Overcoming the IT-Business divide in an era of big data, Part 2
.@philsimon on the new role of IT.
English
Are you a geography expert? Try this quick quiz!
My blog posts focus on visual data analysis, and many of them use geographical maps. Therefore I hope you will have fun with a quick geography quiz, which I created using SAS/Graph ... And what, you might
The Wonders of Winter Squash
September is Fruit and Veggie Month! What better way to celebrate than to learn more about what’s in season right now! Here in North Carolina it’s time for all the winter squash recipes to start floating around again! Winter squash is a great fiber rich, nutrient dense carbohydrate that’s loaded
A simple way to construct a large correlation matrix
Occasionally a SAS statistical programmer will ask me, "How can I construct a large correlation matrix?" Often they are simulating data with SAS or developing a matrix algorithm that involves a correlation matrix. Typically they want a correlation matrix that is too large to input by hand, such as a
Presenting at SAS Global Forum 2016 - Is my idea good enough?
So you have an idea for a presentation for SAS Global Forum 2016. The idea isn’t earth shattering, but you did figure out how to do something cool in SAS. Still, you have a moment of pause. Questions abound. “Is it good enough? Should I submit it to the Call
Administering on-campus SAS Certification exams
At California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo the Statistics Department offers two courses on preparation for the Base SAS Certification and Advanced SAS Certification exams, respectively. Each of these courses is 10 weeks long and the topics covered follow the content offered in the certification guides offered by SAS.
Response Colors and Thickness
Often there is a need to display more than one response simultaneously for a bar chart, series plot or a vector plot. SAS 9.40M3 adds the options you need to get such results using two new options COLORRESPONSE and THICKRESPONSE where applicable. The Bar Chart on the right shows the frequency
How to plot your GPS tracking data on a SAS map
These days many devices (such as smart phone apps, Fitbits, Apple watches, dog tracking collars, car gps, hiking gps, teen/car trackers, etc) can track your location, and provide you with standard/canned ways to analyze the data. This blog post shows how I created a custom SAS map of the tracking
Overcoming the IT-Business Divide in an era of big data, Part 1
.@philsimon on the new challenges of an old problem.
Protect child welfare workers with better information
A Vermont Department of Children Families (DCF) worker was murdered last month. The lead suspect is the mother of a child that was previously removed from her care and placed in foster care. This tragedy illustrates the challenges and risks that workers have in the field of serving at risk
It's all good at SESUG 2015 - What not to miss
Savannah plays host to the 23rd annual SouthEast SAS Users Group (SESUG) conference from Sept. 27 to Sept. 29. Over 300 attendees are expected to gather in this historic city. If you’re planning to attend, I’ve selected a few special features that I hope will help both new and returning attendees
Excluding variables: Read all but one variable into a matrix
Dear Rick, I have a data set with 1,001 numerical variables. One variable is the response, the others are explanatory variable. How can I read the 1,000 explanatory variables into an IML matrix without typing every name? That's a good question. You need to be able to perform two sub-tasks:
Q&A with data mining instructor Jeff Thompson
Do you want to know what will happen in the future? To gain true predictive insight, skip the tea leaves and look toward your data. SAS instructor Jeff Thompson is a high-energy data mining expert who will be demonstrating how to gain predictive insight from your data in his new
Specifying Unicode values and colors easier with PROC SGPLOT and GTL
Many users of ODS Graphics will be excited to learn that, beginning with SAS® 9.4 TS1M3, SG procedures are able to recognize formatted values that contain Unicode values. One benefit of this is that it allows you to include, without using annotation, special symbols such as greater-than-or-equal-to signs or Greek
Why machine learning? Why now?
Even though the first papers in machine learning were in the 1950s, one could argue it goes back further to the work of Alan Turing and other early computer scientists. So why has this way of modeling seemingly become so popular now? Because data has become a commodity. Large amounts of many different
Am I running slower as I get older?
