Many factors have to work together for organizations to compete on big data analytics. First, you need the right technology. Second, you need to look at the skill set that is required to use the technology and the culture changes that are often needed. So how do you bring it
Principle 3: Accuracy and Integrity – A bank should be able to generate accurate and reliable risk data to meet normal and stress/crisis reporting accuracy requirements. Data should be aggregated on a largely automated basis so as to minimize the probability of errors. It seems logical that banks would want
I have previously written about the scope of local and global variables in the SAS/IML language. You might wonder whether SAS/IML modules can also have local scope. The answer is no. All SAS/IML modules are known globally and can be called by any other modules. Some object-oriented programming languages support
Often, the topic of an article is motivated by a question from a user. A satisfactory resolution of the situation is usually a good indication of a topic that may be of interest to other users. On such question was posed to me by a user this weekend. He wanted to display fit
I just read another headline about Pope Francis doing something controversial and it struck me how effectively he’s been able to lead the Catholic Church in just over a year. Without question, he exercises leadership by virtue of his position, but most of his actions hold valuable leadership lessons for
If you’re an analyst, you know discovery in a complicated data set is one of the toughest problems to solve. But did you know the Business Knowledge Series course, Exploratory Analysis for Large and Complex Problems Using SAS Enterprise Miner, can help you solve those issues by tackling real-world problems?
Some very common questions we receive into Technical Support are, “I need to be able to send the data for every hospital listed in my data set to a separate .csv file. How can I do that?” Or, “How can I run a PROC REPORT for each region listed in
Here is editor Len Tashman's preview of the new Spring 2014 issue of Foresight. In particular note the new article by Steve Morlidge of CatchBull, reporting on an analysis of eight B2B and B2C companies, which we'll discuss in a separate post. An organization’s collaboration in forecasting and planning has
Would you like to analyze the 9 million lines of Medicare payment data that was recently made public? You'll need lots of luck if you're planning to use Excel ... whereas this is the kind of thing SAS was built for! Here's a sneak-peek at what the text data looks
This week's SAS tip is from Barry de Ville and Padraic Neville's enterprising new book Decision Trees for Analytics Using SAS Enterprise Miner. With their combined vast expertise, De Ville and Neville have created a comprehensive guide to decision tree theory, use, and applications. If you're interested in this week's free
When you run a program or task in SAS Enterprise Guide, the application wraps your job in an "ODS sandwich", the colloquial term we use for the ODS statements necessary to create output that can be viewed in your project. That's convenient for exploring and refining your program, but at
Recently, as I was driving in listening to National Public Radio (NPR), the topic of conversation was Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency (NSA), again. If you’ve been listening to any of this coverage, it seems the news media has a new catch word “metadata” that they are throwing
Q: How would you set the target for demand planners: all products at 0.7? All at practical limit (0.5)? A: In principle, forecasts are capable of being brought to the practical limit of an RAE of 0.5. Whether it is sensible to attempt to do this for all products irrespective
Last week I described the Hilbert matrix of size n, which is a famous square matrix in numerical linear algebra. It is famous partially because its inverse and its determinant have explicit formulas (that is, we know them exactly), but mainly because the matrix is ill-conditioned for moderate values of
Here's an example that shows SAS is more than just a tool to create analytic graphics - it can also be used to create 'cute' infographics! :) An infographic that recently caught my eye had a fleet of airplanes stretching from overhead out to the horizon, along with some interesting
I'm in the grocery store with a "mental" list of 3 items to pick up: bread, eggs, and something unusual like cupcake liners. My phone rings. It's my wife (or sometimes a daughter) asking me to pick up one or two more things, maybe orange juice and bananas. Suddenly, the
We are all busy. Between demands from our career, families and communities, I am willing to bet we easily fill the 24 hours we get each day. But sometimes we're in such a rush or so focused on getting our to-do list checked off that we miss out on some
Principle 2: Data architecture and IT infrastructure – A bank should design, build and maintain data architecture and IT infrastructure which fully supports its risk data aggregation capabilities and risk reporting practices not only in normal times but also during times of stress or crisis, while still meeting the other
The SAS Users Groups Leaders meet-up was scheduled for the last evening of SAS Global Forum 2014, sandwiched between the last of the Tuesday presentations and the Kick-Back Party later that evening. There were a few familiar faces from regional users groups but lots of new ones from local and
I enjoy blogging about new functionality in the SAS/IML language because I can go into more depth and provide more complicated examples than the SAS/IML documentation. Today's article is a summary of all of my posts about features that were added to SAS/IML 12.1, which shipped in August 2012 as
When you hear of a Scatter Plot or a Series Plot, you have a picture in your mind what we are talking about. But one of the plot statements available in GTL, and soon with SGPLOT, is the BLOCK plot. I am sure this leaves many users scratching their heads, wondering
“We are living in the era of the connected customer - one in which normal customer behavior is to capture moments and share it in near real-time.” - from "Customer Love - it's All About the Connection" by John Balla One message does not fit all anymore. Remember the days when marketing would use one
Have you written a popular SAS Global Forum paper? Have you shared a winning case study with your colleagues? Have you talked about a cool, new feature you found in SAS? Well, share it with the world! SAS Press can help you share your knowledge and expertise worldwide. We’ve published
In this tutorial video, you will learn to print a simple listing with Base SAS. You see how to write a PRINT procedure step to display a SAS data set. You also see how to use statements and options to subset observations and variables and enhance the report. Learn
Yesterday I blogged about the Hilbert matrix. The (i,j)th element of the Hilbert matrix has the value 1 / (i+j-1), which is the reciprocal of an integer. However, the printed Hilbert matrix did not look exactly like the formula because the elements print as finite-precision decimals. For example, the last
So far in this Ask the Statistician series, we heard statisticians at the Analytics 2013 conference discuss the benefits of statistical analysis, the types of statistical techniques they use to solve their business problems and how they share their statistical results with non-technical audiences that need to use this information. So, the next step
This is a question I get pretty often. It’s not an easy question to answer either. It depends on what your goal is. Do you want a milk that’s low in calories or do you want one that’s high in protein? Maybe taste is your only criteria. Luckily, if you
It was wonderful to see and talk with so many SAS Administrators at SAS Global Forum this year. If you’re like me, you may have finished the conference wondering why it wasn’t possible to be two places at once because there was so much terrific content that it was impossible
The Hilbert matrix is the most famous ill-conditioned matrix in numerical linear algebra. It is often used in matrix computations to illustrate problems that arise when you compute with ill-conditioned matrices. The Hilbert matrix is symmetric and positive definite, properties that are often associated with "nice" and "tame" matrices. The
There are many reasons for marketers to see opportunity in the Internet of Things, most especially because it entails the interconnection of objects and devices and the data that's generated from these devices. It's not so much that we have to get our geek on, but the devices themselves ultimately
