Sankey Diagrams have found increasing favor for visualization of data. This visualization tool has been around for a long time, traditionally used to visualize the flow of energy, or materials. . Now to be sure, GTL does have a statement design for a Sankey Diagram which was implemented only in Flex for use
I recently read a Washington Post article about the euro versus the dollar, and I wanted to analyze the data myself to see whether the article was simply stating the facts, or "sensationalizing" things. The washingtonpost.com article started with the headline, "This is historic: The dollar will soon be worth
Did you know the US-Malawi trade relationship is based almost entirely on tobacco? Or that apparel & accessories drive Morocco & Tunisia exports while their North African neighbors rely on oil? The United Nations Statistics Division collects detailed international trade data from more than 200 countries on the import and
Advances in technology, evolution of the distribution channels, demographic shift, economic conditions and regulations changes. How does an insurer prioritize all these seemingly competing goals and create sustainable competitive advantage. One answer is analytics. Many insurance companies are just beginning to take steps toward becoming an “analytic insurer” – one
It may never crossed your mind, but there are real-life cases when reversing graph axes make sense. For example, when Y-axis represents a depth under the sea level or depth of oil well drilling, it makes perfect sense to have zero on top and positive numbers increasing from top down.
Is daylight saving time the ultimate in efficiency, or is it living a lie? Here are some graphs that might help facilitate a discussion on this topic ... With daylight saving time (DST), a whole geo/political area (such as a country) decides to set their clocks forward an hour during
One thing that always puzzled me when starting out with data quality management was just how difficult it was to obtain management buy-in. I've spoken before on this blog of the times I've witnessed considerable financial losses attributed to poor quality met with a shrug of management shoulders in terms
“Dear Cat, I got an email from my IT department that says: [We are nearing capacity on the Flotsam Drive. Please clear data from any folders you are no longer using so we can save disk space. Thanks, The IT Department] Doesn’t this strike you as a bit old-fashioned? I
I know I’m not the only who feels it’s been an endless North Carolina winter! What could be more wonderful than the emerging spring with its warmer temperatures, bright sun, Carolina blue skies and longer days to spend time enjoying every minute of it! One of my favorite activities in
Imagine that you have one million rows of numerical data and you want to determine if a particular "target" value occurs. How might you find where the value occurs? For univariate data, this is an easy problem. In the SAS DATA step you can use a WHERE clause or a
When do analytics really provide value? All the time, of course. However, one of the best times for analytics to prove their value is when you are asked to do more with less. Often, the reason we are asked to do more with less is because of an economic downturn
Each year, SAS Global Forum conference organizers take your responses to surveys and pore over the suggestions and feedback you provide. Content and content delivery are bigger and better than ever at SAS Global Forum 2015 because of your feedback. Often, as good minds think alike, there will be trends
.@philsimon looks under the hood of 'analytics.'
Which is more important - having beautiful graphs, or accurate graphs? Let's explore this question using the locations of the world's richest billionaires... I recently saw a beautiful map on dadaviz.com that purported to show the cities with the most billionaires. Here's a screen-capture of that map: I decided to
In the previous article, I described the process to create a 3D Scatter Plot using a 3D Orthographic View matrix and the SGPLOT procedure. I posted a macro that can be used to create a 3D scatter plot from any SAS data set, using 3 numeric columns, one each for
With any software program, there are always new tips and tricks to learn, and nobody can know them all. Sometimes I even pick up tips or techniques from my students while they’re learning broader programming tips from me. Like fine wine, instructors only get better with age. Every customer interaction
This article show how to run a SAS program in batch mode and send parameters into the program by specifying the parameters when you run SAS from a command line interface. This technique has many uses, one of which is to split a long-running SAS computation into a series of
With Pi Day coming up on 3/14, I wanted to make sure all you SAS programmers know how to use the pi constant in your SAS code... All you have to do is use constant("pi") in a data step, and you've got the value of pi out to a good many decimal places
This blog is not about the original movie The More the Merrier (1943) or its remake, Walk, Don’t Run (1966), which I’ve actually seen a couple of times. It’s actually about the wide variety of descriptive statistics available in SAS Visual Analytics—and when you want to examine the characteristics of
England’s shambolic early exit from the Cricket World Cup has stirred up a hornet’s nest about the team’s supposed over-reliance on data. In the aftermath of their defeat to Bangladesh, coach Peter Moores said: ‘We thought 275 (runs) was chaseable. We’ll have to look at the data.’ It prompted outrage from
Are you heading to the ENAR 2015 Spring Meeting in Miami this week? SAS author and Program Chair Mithat Gönen, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Associate Chair Brisa Sánchez, of the University of Michigan School of Public Health have created an outstanding scientific program this year. The sessions cover
Saturday, March 14, 2015, is Pi Day, and this year is a super-special Pi Day! This is your once-in-a-lifetime chance to celebrate the first 10 digits of pi (π) by doing something special on 3/14/15 at 9:26:53. Apologies to my European friends, but Pi Day requires that you represent dates
Two popular SAS custom tasks have recently been updated for SAS Enterprise Guide 7.1. Most custom tasks that I've shared will work without modification across releases, but these two required a special rebuild due to some internal product API changes. The Project Reviewer task allows you to see a detail
The data lake is a great place to take a swim, but is the water clean? My colleague, Matthew Magne, compared big data to the Fire Swamp from The Princess Bride, and it can seem that foreboding. The questions we need to ask are: How was the data transformed and
The Internet of Things is coming fast and furious. We clearly know what these “things” are, and were able to see prototypes at last week’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) which hosted some 93,000 attendees. Things = connected life = cars, homes (thermostats, washer and dryers, vacuum cleaners, security systems, refrigerators, etc.),
My colleague Charlie Chase, Advisory Industry Consultant and author of the book Demand-Driven Forecasting, has developed a new course for the SAS Business Knowledge Series (BKS): Best Practices in Demand-Driven Forecasting. The 2-day course will be offered for the first time April 20-21 in Atlanta (and then again September 24-25 in Chicago). From the
Innovation within hospitality drives awareness, service delivery, guest engagement, and brand differentiation. SAS asked a panel of experts to comment on how innovation is shaping the hospitality industry. According to many of our experts, analytics is at the heart of innovation. Learn more in this white paper on building
I just found out that Girl Scout cookies haven't changed from when I was a kid. I just moved to a different area, serviced by a different cookie maker! That's what I found out from the cool map in an article on latimes.com! The article explains that there are two different
Peg solitaire I love puzzles; I have a few of them in my office. I regularly use them at interviews: I ask the candidate either to solve a puzzle or to devise a (clever) mathematical algorithm that solves it. I'm sure a lot of readers are familiar with the standard
SAS FULLSTIMER is a SAS system option that takes operating system information that is being collected by SAS process runs and writes that information to the SAS log. Using it can add up to 10 lines additional lines to your SAS log for each SAS step in your SAS log—so why
