Data-driven design, Part 2
Four things clients say could go wrong when you're working to become a data-driven business.
English
The top 10 posts from The DO Loop in 2017
I wrote more than 100 posts for The DO Loop blog in 2017. The most popular articles were about SAS programming tips, statistical data analysis, and simulation and bootstrap methods. Here are the most popular articles from 2017 in each category. General SAS programming techniques INTCK and INTNX: Do you
Implications of being data-driven
David Loshin describes four key traits of fully data-driven businesses.
Building effective tools for population health management
At a time of unprecedented financial challenges – from payment shifts and regulatory mandates to aging populations – our nation’s hospitals are awash in data. Clearly, there is a need for analytics capabilities to make health care more efficient, cost-effective and satisfying to patients and providers alike. In the October
What Wikipedia pages are the most popular?
When I was growing up, our family had a bookcase containing a set of encyclopedias - it was where I went to obtain information and facts about various things, to satisfy my curiosity and impress my friends. Now that we have the Internet, Wikipedia has taken the place of encyclopedias
Relative Period Report in SAS Visual Analytics
Another report requirement came my way and I wanted to share how to use our Visual Analytics’ out-of-the-box relative period calculations to solve it. Essentially, we had a customer who wanted to see a metric for every month, the previous month’s value next to it, and lastly the difference between
Behavioral health remains a blind spot in health IT
Behavioral health information technology (HIT) adoption efforts have struggled and are still plagued by a number of challenges. Since 2011, the federal government has incentivized the industry to the tune of $37 billion. However, according to US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) “psychologists, community mental health centers, psychiatric hospitals, and others
Using data to discover what’s driving hospital readmissions
US health care costs are the highest in the developed world, despite per-capita healthcare spending roughly double that of the others, but with outcomes worse-or-equal-to comparable countries. A 2014 Commonwealth Fund study ranked the United States 11th out of 11 major industrial nations in overall healthcare. An aging population is
Sweet Season for Giving Once Again
Well SAS, you outdid yourselves once again! For 6 years running, we've been collecting and donating leftover and excess Halloween candy from SAS families. After last year's record breaking 450 pounds of donated candy, we challenged you to raise the {candy} bar even higher this year...and man did you do that,
How to create a sliced fit plot in SAS
I previously showed an easy way to visualize a regression model that has several continuous explanatory variables: use the SLICEFIT option in the EFFECTPLOT statement in SAS to create a sliced fit plot. The EFFECTPLOT statement is directly supported by the syntax of the GENMOD, LOGISTIC, and ORTHOREG procedures in
Running SAS programs in batch under Unix/Linux
While SAS program development is usually done in an interactive SAS environment (SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS Display Manager, SAS Studio, etc.), when it comes to running SAS programs in a production or operations environment, it is routinely done in batch mode. Why run SAS programs in batch mode? First and
Getting started with SGPLOT - Part 9 - Bubble Plot
This is the 9th installment of the "Getting Started" series, and the audience is the user who is new to the SG Procedures. It is quite possible that an experienced users may also find some useful nuggets here. In this article, we will cover the basics of the BUBBLE plot.
2018 Work/Life Center Book Club
In 2018, join us for lively discussions on thought-provoking books. We love to read and have each picked out great books that we hope you will enjoy too. Book Club discussions will be held from 12:00 - 1:00pm in the designated month. Check the Work/Life Calendar throughout the year for
Four things preventing your organization from becoming a data-driven business
What's stopping you from being a data-driven business? Phil Simon points to four common stumbling blocks.
What makes SAS so powerful
SAS' tag line is The Power to Know©, But what makes SAS so powerful? Ask our users and they'll tell you -- it's because SAS allows them to answer questions which previously could not be answered. How does SAS do this? SAS built a 4th generation programming language which makes
SAS Admin Notebook: Managing SAS Configuration Directory Security for SAS Visual Analytics
In my last article, Managing SAS Configuration Directory Security, we stepped through the process for granting specific users more access without opening up access to everyone. One example addressed how to modify security for autoload. There are several other aspects of SAS Visual Analytics that can benefit from a similar
What can compression do for you?
Compressing a data set is a process that reduces the number of bytes that are required to represent each observation in a file. You might choose to enable compression to reduce the storage requirements for the file and to lessen the number of I/O operations that are needed to read
Community Workforce Analytics – You have the data
Without a prepared and available workforce, a community, county or state will slowly decline and ultimately die. Why? Lacking a skilled workforce, a company cannot grow and compete. And if a company can’t grow and compete, it leaves, and the community suffers. Ever hear someone say, “I can’t find a
Counting fast-food calories over the holiday
Most of us put on a few pounds over the holidays. It's difficult not to, with the holiday dinners, and then all the special desserts, snacks, and candies. But there might also be another source of extra calories that you hadn't thought about - fast-food! Let's have a look at
Why now is the time to identify indicators of attack
You never saw it coming. No indicators of attack on your financial data. Then, you get a letter. Your financial information was exposed in a massive data breach. What do you do now? Your identity is forever at risk. Unfortunately, you can't change where you used to live, when you last
Interpretability is crucial for trusting AI and machine learning
We have updated our software for improved interpretability since this post was written. For the latest on this topic, read our new series on model-agnostic interpretability. As machine learning takes its place in many recent advances in science and technology, the interpretability of machine learning models grows in importance. We
Visualize multivariate regression models by slicing continuous variables
Slice, slice, baby! You've got to slice, slice, baby! When you fit a regression model that has multiple explanatory variables, it is a challenge to effectively visualize the predicted values. This article describes how to visualize the regression model by slicing the explanatory variables. In SAS, you can use the
What do they call Santa in other countries?
With the Christmas holiday approaching, I got to wondering what they call Santa in other countries. Of course, some countries don't celebrate Christmas - but most countries at least have some sort of "winter holiday," and most also have some tradition of gift-giving. So, I guess the better question might
Test-Drive SAS' new Support site search
“Alexa, how many ounces are in a 750-ml bottle of wine?” “Waze, how many miles between Cary and Kannapolis, NC?” “Google, which NFL teams are favored to win this weekend?” Every day many of us turn to some sort of search vehicle to help us solve a work issue or win
A practical approach to blockchain analytics
What is blockchain and how can you analyze data in a blockchain? This article will discuss various forms of blockchain analytics from a tactical or heuristic perspective.
Coming soon to a grid near you: certainty amid confusion
The paradigm in which we have all lived in an electrified world is changing. The convergence of technology, changing business models, and increasing customer expectations means the way utilities have operated for the last 100+ years must change. Further, this change must embrace where the operations side of the business
SGMAP: Now in BASE SAS!
Data with a geographic component begs to be mapped. That capability is now available to all SAS users. A new mapping procedure in the fifth maintenance release of 9.4 (SAS 9.4M5) allows any user to easily plot data on a map. Unlike previous mapping applications with SAS, the SGMAP procedure
Timeline of all the U.S. presidents
I was recently reading the Wikipedia page about the U.S. presidents. There was a table with a lot of interesting data, but I thought it would be much easier to get a handle on the information if there was also a timeline graph. So, of course, I set out to
SAS Data Preparation 2.1: Data quality transformations
SAS Data Preparation 2.1 is now available and it includes the ability to perform data quality transformations on your data using the definitions from the SAS Quality Knowledge Base (QKB). The SAS Quality Knowledge Base is a collection of files which store data and logic that define data quality operations
How a data-driven business supports analytics goals
Jim Harris says a data-driven business can make decisions faster, using better data, with more transparency about results.