From time to time we’ll hear from customers who are encountering performance issues. SAS has a sound methodology for resolving these issues and we are always here to keep your SAS system humming. However, many problems can be resolved with some simple suggestions. This blog will discuss different types of
As a fitness and health professional, I know better. But I still find myself splurging on my favorite comfort foods (burritos, pizza, pasta, etc). Okay, maybe splurge is too mild of a word. I admit it. I tend to go totally overboard at times! What I’m talking about is eating
Know your data. Do a needs analysis. Organize for success. Empower users. These are four best practices for data and analytics that you'll want to hear more about. In my first three posts in the Analytics in Real Life blog series, we learned how higher education customers are using SAS and why
Did you know that you can use the POLYGON statement in PROC SGPLOT to draw a map? The graph at the left shows the 48 contiguous states of the US, overlaid with markers that indicate the locations of major cities. The plot was created by using the POLYGON statement, which
.@philsimon on whether data governance is still relevant.
Identity quizzes are a hot topic among fraud fighters, and particularly so among tax administrators. A quick web search finds that a lot of state tax agencies use quizzes to fight refund fraud, including Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio. Even the IRS has gotten into the game. In reading the press
This blog is co-authored by Susan J. Slaughter and Lora D. Delwiche. SAS Press is now 25 years old. As impressive as that is, a bigger milestone for us personally is that The Little SAS® Book is now 20 years old! We had no idea back then that we would still
Did you know that SAS Global Forum, like other SAS User events, is run almost exclusively by volunteers? With hundreds of workshops, presentations, demos and networking opportunities, the event gives SAS users the invaluable opportunity to develop their SAS skills, exchange ideas with experts and peers, and explore new ways
In many procedures, the ID statement is used to identify observations by specifying an identifying variable, such as a name or a patient ID. In many regression procedures, you can specify multiple ID variables, and all variables are copied into output data sets that contain observation-wise statistics such as predicted
At the top of SAS Technical Support’s Policy page you’ll find the department’s mission statement: "help our customers make the best use of our software products through effective and responsive support, active advocacy, and a broad and flexible range of self-help resources." We deliver on that promise with outstanding support,
To prepare for the data challenges of 2015 and beyond, health care fraud, waste and abuse investigative units (government funded and commercial insurance plans, alike) need a data management infrastructure that provides access to data across programs, products and channels. This goes well beyond sorting and filtering small sets of
International Fraud Awareness Week begins on Monday, and you know what that means. Our intrepid team of fraud experts is taking over the State and Local Connection blog! Fellow bloggers, get ready. Each day next week one member of the SAS Fraud and Security Intelligence team will post on a
I brushed aside some sawdust on the workbench and set my laptop down. It wasn’t really mine. SAS Library Services had kindly lent me a new laptop for the “Making Sense of Sensor Data” workshop at UNC’s BEaM Makerspace. I had just set the laptop down…in sawdust. Like any normal
With a major election coming next year, I was wondering if there have been any shifts & changes in the voters in my state. This seems like an interesting opportunity for some data analysis, eh!?! To get you into the spirit of elections, here's an "I Voted" sticker from my friend
As I visit my clients, it sometimes surprises me when they avoid the use of PROC REPORT. “It’s too different”. Even those that do use it, often fail to take advantage of the procedure’s power by ignoring the compute block. Yes this procedure is different from any other. Yes using
This summer, I had several interesting sessions with customers and prospects. Much to my surprise, two of them, both multinational organizations, were doing most of their data related tasks in Excel. This happens every now and then -- I come across organizations (like yours?) where people are manipulating and ‘analysing’
I feel like I'm singing a song called Data in the Sky – With Options! The cloud is forever in our minds these days as a lower cost option because it requires fewer resources to address our data needs. Cloud solutions are an increasing part of many organizations' budgets every year. Whether enterprise data is
With over 1,000,000 words in the English language, why is it that we tend to use the same words over & over? This blog shows a hierarchical approach to help you branch out and choose more descriptive words. But first, to get you into the mood for a blog about
After several years of visiting the wine country of California, my husband and I have grown to love Sonoma Valley – it’s climate, it’s laid back atmosphere, it’s sustainability mindset, and of course, the Wine. Yes, Napa Valley is the big dog in wine country where most of the large
The phrase “business rules” is often loosely used. It can refer to things like constraints in a query, a data mapping, a data quality constraint, a data transformation, or a model. Business rules also reflect an enforced policy, a regulatory requirement and business constraints on model scores that trigger analytically-driven
How much does this big pumpkin weigh? One of the cafeterias at SAS invited patrons to post their guesses on an internal social network at SAS. There was no prize for the correct guess; it was just a fun Halloween-week activity. I recognized this as an opportunity to apply the
SAS Press is now 25 years old! To commemorate this milestone, I decided to research a question that has fascinated me for years: Who was the first person outside of SAS Institute to write a book about SAS? I first heard about this controversy at the Western Users of SAS
I hope by now you’ve seen the movie “The Imitation Game” with Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. It’s the true story of Alan Turing, whom many consider to be the father of the modern-day computer and the discipline of computer science. Turing’s innovation (and the movie) takes place in early
This post shares the story of a teacher and coach, and a student-athlete who was the first in his family to graduate college, attend graduate school, and aspires to become a Mathematics professor. It's the first entry in a blog series that will highlight some tremendous educators with whom I’ve
Having a mentor is the number one factor in increasing the steepness of your personal learning curve. So says my oldest, Garik, a Park Scholar at North Carolina State University (class of 2012), during a discussion he recently had with the incoming Park Scholar class of 2019. To accept the
The Internet of Things (IoT) has become the new It Girl of the IT world. Of course her big brother big data continues to generate big buzz. My sis from another miss Tamara Dull has blogged about the relationship between big data and IoT, positing big data is a subset of IoT on
By now, you’ve probably seen a video of a 3D printer discharging layers of plastic to create a model of a building or a plastic figurine. You may have heard stories about 3D printed guns, 3D printed airplane parts and even 3D printed body parts. While 3D printers are becoming more common, they are
SAS Visual Analytics contains an Administrator Overview report which provides for Visual Analytics usage information by application, user, and object. To provide data for the report you must enable collection of key actions audit data in the Visual Analytics Middle-Tier. Auditing doesn’t just apply to Visual Analytics, it can be
In SAS, the DATA step and PROC SQL support mnemonic logical operators. The Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT are used for evaluating logical expressions. The comparison operators are EQ (equal), NE (not equal), GT (greater than), LT (less than), GE (greater than or equal), and LE (less than or
Analytics claim this is the 20th most used word in English writing. What word, you might ask? This word. Which one? This one right here! You might think I'm trying to lead into an Abbott & Costello-style comedy routine, but I literally mean this word ... the word 'this'! As you can
