How many companies are using Hadoop as part of their master data management initiative? Come on, raise your hands! Well, maybe a better question is this: How many companies are using Hadoop for enterprise data? From what I have seen, Hadoop is coming along quite nicely. However, it may not be the
SAS Author Derek Morgan is a programming rock star… in more ways than one. Not only has he been a professional SAS programmer in the pharmaceutical industry for almost 30 years and written two editions of The Essential Guide to SAS® Dates and Times, Derek also plays electric bass in
When a person feels sufficiently wronged to lodge a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), there’s likely to be some negative sentiment involved. But is there a connection between the language they use and the likelihood they will be compensated by the offending company? At the upcoming Sentiment
Disclaimer: before you get overly excited, PROC EXPAT is not really an actual SAS procedure. Sadly, it will not transfer or translate your code based on location. But it does represent SAS’ expansion of the Customer Contact Center, and that’s good news for our users. Here’s the story behind my
They say age is a relative thing. With this graph, you can tell how old (or young) you are, relative to everyone else. (I'll let you decide whether this is a good thing, or a bad thing, hahaha!) Nathan Yau recently posted a graph on flowingdata.com that allows you to
At this stage our organization has already defined the business objectives for Data Governance programme (step 0) and started to manage business terms, as described in step 1. Step 2: tracking data flow in organization Data Governance is not only related to understanding the data – it also focuses on
Last week I blogged about how to draw the Cantor function in SAS. The Cantor function is used in mathematics as a pathological example of a function that is constant almost everywhere yet somehow manages to "climb upwards," thus earning the nickname "the devil's staircase." The Cantor function has three
Data monetisation is a hot topic these days. Especially for people like me watching the movements of early adopters – companies who are using data to create new revenue streams or even create new businesses to capture those revenue streams. DataStreamX is a notable start-up whose sole business is cashing
Editor Len Tashman's Preview of the Summer Issue of Foresight Clarity and effectiveness of communication are key to success – so says a recent survey by the National Association of Business Economists (NABE), which reported that industry leaders and hiring managers considered communication skills to be the single most important
There are many situations where it is beneficial to display the data using a polar graph. Often your data may contain directional information. Or, the data may be cyclic in nature, with information over time by weeks, or years. The simple solution is to display the directional or time data
Paul Goodwin is Professor Emeritus of Management Science at University of Bath, and one of the speakers at this fall's Foresight Practitioner Conference (October 5-6 in Raleigh, NC). His topic will be "Use and Abuse of Judgmental Overrides to Statistical Forecasts"-- an area in which he has contributed much of
We live in a complex world that overflows with information. As human beings, we are very good at navigating this maze, where different types of input hit us from every possible direction. Without really thinking about it, we take in the inputs, evaluate the new information, combine it with our
Mix up your strength training routine with the RFC's Workout of the Month! July's featured equipment is the BOSU. The BOSU was originally created to improve athletic performance, however, it quickly entered mainstream gyms as well as rehab facilities due to it's versatility as a balance, stability, and core strength tool.
It’s clear from the minute you step into Accenture’s Digital Innovation Center (Future Camp) in Kronberg, Germany, that you're stepping into the future of innovation. The writing is literally on the walls, and everything you need to inspire big ideas – from brightly colored furniture to racks and racks of gadgets
I look forward to SAS Global Forum each year and this past conference ranked up that as one of the best I've ever attended. This year there were so many wonderful presentations, Super Demos and workshops on the topic of administration of SAS and the underlying hardware infrastructure needed for SAS
Data scientists are familiar with prototyping - we do this as part of a well-understood process to arrive at the optimum solution. But prototyping is more than about perfecting the math; it should also be about testing interpretability of the results. This need comes into stark prominence when you start
Let’s go back to 1976 for a moment. Did you know that was the year Muhammad Ali introduced a line of beauty products called “Knock Out?” And the hottest merchandise, including t-shirts, posters and even beanbags sported the character Arthur Fonzarelli (The Fonz) of TV’s “Happy Days.” But there was something
Throughout my 10 years at a leading direct marketing and CRM agency, a chief issue we solved for our clients was what we affectionately referred to as a spaghetti junction. It’s a nickname often given to a massively intertwined road traffic interchange that resembles a plate of spaghetti, like this
At some point, your business or IT leaders will decide – enough is enough; we can't live with the performance, functionality or cost of the current application landscape. Perhaps your financial services employer wants to offer mobile services, but building modern apps via the old mainframe architecture is impractical and a replacement
I recently read an article in which the winner of a Kaggle Competition was not shy about sharing his technique for winning not one, but several of the analytical competitions. “I always use Gradient Boosting,” he said. And then added, “but the key is Feature Engineering.” A couple days later,
I was a freshman in college the first time I saw the Cantor middle-thirds set and the related Cantor "Devil's staircase" function. (Shown at left.) These constructions expanded my mind and led me to study fractals, real analysis, topology, and other mathematical areas. The Cantor function and the Cantor middle-thirds
Let's continue now to Nikolaos Kourentzes' blog post on How to choose a forecast for your time series. Using a Validation Sample Nikos first discusses the fairly common approach of using a validation or "hold out" sample. The idea is to build your model based on a subset of the
Some of the most common questions from customers are about their analytics administration. Often regarded as house-keeping, administration failures can nevertheless cause real pain. The typical day-to-day tasks of analytics administration include checking availability and health of the analytics platform components, allocating proper resources for users like memory, file systems,
It’s no secret: here at SAS, we care about our customers. In fact, we care so much that we developed a program with that exact name: our SAS Cares program is here to help you with all things SAS! We know you may be so awesome that you never need
Nikolaos Kourentzes is Associate Professor at Lancaster University, and a member of the Lancaster Centre for Forecasting. In addition to having a great head of hair for a forecasting professor, Nikos has a great head for explaining fundamental forecasting concepts. In his recent blog post on How to choose a
As a hospice social worker I considered it one of my roles to remind patients and families to take moments to slow it down; to look around at the person they were about to lose and the people who were about to experience the loss. I knew it was time
Starting in 2018, IFRS 9 will require banks around the world to change their processes for accounting of credit risk. This new impairment standard will move banks from the backward looking incurred loss model into a forward looking Expected Credit Loss (ECL) modelling approach. When talking with banks around the
With the recent vote for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union being all over the news, I was a bit embarrassed to realize I didn't know exactly what areas are (and aren't) considered part of the UK. After a few Google searches, I found the following map on the
Over the last ten years, utilities around the world have have invested billions of dollars in the Internet of Things (IoT). Better known as smart grid and smart meter initiatives, this massive intelligent infrastructure is moving utilities into a future that’s beginning to look radically different from the century-old business model
Would you like to see the latest features of SAS Enterprise Guide in action? Of course you would! That's why it's well worth the 12 minutes of your time to watch this video from SAS Global Forum 2016. In the video, Casey Smith (SAS' R&D manager of the SAS Enterprise
