The holiday season is a festive time of the year. But it can also be a nail biter for retailers. Months of planning can be sidetracked by fickle consumers or aggressive pricing from competitors. Paying attention to even a little bit of data can work wonders. In October, SAS conducted
John Beale was one of the highest paid government employees. A 10-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Beale defrauded the Federal Government of nearly $1M in employment wages and fraudulent travel. Beale came under suspicion after it was noticed that the he was still being paid wages 19
I have written a new book on advanced ODS Graphics examples. It is available as a free PDF file on the web. It is in color, and all of the SAS code is available by double clicking a link at the beginning of each example. Advanced ODS Graphics Examples Update:
Here in the US, we've got the Thanksgiving holiday coming up soon. And the keystone of this holiday is a big dinner, with lots of traditional Thanksgiving foods. But where does all this food come from, and which farmers should we thank for which of the food items? I use SAS
Learn the top 5 reasons for managing data where it lives – whether it's in database or in memory, in the cloud or in-stream.
In my previous blog post, I took you through the amazing adventure of Grape Camp in Sonoma, California. As you learned in that post, Sonoma Valley is near and dear to my heart because of its beautiful terrain, quaint boutique wineries, sustainable agricultural practices and, of course, it’s award winning
Barbarians are relentless, and they are inside the gates! That didn't go well for the Romans, and they had the most advanced technologies of their day. So how do we do better against the relentless waves of cyber barbarians attacking virtually everywhere? The answer to that is analytics, which offers early
Identity fraud typically conjures thoughts of credit card scams or stolen Social Security numbers. Medical identity fraud is often overlooked, but can be a crime that kills. On the black market your medical identity can be worth as much as $50 per person versus $1 for a Social Security Number.
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
