In my last post I described "4 adaptability attributes for analytical success," and in the past I've discussed the strategic role analytics play in helping organizations succeed now and into the future. Now I'd like to discuss three attributes that define a powerful analytics environment: Speed Accuracy Scalability [NOTE: Any
Throughout life we are bound to grieve many things but often may not realize when we are grieving. I am not referring to the grief felt after the death of a loved one. This post is not meant to equate these losses to the experience of the death of a
I've been working on a pilot project recently with a client to test out some new NoSQL database frameworks (graph databases in particular). Our goal is to see how a different storage model, representation and presentation can enhance the usability and ease of integration for master data indexes and entity
SAS® Viya™ 3.1 represents the third generation of high performance computing from SAS. Our journey started a long time ago and, along the way, we have introduced a number of high performance technologies into the SAS software platform: In-Database processing where SAS data quality and analytical processing occur within the
Recently a colleague told me Google had published new, interesting data sets at BigQuery. I found a lot of Reddit data as well, so I quickly tried running BigQuery with these text data to see what I could produce. After getting some pretty interesting results, I wanted to see if
Tell me if you’ve heard this before: Your company hired (or re-titled) a talented data scientist and they have great skills and no data. Or they're marginalized by IT because they're misunderstood. They're offered “cleansed” data that will fit into the hardware provisioned. What they want is “all” relevant data
Are you one of those people who get easily bored at amusement parks? Would you like something to do while your friends/family are waiting in line for a ride? Perhaps I have an alternate idea, to keep you busy - survey markers! When surveyors are measuring and marking areas for
We’ve become a lower carb household in the past few years due to family health history and genetics that strongly encourage it. As a result, our decades-old breakfast of eating cereal with milk went out with the trash leaving the challenge of finding low carb, nutrient-dense options.
This article shows how to simulate a data set in SAS that satisfies a least squares regression model for continuous variables. When you simulate to create "synthetic" (or "fake") data, you (the programmer) control the true parameter values, the form of the model, the sample size, and magnitude of the
Editor's note (10/25/17): You can practice what you learned in class with 15 hours of Free virtual lab time when you attend the in-person or Live Web Applied Analytics Using SAS Enterprise Miner class. Register now. Are you interested in taking an advanced course on the machine learning topic of Neural Networks? Does text
Historically, tax havens have been a key tool for tax evaders to store and hide unreported and untaxed money. I would agree with most observers that the Panama papers (11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial information for more than 214,488 offshore entities) are just the tip of the tax
In a previous blog, Random Sampling: What's Efficient?, I discussed the efficiency of various techniques for selecting a simple random sample from a large SAS dataset. PROC SURVEYSELECT easily does the job: proc surveyselect data=large out=sample method=srs /* simple random sample */ rate=.01; /* 1% sample rate */ run; Note:
We are a few months away from SAS Global Forum in Orlando. You might think that the conference kicks off Sunday night at opening session, but there are plenty of weekend activities before then and I’d like to highlight one of them: SAS certification exam sessions. Isn’t now a great
I review some fundamental principles of creating axis tables along with graphs that have TYPE=LINEAR or TYPE=DISCRETE axes.
The SAS analytical documentation has a new look. Beginning with the 14.2 release of the SAS analytical products (which shipped with SAS 9.4m4 in November 2016), the HTML version of the online documentation has moved to a new framework called the Help Center. The URL for the online documentation is
Editor's note: The following post is from Xiaoyuan Zhang, presenter at an upcoming Insurance and Finance User Group (IFSUG) webinar. Learn more about Xiaoyuan Zhang. As a business user with limited statistical skills, I don’t think I could build a credit scorecard without the help of SAS Enterprise Miner. As you
I continue to find the concept of explaining analytics through storytelling intriguing. As I have written before, at first blush this did not seem immediately clear to me. The advice to use storytelling appeared somewhat vague, trite and without substance. More importantly, it seemed to conflict with the rigor required
I remember my grandparents talking about how hard things were for them growing up. They would say, “Things were so bad that we had to walk uphill, both ways, in the freezing snow to get to school.” It was always hard for me to relate to these statements because the
"They'll eat you out of house & home! Their food bill will put you in the poor house! ... And they never gain an ounce!" - That's what my friends say about their teenage sons. They're probably exaggerating a little, but since it's a recurring theme, there's probably some truth
As the application stack supporting big data has matured, it has demonstrated the feasibility of ingesting, persisting and analyzing potentially massive data sets that originate both within and outside of conventional enterprise boundaries. But what does this mean from a data governance perspective?
This predictive analytics post continues a blog series that highlights education leaders sharing successes and challenges of using data to drive school improvement. Sampson County Schools is a small rural school district in southeastern North Carolina. While overall graduation rates in the county were improving, one school wanted to do
It's the 3rd week of January. Did you set a fitness resolution or a 2017 exercise goal? How are you doing? Usually week 3 is where things start getting real. And by real, I mean real hard. The sparkle of newness wears off, enthusiasm wanes, the gym is crowded, and
Today, fraud detection in the areas of financial services, citizen services and national security is becoming an increasingly relevant challenge for both private organisations and government agencies. The ubiquity of the internet, the e‑commerce boom and growing volumes of data processed in clouds necessitate the implementation of advanced IT tools.
Here in the US, it's Girl Scout cookie season. This is when you get to spend a few bucks on cookies, break your New Year's resolution about losing weight ... and feel good about it, because the money's going to a good cause. Or is it? - Let's break down
Improving citizen happiness is an important goal for many, if not all, governments. But what is happiness really? Can it be objectively measured? Can we discover the key factors that best correlate with happiness? And ultimately, can governments implement policies and programs that maximize happiness? Is maximum happiness nothing more than
This article shows how to solve mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problems in SAS. In a mixed integer problem, some of the variables in the problem are integer-valued whereas others are continuous. The objective function is a linear function of the variables and the variables can be subject to linear
Today's guest blogger is Liisa Ogburn, founder of Aging Advisors NC About one in every seven Americans is over 65 and that number is projected to increase to one in five by 2050. Ninety percent of people over sixty-five want to live out their days at home. However, only sixty
We've all seen it before – a truck on the side of the road with the hood up and the driver desperate to figure out what’s wrong. In this situation, not only is a customer not receiving goods on time, but the problem is exacerbated by the fact that most
After reading a recent LinkedIn post by Jeff Haden, "Want to Achieve Lifelong Success? An Army Ranger Says You Need This 1 Trait the Most", (spoiler alert: It's adaptability) something occurred to me. One of the reasons I enjoy solving business problems with analytics is that analytics is all about
Editor's note: Charyn Faenza co-authored this blog. Learn more about Charyn. As the fun of the festive season ends, the buzz of the new year and the enchantment of SAS Global Forum 2017 begins. SAS Global Forum is a conference designed by SAS users, for SAS users, bringing together SAS professionals
