"Why forecasting is important" gets searched over 100 times monthly on Google. Search results include plenty of rah-rah articles touting the obvious benefits of an "accurate forecast," but are of little help in the real life business world where high levels of forecast accuracy are usually not achieved. This is
Modernization. It’s a hot topic for organizations in all types of industries that are looking for ways to streamline hardware and software footprints while gaining control and insights from the data deluge. In the data integration space, this means we have to look beyond a traditional ETL approach to one
In traveling and speaking at SAS events in South America this summer -- at SAS Forum Chile in Santiago and at events in Buenos Aries, Argentina and Lima, Peru -- I had the wonderful opportunity to speak with local customers and learn about their progressive organizational approaches. In talking with these
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend the 2015 EyeforTravel Connected Traveller Conference. Based on the spelling of the word “traveller” which my American version of MS Word continuously wants to autocorrect, you can correctly assume the conference was hosted in London. During the conference, one phrase
Time. It flies. It does so whether or not you’re having fun or otherwise putting it to good use. To know where it flies, you’d need to watch. But most of us can’t make the time to watch. How we use time is important since it’s the one resource we
Saturday Night Live has been on television for about as long as most of us have been old enough to stay up and watch it (since 1975). Therefore, when I saw that Rolling Stone had ranked all the cast members throughout the show's history, I knew this was going to
When clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, the year won’t be the only thing that starts anew around here - January is right around the corner and the SAS Users Group support program starts fresh on January 1st 2016 as well. Auld Lang Syne Even if you were registered
With all the holiday treats and fixins’, it’s nice to find some healthy options in the mix. These two recipes are as much fun to make as they are to eat. Create them with your children, grandchildren or significant other and enjoy eating them without guilt. Either recipe will make
Recently Sanjay Matange blogged about how to color the bars of a histogram according to a gradient color ramp. Using the fact that bar charts and histograms look similar, he showed how to use PROC SGPLOT in SAS to plot a bar chart in which each bar is colored according
#GivingTuesday has been gaining popularity as people worldwide find ways to give back, after giving thanks. On December 1, 2015, charities, families, businesses, community centers, and students around the world came together for one common purpose: to celebrate generosity and to give. SAS is proud that we were once again able
I've seen a number of articles and webinars recently that discuss data integration as a cloud-based service. So I thought it was worth exploring what this really means in the context of big data – specifically when the objective is to exploit many sources of streaming data for analytics. My initial reaction
"Where do you go to get help with SAS?" It's a question I've asked users more times than I can remember. Some will tell me they take a SAS class or call SAS Technical Support, but the most common answer is "colleagues." There's no doubt fellow users are a great resource, but if you're only relying on colleagues at your
Journal of Business Forecasting columnist Larry Lapide is a longtime favorite of mine. As an industry analyst at AMR, and more recently as an MIT Research Affiliate, Larry's quarterly column is a perpetual source of guidance for the practicing business forecaster. No wonder he received IBF's 2012 Lifetime Achievement in
Last Christmas I decided to knit a scarf while at a concert in the Bahamas. A little boy and his sister sitting in front of me watched me very intently. Their eyes grew bigger and bigger as the scarf grew longer and longer. Finally the little boy couldn’t take it
.@philsimon with some thoughts on the panoply of available tools out there.
A SAS customer asked: Why isn't the chi-square distribution supported in PROC UNIVARIATE? That is an excellent question. I remember asking a similar question when I first started learning SAS. In addition to the chi-square distribution, I wondered why the UNIVARIATE procedure does not support the F distribution. These are
In the previous article I described a way to create a box plot with multiple connect lines using SAS 9.40M1 or later release . I created the graph using SGPLOT with VBOX and overlaid SERIES statements. Such an overlay of a basic plot on the VBOX statement is supported starting
This blog post is motivated by a post by a user on the communities page about creating a box plot with colored boxes by category and multiple connect lines. Normally, a box plot can be drawn by category, with a single connect line for one of the statistical values of
WRAL Chief Meteorologist (and Friend Of the Business Forecasting Deal) Greg Fishel garnered national attention recently with a thoughtful (yet to some, provocative) blog post on climate change. In the post, Fishel chronicled his evolving thought on the subject. He argued for an end to the political partisanship that stifles
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,
