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Dutch Data Science, Part 8: Zilveren Kruis
This episode covers one of the greatest challenges in Dutch data science: how to distribute €43 billion (no, that’s not a typo) among all Dutch health care insurers in a fair, equal and transparent way. To learn more, I visited the biggest health insurer of the country, Zilveren Kruis, and
Saving lives with genetics and big data
During each minute you spend reading this article, 18 people will die of cancer. With each tick of the clock, your odds of becoming one of them increases: age is one of the primary risk factors for cancer. Take Nancy. She is a normal, active, healthy woman. Inside her body
How to spot counterfeit company logos with AI – no SAS programming experience needed
As one of SAS' newest systems engineers, recently joining the Americas Artificial Intelligence Team, I’m incredibly excited to gain expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning. I also look forward to applying my knowledge to enable others to leverage the advanced technologies that SAS offers. However, as a recent graduate
Data stewards – Why they’re the unsung heroes of the business
Expect to lose time if you don't include a data steward in your project until you're reviewing the data model.
4 reasons to use PROC PLM for linear regression models in SAS
Have you ever run a regression model in SAS but later realize that you forgot to specify an important option or run some statistical test? Or maybe you intended to generate a graph that visualizes the model, but you forgot? Years ago, your only option was to modify your program
Convert a text-based measurement to a number in SAS
Regular expressions are a powerful method for finding specific patterns in text. The syntax of regular expressions is intimidating, but once you've solved a few pattern-recognition problems with regex, you'll never go back to your old methods.
How to show recessions on your SGplot line graph
Plotting just your data often helps you gain insight into how it has changed over time. But what if you want to know why it changed? Although correlation does not always imply causation, it is often useful to graph multiple things together, that might logically be related. For example, recessions
Fundamentals of SAS Visual Analytics geo maps
Creating a map with SAS Visual Analytics begins with the geographic variable. This blog post explains the first type of geography variable that VA supports: predefined. Future posts will cover the other two types of geography variables in VA: custom coordinates and custom polygons.
An unexpected weapon in the fight against the opioid epidemic: Graduate students
Each day, more than 130 Americans die from opioid overdoses. Combating the opioid epidemic begins with understanding it, and that begins with data. SAS recently partnered with graduate students from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) 's Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy to understand how data mining and machine
Relationship Series: How to keep from losing yourself in a relationship?
Each week in February, your Work/Life team has invited therapists and dating professionals in the community to respond to questions about relationships. To kick off this series, we asked our experts… How do you keep from losing yourself in a relationship—new or longstanding? Kate Freiman-Fox, Ph.D. Matchmaking, Date and Relationship
Coughing, fever, sore throat...oh my!
February may be a short month, but it's packed: Groundhog Day, the Super Bowl, Valentine's Day...and the flu. Flu season is a lot like watching a sunrise. When flu season begins each Oct 1 there is a great sense of anticipation as the HCC administers thousands of flu shots and begins reporting flu and influenza-type illnesses to
How to split a raw file or a data set into many external raw files
Recently, I worked on a cybersecurity project that entailed processing a staggering number of raw text files about web traffic. Millions of rows had to be read and parsed to extract variable values. The problem was complicated by the varying records composition. Each external raw file was a collection of
Feature generation and correlations among features in machine learning
Feature generation (also known as feature creation) is the process of creating new features to use for training machine learning models. This article focuses on regression models. The new features (which statisticians call variables) are typically nonlinear transformations of existing variables or combinations of two or more existing variables. This
Owning Your Happiness
Talk to most parents about their role as parent, and you eventually hear the parent sigh and say, “I just want my kid to be happy,” or “A parent is only as happy as their least happy child.” There was a time in my life when I nodded in agreement,
Webpage scraping made easy with PROC HTTP
SAS Press author Matt Windham shows you how to use the SAS procedure PROC HTTP to grab raw data from a website.
