I’ve often heard people say about weather forecasters “they have the best job…they just report what the models are telling them, and when they’re wrong they can always blame it on Mother Nature throwing us a curve.” While that’s true, this glass-half-empty crowd is failing to appreciate how amazing the
I remember being intrigued by the movie In Search of Noah's Ark, when I was a kid back in the 1970s. They claimed to have definitively found the ark ... but of course, since then several other people claim to have found it in other locations. Therefore I don't feel too
One of my new favorite activities is perusing the memorable transcripts from our Live Chat program. Lida: Hi! Welcome to Live Chat! I'm here to help. Lida: May I please have your name and company? Visitor: My name is Bill Smith and I'm with ABC. Visitor: how many offices do
If you’re looking to advance your knowledge and your career, few activities are better than attending a professional conference, where new ideas, best practice discovery and networking opportunities abound. For many SAS users, regional user group meetings provide a forum to learn from other users and meet successful professionals in
Editor Len Tashman's Preview of the Fall 2015 issue of Foresight This 39th issue of Foresight features a special section on forecasting support systems (FSS) developed by our FSS Editor Fotios Petropoulos. His article Forecasting Support Systems: Ways Forward highlights three main areas for improvement: better utilization of open-source software
People encounter stress in all types of situations. Positive stress occurs when we are exposed to new situations or challenges, perhaps a new job or attending a new school – this type of stress is typically short term and is a necessary factor in healthy development. Tolerable stress results from
I hear a lot of talk about income inequality in the US ("the rich get richer..." and such) - especially as elections approach. I also see a lot of graphs, and they all seem to define their numbers slightly differently. I'm not in a position to improve the way income
You can use SAS to generate random integers between 1–10 or in the range 1–100. This article shows how to generate random integers as easily as Excel does. I was recently talking with some SAS customers and I was asked "Why can't SAS create an easy way to generate random
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a revolutionary approach that will radically change our lives, our way of integrating with technology, and the way we do business and marketing. Companies have already defined a strategic plan for collecting and organizing data coming from the IoT. The next step is to
The SAS Analytics 2015 Conference is coming soon. It is my first time attending, so when I discovered that the conference is in Las Vegas, I must admit I became more than a little excited to partake in some casual gambling. My thing is sports betting, specifically college football, and
I highly recommend The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin. Since reading it I have changed the way I approach daily tasks and technology. I’ll share some nuggets and strategies I have implemented but encourage you to read the book as it contains a wealth of information. You can also hear Levitin on the Diane Rehm
.@philsimon on bridging the IT-business divide once and for all.
For students to become capable data analysts, they need experience that they can take with them into the real world after graduation. By far the most critical skill for their toolkit is learning to work with real-life data. Therefore, it is important from a teaching standpoint that instructors provide students
In a previous post I described how to simulate random samples from an urn that contains colored balls. The previous article described the case where the balls can be either of two colors. In that csae, all the distributions are univariate. In this article I examine the case where the
Every year, Fortune magazine compiles a list of the 500 largest US corporations - called the Fortune 500. Their list was a bit difficult to digest in text-form, so I thought I'd try using some maps & graphs on the data ... For a map analysis, I thought it would
SAS Administrators are frequently asked to log and report on which users are accessing SAS tables. This functionality is often requested by companies who, for regulatory compliance, need to track who is accessing data. In my next couple of blogs I will show how you can audit data access. In this first blog
This guest post was written by Andy Pulkstenis, Director of Advanced Analytics for State Farm Insurance. He leads a team of advanced analytics professionals providing statistical analysis and predictive modeling support for the enterprise across a variety of business units. His background includes more than a decade of experience improving
If not for probability theory, urns would appear only in funeral homes and anthologies of British poetry. But in probability and statistics, urns are ever present and contain colored balls. The removal and inspection of colored balls from an urn is a classic way to demonstrate probability, sampling, variation, and
As a youngster in the 70s and 80s, Star Trek inspired my imagination and fostered a great love for science, technology and reading. (See the embedded Star Trek infographic for some interesting factoids – did you know that there were 28 crew member deaths by those wearing red shirts?) Captain Kirk and the
As we continue our celebration of 25 years of SAS Press, I thought I’d share 25 reasons why you should write a book with us and become a SAS Press author. It’s not all work; we also have fun through this enriching journey from idea to print! Here’s our top
For students interested in a career in analytics, there’s no better preparation than solving real-world problems using “big data” sets. At SAS Global Forum 2016, students will have an opportunity to showcase their analytical skills by competing in the SAS Student Symposium. The symposium, a new initiative of the SAS Global Users Group
Update 02Dec2016: Beginning with SAS 9.4 Maintenance 4, there is now a JSON libname engine. Read this new article to learn more -- you might prefer it to using DS2 for this task! Thanks to the proliferation of cloud services and REST-based APIs, SAS users have been making use of
I get several requests and recommendations for analyzing sports data. I'm not a big sports fan ... but when did I ever let that stop me! When I find interesting data, I like to graph it! Before we get into the nitty-gritty data analysis, here is a picture of my friend Jennifer's daughter
Why are so many companies across a diverse set of industries investing in and around the Internet of Things? Everywhere I go, every blog I read … I sound like my favorite band from the 80s: the Internet of Things is watching me. In reality, it’s the reverse: I'm seeing
You've had a long day. You've implemented a custom algorithm in the SAS/IML language. But before you go home, you want to generate some matrices and test your program. If you are like me, you prefer a short statement—one line would be best. However, you also want the flexibility to
I routinely speak with executives who tell me that the ability to “sell” analytical results is just as important as producing them. In this post I will share some of what I have learned in several years of presenting complicated analytical results to audiences, both technical and lay. Some of
What is your first reaction to this question: “How would you like to take an exam today?” If you are like most people, you probably responded in a not so positive way. Maybe your brow furrowed, you physically leaned away from your computer (and this article), or your stomach knotted
New York City is a pioneer in use of technology in many ways. For instance, the work of the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics has been cited repeatedly as an example of smart city innovation. But the innovation doesn’t stop there. Two projects that used SAS data visualization and data
It’s been an amazing journey with Hadoop. As we discussed in an earlier blog, Hadoop is informing the basis of a comprehensive data enterprise platform that can power an ecosystem of analytic applications to uncover rich insights on large sets of data. With YARN (Yet Another Resource Negotiator) as its
In October I will be at the Analytics 2015 conference in Las Vegas. I’ve never been to Las Vegas before. People tell me that if you are better than average in forecasting where a small ball will end up after it’s been spinning for a while in a dish with
