Can pattern recognition software tell us if it is a Hermit Thrush or a Swainson's Thrush we've seen? A few of us have been debating an identification question at work, because we agreed to help Fulbright Scholar and Duke University PhD student Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela with research she is doing related to bird collisions with windows. A sad
Did you know that Tuesday, Nov. 24, was #ThankfulTuesday? This themed day was just two days before Thanksgiving and joined the ranks of newly invented opportunities such as #WorldPastaDay and #NationalMotherInLawDay to collectively post on social media about a single topic. Appropriate to the season of giving thanks, many people
It's Data Stewards Day! I could barely sleep last night after decorating the office with old floppy disks and outmoded data governance presentations from 2008. (Editor's note: That didn't happen, but it's a great idea for next year.) Yes, for anybody who lives and loves data, this is truly "the
We have all been there. You are face to face with a test question. You stare at the page or screen, your mind is racing, your eyes scanning the question and then the answer options and then the question again. Your brain is straining to recall the information. Time is ticking. Frustrated at
On the first day of Big Data Analytics my colleagues sent to me: A data scientist discussing a decision tree On the second day of Big Data Analytics my colleagues sent to me: Two business analysts and A data scientist discussing a decision tree On the third day of Big Data Analytics my
The other day I was chatting with an ETL developer and he said he always pushes queries into the database instead of dragging data across the network. I thought “Hmm, I remember talking about those topics when I was a DBA.” I'd like to share those thoughts with you now.
I have a short attention span. So, imagine my delight when a colleague of mine introduced me to theSkimm. If you are not familiar, theSkimm takes the top news stories of the day and summarizes them quickly, in ways that are easy to understand – and often linked to pop
It all started in 1985. December 2nd as a matter of fact. Four full time staff members shared one office and the responsibility for keeping SAS employees fit and healthy. It has always been a part of the SAS culture to look out for employee’s health and well-being. And as
Data science is hot. You've undoubtedly heard a lot about the field and the role of the data scientist, now it's time to learn more. So, here are the top three reasons to become a data scientist. 1 – For the enjoyment of creating and building new “things” No, data scientists do not
Last week my colleague Chris Hemedinger published a blog post that described how to use the ODS LAYOUT GRIDDED statement to arrange tables and graphs in a panel. The statement was introduced in SAS 9.4m1 (December 2013). Gridded layout is supported for HTML, POWERPOINT, and the PRINTER family of destinations
Recently, I have been thinking about how search can play more of a part in discovery and exploration with SAS Text Miner. Unsupervised text discovery usually begins with a look at the frequent or highly weighted terms in the collection, perhaps includes some edits to the synonym and stop lists,
Here in the US, California is known as "wine country" - but I was wondering what other states make wine, and whether there have been any big changes in recent years. This seemed like a good excuse for some graphical analytics... My previous blog analyzed where various Thanksgiving foods were produced. I was
What is information? The lack of a working definition plagued both science and the emerging telecommunications industry until the arrival of Claude Shannon and his famous 1948 paper, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”, based on his cryptography work during WWII while at Bell Labs. The landmark article is considered the
Parents, My boys are now young adults, but when I read a blogpost by Kari O'Driscoll about "What NOT to Say to a Teen Girl on Thanksgiving", I found myself remembering some very awkward moments around the dinner table from past years. Her first point, which has nothing to do
In my first post, I talked about the hell of using Excel for all your data needs; in my second post, I covered the building blocks and initial first steps that will lead you to a future proof data strategy. Now let’s zoom in on the three domains that underpin
Recently a user posted a query on the SAS Communities page asking on how to create a histogram where the bins of the histogram are colored by the analysis variable using a three color ramp. Essentially, he wanted the bins to be colored from "Low" to "High" along the horizontal
Government organizations are seeking new and innovative ways to use an abundance of data – both internally for government operations and externally to provide the public with greater access to information. This intersection of open and internal government data is the topic of a Route Fifty webinar taking place on
There is no doubt about it – over the past few years there has been a monumental shift in how we think about “enterprise” data management. I believe this shift has been motivated by four factors: Open data. What may have been triggered by demands for governmental transparency and the need
Imagine your company's analytics environment is like an old apartment building, with each unit having its own air conditioner. Each air conditioning unit has to be individually maintained and repaired by the building landlord or "super." The air conditioning units come from different manufactures and are of varying ages. It can be challenging, to
When creating a statistical graphic such as a line plot or a scatter plot, it is sometimes important to preserve the aspect ratio of the data. For example, if the ranges of the X and Y variables are equal, it can be useful to display the data in a square
Times have changed. As the oil industry shutters and sheds investments that made sense during the two-year period in which oil rode comfortably above $90, the market is establishing a new equilibrium at $40/barrel. This despite the fact that the Baker Hughes domestic rig count is down 64 percent. It’s
“(Teaching) is an incredible opportunity to be a catalyst for what we want the future to be," says Shannon Hardy, a 21-year math and science teacher from The Exploris School, a Wake County charter school in Raleigh, NC. Ms. Hardy uses data not just as a summative measurement tool, but
One of the frustrating outcomes of the data import process is when a variable that you need to be numeric is imported as character. This often happens because the column of data contains non-numeric data, for example, where blanks in a database are exported as “NULL” instead of a true
A matrix is a convenient way to store an array of numbers. However, often you need to extract certain elements from a matrix. The SAS/IML language supports two ways to extract elements: by using subscripts or by using indices. Use subscripts when you are extracting a rectangular portion of a
You could argue that it’s misguided for someone like me to say data science doesn't have to be difficult. After all, I’ve been in the industry for many years and should have a few tricks up my sleeve for dealing with data. But with the latest data visualisation technology –
As consumers have moved to digital channels and digital interactions, competition for the hotel consumer has increased dramatically. Now, hotels not only compete with each other, but also with third-party online distributors, and even new disruptors from the sharing economy like AirBnB. However, hotels have one advantage that these other
SAS Global Users Group and SAS have a history of giving back to the community where the conference is held. We think giving back is important. Conference attendees have played a big part in contributing to this effort every year. Over the years, the opportunities where attendees have been able
What happened to the adage, "What gets measured, gets done"? Though progress is being made, there are too many child protection agencies that have yet to understand the profound impact data-informed policy and practice have on performance outcomes, as well as staff retention and satisfaction. Without dipping deep into the
The ODS statement controls most aspects of how SAS creates your output results. You use it to specify the destination type (HTML, PDF, RTF, EXCEL or something else), as well as the details of those destinations: file paths, appearance styles, graphics behaviors, and more. The most common use pattern is
Sometimes you are writing a program that needs to find out whether a particular SAS product (like SAS/ETS, SAS/QC, or SAS/OR) is licensed. I was reminded of this fact when I wrote last week's blog post about how to create a map with PROC SGPLOT. Although the SGPLOT procedure is
