Two years ago my husband and I found ourselves on the eve of Valentine’s Day with no plans. It fell on a weekend that year so there was plenty of time to do something. The act of giving gifts isn’t necessarily either of our love languages. We also have very
Todd Wright summarizes several GDPR-related blog posts that cover topics ranging from what the GDPR means to how you can manage consent.
In the hype and excitement surrounding artificial intelligence and big data, most of us miss out on critical aspects related to collection, processing, handling and analyzing data. It's important for data science practitioners to understand these critical aspects and add a human touch to big data. What are these aspects?
Did you know that SAS can combine or "merge" a symbol and a line pattern into a single legend item, as shown below? This kind of legend is useful when you are overlaying a group of curves onto a scatter plot. It enables the reader to quickly associate values of
As the old saying goes, the only constant is change. The corollary that I’ll add is this: and the pace of change feels like it's directly proportional to Moore’s Law. Utilities used to be favorites for conservative investors. Smooth. Steady. When there was change, it was incremental. But today, uncertainty
This is a guest blog by Hayden Dawes, LCSW, LCAS-A, as part of the Work/Life February Relationships Series. We offer our sincere thanks to Hayden for volunteering to contribute! As we head into Valentine's week of 2018, I am struck at the differences as to how children and adults typically celebrate
Want to see my newly minted certified professional badge? Scroll down to take a peek. Yes, I managed to successfully complete the Base SAS Programmer certification exam… with, ahem, flying colors I might add. Here are my tips to tackle the Base SAS certification exam: 1. Get clear on the
In my last article, I worked with an example of using custom polygon data to create a regional geo map in SAS Visual Analytics 7.4. In this article, I will use almost the same example to illustrate the ease of implementing custom polygons to produce the same regional map in
By default, SAS Visual Analytics 7.4 supports country and state level polygons for regional geomaps. In SAS Visual Analytics 7.4, custom shape files are now supported, as well. This means that if a site has their own custom polygon data that defines custom regions, it’s possible to create a region
Jim Harris considers the technical infrastructure challenges of data preparation for streaming data.
With Valentine’s Day just a week away, many of you might already be thinking about the treats that tend to come along with this holiday. Whether or not you celebrate Valentine’s Day, we all love a little special treat now and then. While I don’t believe that you have to
If N random people are in a room, the classical birthday problem provides the probability that at least two people share a birthday. The birthday problem does not consider how many birthdays are in common. However, a generalization (sometimes called the Multiple-Birthday Problem) examines the distribution of the number of
In an earlier blog, I asked you to participate in CertMag/GoCertify’s Annual IT Salary survey. The response was fantastic and I’m happy to report that we made the list of the Top 75 IT certifications out of more than 900. This marks the first time SAS has been part of
Jazz up your Geo Map or Network Analysis graph by applying icon-based display rule markers instead of color markers on the map. With SAS Visual Analytics, you may have already used display rules by populating intervals or adding color-mapped values for report objects. Now, you can jazz up your Geo
Next week I am offering a lunch-and-learn called "Successfully Single: In and out of relationships", but I think I should have titled it "Attractiveness and Self-investment". I am not sure how many people want to be "successfully single", particularly this month when our collective attention is focused on love and
A dual response axis chart is useful when the data type for the multiple measures are not compatible. For example, when overlaying measures like "This Year" sales with "Last Year" sales, the format and magnitudes of the two measures (or values for two groups) may be compatible, and it is
This article simulates the birthday-matching problem in SAS. The birthday-matching problem (also called the birthday problem or birthday paradox) answers the following question: "if there are N people in a room, what is the probability that at least two people share a birthday?" The birthday problem is famous because the
Forecasting Research Survey The Centre for Marketing Analytics and Forecasting at Lancaster University is conducting a new study on how demand forecasters do forecasting. They invite all practitioners who are working with forecasts, such as demand planners and supply managers, to take part in the study. The survey is anonymous
Can felons vote? This seemed like a simple question, but I realized that I wasn't 100% sure of the answer. Therefore I looked into the data ... and apparently "it depends". Follow along and see how I created a map to help answer this question. But before we take the
This is a guest blog by Shelly Hummel, LMFT and Carole Cullen, LMFT as part of the Work/Life February Relationships Series. We offer our sincere thanks to Shelley and Carole for volunteering to contribute! Jennifer and Dave have been married for 3 years. “We have a huge argument every December
For the past few years, I've been hearing from many news sources that Detroit is the most violent large city in the US. If the news is saying this, then the data should corroborate it, eh? Well, of course I decided to check for myself... When comparing crime data across
Do you know what the #1 fear in North America is? Most people say fear of public speaking or fear of death, but you may just want to consider this new fear upping the charts - the fear of writing a SAS Certification exam! The real test begins before even
@philsimon provides more thoughts about the opportunity that GDPR provides marketing departments.
It seems like almost everyone is sporting a gadget these days to record their every move, as fitness trackers have become increasingly popular over the last several years. While some devices have the ability to recognize mileage, steps, and even sleep patterns, perhaps the most important feedback when it comes
This article shows how to construct a "stacked band plot" in SAS, as shown to the right. (Click to enlarge.) You are probably familiar with a stacked bar chart in which the cumulative amount of some quantity is displayed by stacking the contributions of several groups. A canonical example is
Can you use a data visualization tool to display building maps, floor designs and other Esri data? With the recent addition of custom polygon support in SAS Visual Analytics 8.2, customers wondered if this feature can be utilized to render different types of regional overlays. A common request is to
The flu seems to be especially potent this year. "How potent is it," you might ask? ... Well, let's plot some data on a map to help find out! Here in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) compiles data about diseases, and provides reports and graphs
Sometimes we social worker types in Work/Life forget that other people don't use phrases like "love languages" with the same ease that the typical SAS employee might talk about "data-driven customer experience." In Work/Life we are kicking off a February series on relationships, so I wanted to take a moment to tell
Have you, or someone you know, gotten the flu this year? Word on the street is that this year's flu might be particularly bad, and the data seem to be corroborating that so far. You don't want to take my word for it? -- well then, let's have a look
I ran across an interesting conundrum the other day. The intent was to compare the value of X to a list of desired values, and if X matched one of the values in the list, set Flag to 1, otherwise set Flag to 0. I wrote and executed this test program,