I read an article recently discussing how runners inevitably slow down with age, particularly after 50. Data from the New York Marathon and Boston Marathon back this up with generally flat average finishing times for ages 20-49 followed by a steady, almost exponential, increase after 50. I haven’t reached the
Monitoring Database Usage with SAS Environment Manager
Many administrators are familiar with the well-known “WIP Data Server” component of a SAS installation–so this blog takes a closer look at it, and shows how easy it is to monitor how large the database is growing. This data server contains a SAS-critical database known as the SharedServices Database, which is
Talk Like a Pirate day ... and paddling from Cuba to the US
I just returned home from an expedition/adventure boat trip to Cuba, and Talk Like a Pirate day is coming up this Saturday - what a combination for an interesting blog! I hope you enjoy a few pictures, and a bit of data analysis on these topics! A couple of weeks ago,
Big data integration - A good starting point for data governance?
In the UK, technology trends move a little slower than for our US counterparts. It was about 5 years ago when I first met a data leader at a conference on this side of the pond who was actively engaging in large scale big data projects. This wasn’t a presenter
Accessing VA Reports with Parameterized URLs
The SAS Visual Analytics 7.2 release introduced context sensitive URLs for VA reports which means we can now directly pass parameter values in the URLs! This opens the door and allows for greater flexibility when needing to use a URL to access a VA report. One use would be if
Boost your big data skills at Analytics 2015
Among the tightly held cards, piles of chips and bright lights, there have been stories that have unfolded in Las Vegas that have been forever preserved in time, never seeing the light of day. But what if what happened in Vegas…could be shared with excitement with your friends and family?
Have you had your Vitamin N today?
Close your eyes…inhale deeply...now exhale fully. Absorb the smells, sounds, and sensations all around you. Connect with the ground under you; sense the sky above you. Now open your eyes and enjoy the fullness of the great outdoors! Oh wait! It is likely that you are inside while you are
Error distributions and exponential regression models
Last week I discussed ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models and showed how to illustrate the assumptions about the conditional distribution of the response variable. For a single continuous explanatory variable, the illustration is a scatter plot with a regression line and several normal probability distributions along the line. The
Users Catch the Wave at WUSS 2015
Over 400 enthusiastic SAS users gathered in San Diego September 9-11, 2015 for the 23rd annual WUSS 2015 conference. In this “digital age,” where so much of our communication is virtual and social, it was a treat to get out and meet SAS users face-to-face. The two and a half-days were packed
The Fun and Reward of the SAS Writing Journey
When I wrote my first paper, a poster for SUGI 13, yes it was SUGI back then, not SAS Global Forum, I had no idea what a wonderful journey I was embarking on. At the time, I thought that paper was just a way to get to a conference. That
Data integration – Job skills required for success
Data integration, on any project, can be very complex – and it requires a tremendous amount of detail. The person I would pick for my data integration team would have the following skills and characteristics: Has an enterprise perspective of data integration, data quality and extraction, transformation and load (ETL): Understands
Generate evenly spaced points in an interval
I've previously written about how to generate a sequence of evenly spaced points in an interval. Evenly spaced data is useful for scoring a regression model on an interval. In the previous articles the endpoints of the interval were hard-coded. However, it is common to want to evaluate a function
Something Different - SAS 9.40M3
The SGPLOT procedure provides great tools to create all kinds of graphs for all domains from business to clinical. However, every so often, we need to create visuals that are not exactly graphs, but more like flow or network diagrams, or something entirely unique. Some users may have tools to
Back to the Basics Part Two: What can hoteliers do with analytics?
with Natalie Osborn, Senior Industry Consultant, Hospitality and Gaming Practice, SAS This week, we continue our fall “back to the basics” refresher series on analytics for hoteliers. Last week, in part one, Natalie and I reviewed the analytic methods that can be utilized by hoteliers. This week we will explore
SAS/ETS 14.1 adds panel data models and model comparison utilities
I had the pleasure of speaking at the inaugural “Accounting IS Big Data” conference this past week in New York City, a meeting organized by the American Accounting Association. In addition to giving several talks, I participated in breakout sessions in which attendees discussed how analytics is used to monitor