Critical business applications depend on the enterprise creating and maintaining high-quality data. So, whenever new data is received – especially from a new source – it’s great when that source can provide data without defects or other data quality issues. The recent rise in self-service data preparation options has definitely improved the quality of
SAS was founded on the principal of using analytics to change the world. From fighting cancer and researching the Zika virus to changing the lives of Ghana women by teaching them how to code, SAS has remained committed to helping solve critical humanitarian issues using data and analytics. What SAS has been
There’s been an uptick recently in corporations working together to improve patient experiences and even saves lives. From the recent buzz about drug developers coming together to combat Alzheimer’s, to health systems opening data to researchers, companies realize that partnering just might produce the greatest impact.
Everyone who knows about monarch butterflies, likes monarch butterflies. This blog post focuses on their food source - milkweed. And to get you in the mood, here's an amazingly beautiful picture my friend Eniko made of a monarch: In recent years, I had heard reports of the dwindling number of
All global researches and surveys show that all kind of fraud, like procurement fraud, is rising and empowered by new dimensions in matter of vulnerabilities and attack methods. From traditional check tampering and skimming methods to cyber crime attacks, fraudsters become more sophisticated, with a powerful arsenal of technology in
Update-in-place supports the ability to update a SAS Deployment within a major SAS release. Updates often provide new versions of SAS products. However, when using the SAS Deployment Wizard to perform an update-in-place you cannot selectively update a machine or product. As a general rule if you want to update
In my previous post, Are you ready for the Analytics Fast Track? Part I, I shared details of the SAS and Intel proof of concept program, and promised to follow up with information about our “For Purchase” program. Many organizations are looking for sandbox environments that allow their data scientists
This article describes how you can evaluate the Lambert W function in SAS/IML software. The Lambert W function is defined implicitly: given a real value x, the function's value w = W(x) is the value of w that satisfies the equation w exp(w) = x. Thus, W is the inverse
It’s nearly impossible to avoid the debate. From politicians and pundit commentary, to dinner table discussions across the United States, the hot topic for the last several years has been the rising cost of health care. Consider that health care expenditures in the US were $3 trillion in 2014 and are
What do people have in common who have used analog clocks, vinyl records, and payphones? They were all probably born before 1980! Now, let's focus on those payphones!... A lot of young kids these days can't imagine a world where everyone doesn't have a wireless phone. My buddy Ed likes
Have you ever had problems matching data that has typographical errors in it? Because of the nature of arbitrary typos and incorrect spelled words a specific matching technique is required to tackle those cases. SAS Data Quality, with its traditional, in nature deterministic matching approach is by nature not best
The annual SAS Analytics Conference is upon us again. This year it is known by a different name, Analytics Experience 2016, but the location, Las Vegas, is the same as it has been the previous two years. Just like last year, I will be attending and presenting on analytics for panel
Hadoop has driven an enormous amount of data analytics activity lately. And this poses a problem for many practitioners coming from the traditional relational database management system (RDBMS) world. Hadoop is well known for having lots of variety in the structure of data it stores and processes. But it's fair to
In an increasingly connected world, the automotive industry is embracing opportunities from the Connected Vehicle and Connected Dealer to reach the Connected Customer. At the recent Automotive Analytics Executive Forum, we heard terrific success stories and far-reaching experiments aimed at facilitating the best customer experiences whether buying a vehicle or getting
Yesterday I opened up the Wall Street Journal and found the usual mix of ads from major technology vendors touting their IoT (Internet of Things) prowess, and claiming they all have the secret sauce to make all of our IoT dreams come true. Where do I sign up?! Meanwhile, back
Editor's note: This blog includes the Call For Content Announcement and Frequently Asked Questions. SAS Global Forum is the premier event for SAS users to learn, teach, and network with each other and SAS experts. SAS Global Forum 2017 takes place April 2-5 in Orlando, Florida, where you can join
Many univariate descriptive statistics are intuitive. However, weighted statistic are less intuitive. A weight variable changes the computation of a statistic by giving more weight to some observations than to others. This article shows how to compute and visualize weighted percentiles, also known as a weighted quantiles, as computed by
Often I have written articles that are motivated by some question by a user on how to create a particular graph, or how to work around some shortcoming in the feature set to create the graph you need. This time, I got a question about Clinical Graphs that were mostly working
When I attended my first SAS conference in 2003 I was not only a first-timer, I was a first time presenter. Needless to say I was a bit nervous. I did not know what to expect. Was my topic good enough for these savvy programmers and statisticians? Well my first
Leading up to the Analytics Experience conference, we're going to explore the big trends, hot topics and what's ahead in the industry with some of the companies leading the way. I had the chance to interview David Septoff, CEO of Zencos to get his take on what you need to know about
Some organizations I visit don’t seem to have changed their analytics technology environment much since the early days of IT. I often encounter companies with 70s-era base statistical packages running on mainframes or large servers, data warehouses (originated in the 80s), and lots of reporting applications. These tools usually continue
First, if you landed on this topic because you encountered this SAS message: ERROR 180-322: Statement is not valid or it is used out of proper order. ...then I'll tell you right now: you've probably left off a semicolon in one of your SAS statements. If you're lucky, the SAS
Have you ever wondered how far you live from the closest nuclear power plant? I've crunched the numbers for cities here in the US, and created an interactive SAS map to help answer that question! The average age of US nuclear power plants is 35 years, and there just doesn't
Two years ago, I found myself the proud, first-time owner of a garage. My wife and I quickly started to add new items to the garage – a battery-powered lawn mower, two beach cruisers and four Tommy Bahama beach chairs. They were stored with ease. What a fantastic world I'd been missing out on. But it wasn't long before we outstripped our
.@philsimon continues his series on data prep and anlytics.
As Zika starts spreading into the US, it will be important to have a way to track it. Therefore I wrote some SAS code to pull the latest data from the CDC website, and plot it on a map... But before we get into the details of my map, I
If you are new to eating real foods or are just trying to eat less processed foods, you may have initially thought that real food is bland. But I promise, eating real food doesn’t have to mean plain chicken breast and steamed broccoli. There are plenty of great, easy
Edmond Halley (1656-1742) is best known for computing the orbit and predicting the return of the short-period comet that bears his name. However, like many scientists of his era, he was involved in a variety of mathematical and scientific activities. One of his mathematical contributions is a numerical method for
In our previous post, Econometric and statistical methods for spatial data analysis, we discussed the importance of spatial data. For most people, understanding that importance is relatively easy because spatial data are often found in our daily lives and we are all accustomed to analyzing them. We can all relate to
In her book Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert paraphrases a famous quote by Richard Bach when she writes, "Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them". That saying is now on a sticky note at my desk and a reminder to reflect on the excuses I make for myself.
