
When I'm at a social gathering, someone always asks what type of work I do. I like to keep my social life separate from my work, therefore I usually give a vague answer such as "software" (and quickly change the topic). How vague or specific is your response? How vague
People across the country (and world) are not getting the care they need. There are many data efforts to address that, but I personally believe traditional analytics are short-sighted, too illness-focused, and remarkably negative. We need to take a more holistic approach to data, policy, and health care, including traditional
Elections are in the news again, therefore I have been on the lookout for interesting graphs. I recently found some graphs of the Census Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration Supplement data, and tried to improve them. Follow along if you're interested in voter data, or creating better graphs!
I peruse many different websites to get my news, and I always keep an eye out for good (or bad) presentations of data. I recently saw a posting on reddit claiming "U.S. GDP is greater than the total of all others combined." This news seemed too good to be true
Soccer has been on my mind since the recent tournament in Russia, and fraud is always on my mind. Fighting fraud today means thinking about artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Everyone says so. Like me, you probably wonder how AI and ML work – especially in fraud. What
I started my computer career as a Unix system administrator, and when I began using SAS almost 30 years ago it was only natural that I used it on Unix computers (they were the most powerful/capable computers I had access to at the time). I've picked up a lot of
I can recognize several languages when I hear people speaking them (mostly because I lived in the Alexander International Dorm at NC State University). Therefore when I found a map of the most common languages spoken in each US state, it caught my attention, and I decided to try creating my