Use PROC GREMOVE and GREDUCE for Nice SGMAP Regions
In the previous Graphically Speaking blog for PROC SGMAP, you used PROC GPROJECT so map regions would match OpenStreetMap and Esri background images. This time, the same British Columbia shapefile is used with: PROC GREMOVE to remove unwanted boundary lines PROC GREDUCE to reduce map data PROC GPROJECT to zoom
Learning to use AI to detect cancer
Recently, I was given an amazing opportunity to work on a project in biomedical image analytics in collaboration with a large university medical center. The goal of the project was to develop a computer vision system that identifies tumors in CT scans of livers. I have always loved applying technology
Resting in the Quality Behind SAS
As a SAS analytical software tester, Portia Exum knows what it takes to deliver quality software. She understands the rigor and the dedication to produce a product that the world can trust. But last year, she was on the receiving end of what it means to trust and find confidence
The case for personal change in health care
One of the key health trends we’ll continue to follow in 2019 is the flood of medical and personal data that, if managed and analyzed properly, could help health care organizations provide better care, life sciences companies deliver better therapies and individuals make smarter lifestyle choices. Sounds great, but there
Model selection with PROC GLMSELECT
I previously discussed how you can use validation data to choose between a set of competing regression models. In that article, I manually evaluated seven models for a continuous response on the training data and manually chose the model that gave the best predictions for the validation data. Fortunately, SAS
Adoption Podcasts: Part one
As promised in my blog, Deciding to Adopt, I will be sharing 4 podcasts about adoption that I recorded with Darius Moore and Alex Kelly with the Children's Home Society of NC. Here are the first two on "Becoming a Foster Parent" and "Fostering to Adoption". On January 18th
Questions from CDOs and CAOs: Getting harder as the game evolves
Todd Wright says questions from the C-suite morph as the complex data and analytics landscape evolves.
Installing SAS Viya Azure virtual machines with a single click
I don't know about you, but when I read challenges like: Detecting hidden heart failure before it harms an individual Can SAS Viya AI help to digitalize pension management? How to recommend your next adventure based on travel data How to use advanced analytics in building a relevant next best
SAS International Connections: Top 10 Restaurants to Celebrate Chinese New Year
“The thing I absolutely love about food is it’s a common thread that connects us no matter what culture we come from.” – Poh Ling Yeow For over 20 years, our SAS International Connections Employee Inclusion Group (or as we like to call it - “SASIC”) has been celebrating the array
Creating a fancy life expectancy chart, with SGplot
You might have noticed I've been trying out SAS ODS Graphics lately, whereas in the past I mainly used SAS/Graph for my samples. In this blog post I step you through my latest fancy SGplot graph - hopefully you'll learn some tips & techniques, as you follow along. (I don't
Adoption: Part two
In my blog, Deciding to Adopt, I mentioned sharing 4 podcasts about adoption that I recorded with Darius Moore and Alex Kelly with the Children's Home Society of NC. Here are the second two podcasts on "Adopting in NC" and "Cross-cultural Fostering and Adoption". Adopting in NC Cross-cultural Fostering and
Run-spiration: Roshan Jha's Journey from 0 to 12 Hour Stadium Run
It's a busy time in gyms and on the greenways as people embark on this year's resolutions or better yet, goals, to become healthier this year. For those who are grumpy about traffic in the gym, consider that you too were once in their shoes and be kind. Whether you
Model assessment and selection in machine learning
Machine learning differs from classical statistics in the way it assesses and compares competing models. In classical statistics, you use all the data to fit each model. You choose between models by using a statistic (such as AIC, AICC, SBC, ...) that measures both the goodness of fit and the
Visualizing unemployment data, with a band plot
Many areas of the US are experiencing record low unemployment. This is great at the national level, and also great at a personal level (for example, I now have fewer unemployed friends asking to borrow money!) But just how low is the US unemployment rate, and how does it compare
