Hidely-hodely, everyone! As you might imagine, the size and variety of the gift inventory at the North Pole puts Wal-Mart to shame. And while we’ve been at this for hundreds of years, we still make too many of some things and not enough of others. No elf can forget the
Most people have logged on to a social media site, maybe to look up an old friend, acquaintance or family member. Some people play games, or post funny pictures or other information they want to share with everyone. Do you ever ask yourself what happens with this information? What if your business wanted to purchase this information and
“What’s your major?” All of us recognize the cliché intro line from our years at university. It was the fail-safe, go-to remark to get a conversation started. The most difficult time when meeting someone socially is the first few moments. First impressions are important and the interactions we have during
Anyone with children knows that the trip home from a holiday vacation can be excruciating. Just like adults, the anxiety about getting back to school/camp/daycare or just normal life often seeps into that last travel day. Everyone is tired and cranky and full of sugar after days of being spoiled
Year-end outlooks from most analysts project the low-price environment in the oil market will continue for most of next year, but some pundits emphasize that the market has bottomed out and suggest recovery, though gradual, may be seen if increasing demand outpaces supply growth and sops up some of the
We have all heard many times about how much the US spends on health care each year. But let’s hear it again . . . because it is staggering: According to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), in 2013, the national health expenditure (NHE) grew to $2.9 trillion. That
Will indexing my SAS data sets help? This is one of the most frequent questions I hear in SAS Technical Support. The response is always the same: “Maybe. Tell me about your data, and what you are doing with it.” Here is a primer on effective indexing. Indexing can improve
You’d better watch YouTube, you’d better not cry You’d better not post, I’m telling you why Big data is coming to town He’s making many lists (and selling them too), he’s writing it twice (for redundancy’s sake), He’s gonna find out whose naughty or nice Big data is coming to town
Over the course of my career as industrial engineer turned supply chain planning advocate I've had the opportunity to work hands-on with many manufacturing and supply chain planning solutions. This has included solutions offered commercially by the usual suspects of ERP and post-SCM consolidation supply chain solution providers. Most of these
In 2014, big data was on everyone’s mind. So in 2015, I expected to see data quality initiatives make a major shift toward big data. But I was surprised by a completely new requirement for data quality, which proves that the world is not all about big data – not
Here goes - a title for this week’s blog. Hmmm – How about “A few of my favorite things?” Um, no. I think, for me – what would be more apt is “Self Care during the holidays”, or maybe – “Some ways I try to stay sane during the holidays
Sometimes when trying to fuzzy match names you want to fuzzy match just a portion of the name: for example, Family Name and/or Given Name. A common mistake that people make is to feed in the Family Name and Given Name columns separately into the Match Codes node instead of
If you're just a casual Star Wars fan, you might be confused about the order of the movies. Here's a SAS graph that will help you make sense of it all, before Episode VII comes out this week! If you'd like to see how I created this custom graph, here's a
Twenty-five years ago (when I was 12 years old), we realized that data, across the corporation, was not integrated. Nor did our data let us predict the future by looking at the past. So we started creating these stores of historical data soon to be called “data warehouse.” Here are
We want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who donated their leftover (and excess) Halloween candy this year, you outdid yourselves!! We tipped the scales at just under 250 pounds of candy! So what happened to ALL that candy? Well, we are happy to report that we were able
Lo how a rose e'er blooming From tender stem hath sprung As I write this blog post, a radio station is playing Chrismas music. One of my favorite Christmas songs is the old German hymn that many of us know as "Lo, How a Rose E're Blooming." I was humming
When we talk about the Internet of Things and “analytics at the edge,” we’re talking about modeling data as close as possible to the device – not far away in some warehouse or data storage appliance. So, generally, the edge is anything with a sensor that is transmitting data: an
Today, we live in a polarized world that divides family members, friends, and business colleagues. It effects everything we do from the way we communicate with one another to how we handle business challenges. I have seen long time business colleagues have passionate discussions to defend their supply chain position
Confusion is one of the big challenges companies experience when defining the data governance function – particularly among the technical community. I recently came across a profile on LinkedIn for a senior data governance practitioner at an insurance firm. His profile typified this challenge. He cited his duties as: Responsible for the collection
What would it take for you to keep 60 students interested and on task in a classroom for an entire hour? Some kind of magic or trickery? Maybe a bribe? Nope, all you need is an Hour of Code lesson plan, and you’ll be teaching computer programming to a classroom
There’s more than one way to make a poor decision. Bad data, inappropriate assumptions and flawed logic are just three of the missteps you can take on your climb up the Ladder of Inference, a concept first developed by Chris Argyris, professor of business at Harvard, in 1974, and later popularized
The British spy agency GCHQ recently posted a grid-shading puzzle that the director sent out in his Christmas cards this year. The puzzle, shown here, is known as a nonogram and by various other names, including Paint by Numbers and FigurePic: Each cell is to be colored black or white,
Hey Folks, This is Ed, and I have some sad news to share. A few months ago, Willie started to lose his appetite. We took him to the vet, and he was diagnosed with cancer. Unfortunately, the cancer had progressed beyond treatment. So, we brought him home and spoiled him
Macroeconometrics is not dead: (and I wish I had paid better attention in my time series course): I wrote this on the way to see one of our manufacturing clients in Austin, Texas, anticipating a discussion how to use vector autoregressive models in process control. It is a typical use
The most recent development environment for SAS programmers is SAS Studio, which is a browser-based application. The free SAS University Edition, which includes SAS/IML software, also uses SAS Studio as a development environment. SAS Studio has a special mode for programmers who use interactive procedures such as PROC IML. (Recall
In conjunction with the International Institute of Forecasters and the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University, the 2016 Foresight Practitioner conference will be held in Raleigh, NC (October 5-6, 2016) with the theme of: Worst Practices in Forecasting: Today's Mistakes to Tomorrow's Breakthroughs This is the first
Imagine trying to make the right decision for a child in protective custody if your information was limited only to what was reported to your department about a single incident. Without additional information about the child’s home environment, health and education, criminal background of adults in the child’s life, and
“Give us 50K in bitcoin or you'll never access any of your data again.” Cybercriminals have many ways to hijack your data, and ransom schemes like the one above are just one trick of many. These “geeks gone wrong” are a real threat to customers and brands, and everyone knows
Continuing your education can be daunting. Just thinking about all of that time that could be spent relaxing and you have to carve out two hours to study…really! Trust me when I say, I feel your pain. BUT, you will reap the rewards ten-fold, I promise. Check out these top
Recently I toured a manufacturing plant floor for a company that builds construction materials related to energy. I find a number issues people face in production of which the most common are around asset efficiency, product quality, and safety. This manufacturer like most had similar concerns on all those areas
