I wrote 114 posts for The DO Loop blog in 2015. Which were the most popular with readers? In general, highly technical articles appeal to only a small group of readers, whereas less technical articles appeal to a larger audience. Consequently, many of my popular articles were related to data
In this two-part series, which posts as the calendar prepares to turn 2015 into 2016, I revisit the top data management topics of 2015 (Part 1) and then try to predict a few of the data management trends of 2016 (Part 2). Data management in 2015 Big data continued to make
In my recent posts, I've been exploring the issues of integrating data that originates from beyond the organization. But this post looks at a different facet of extra-enterprise data management: data availability. In many organizations, there's a growing trend of making internal analytical data accessible to external consumers. I can
In my last blog I discussed purging audit records from the Web Infrastructure Platform SharedServices database. The blog generated a fair bit of discussion around the SAS Visual Analytics auditing data gathering and archive process. So let’s take a step back and in this blog review how data collection for auditing works and
An interesting question came up recently, where a colleague wanted to create a bar line chart with Revenue on the Y axis and Profit on the Y2 axis. The Revenues were all positive, but the Profit had positive and negative values. Some data I generated is shown on the right. Creating this
How many times have you gone onto a website, put a few things in a shopping cart, and then exited the Internet? I do it all the time. Sometimes when I log on to that site during my next visit, those same items are still in my cart – ready for purchase. I find
As an economist, I started at SAS with a disadvantage when it comes to predictive modeling. After all, like most economists, I was taught how to estimate marginal effects of various programs, or treatment effects, with non-experimental data. We use a variety of identification assumptions and quasi-experiments to make causal
A Box Plot is very popular to view the distribution of an analysis variable with one or more classifiers. Also, everyone wants to customize the graph in different ways. One recent request was for creating a box plot by category and group along with the display of various statistics and overlaid
Jeff Stander passes along some of the lessons he's learned about third-party metadata collection.
I was reading through Deloitte University Press' 2015 Holiday Spending survey - the results were interesting, but their graph made you jump through mental hoops to understand the data. So of course I used SAS to create a simpler version of the graph, so you'll have more time for holiday shopping!
In today’s world of instant gratification, consumers want – and expect – immediate answers to their questions. Quite often, that help comes in the form of a live chat session with a customer service agent. The logs from these chats provide a unique analysis opportunity. Like a call center transcript,
My view of the world is shaped by where I stand, but from this spot the future of analytics for 2016 looks pretty exciting! Analytics has never been more needed or interesting. Machine learning established in the enterprise Machine learning dates back to at least 1950 but until recently has
In two previous posts (Part 1 and Part 2), I explored some of the challenges of managing data beyond enterprise boundaries. These posts focused on issues around managing and governing extra-enterprise data. Let’s focus a bit on one specific challenge now – satisfying the need for business users to rapidly ingest new data sources. Sophisticated business
Santa Claus and his elves are gearing up for another holiday season, busy filling orders and wrapping gifts for all of the good little boys and girls. Since snowglobes are popular gifts this year, Santa Claus has dedicated an entire department to build and wrap the 32,768 snowglobe orders that
PharmaVOICE recently published an article: Analytics Driven Marketing for the pharmaceutical industry and I was fortunate enough to be interviewed. The article discusses the increased use of advanced analytics to make better marketing decisions, the progress that has been made and the challenges that still need to be overcome. Within
Last month in Lessons from Danny I wrote about embracing the present. So naturally on Thanksgiving the universe decided to see if I practice what I preach. I had rented a beach house for my family. Thanksgiving morning we packed up the car: three adults, two dogs, and a full turkey
The English language, a mishmash of words from many tongues and with rules that aren’t always consistent, sometimes causes people to stumble when writing quotes. There are numerous humorous websites with examples of incorrectly-used quotes on signs saying things like “Sandwiches Prepared ‘Fresh’,” or “Help ‘Wanted’ – Please ‘inquire’ within”.
Earlier this month I attended my first Forbes Healthcare Summit, where the stated goal for this year was to “figure out how to create the kind of care we know we deserve.” The event offered a unique gathering of pharmaceutical, health care and biotechnology chief executives engaged in frank discussions
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
