The recent uptick in buzz around Hadoop caught my attention, and as always, my what’s-in-it-for-me filter kicked in, so I started sniffing around. It turns out that Hadoop brings some big advantages to the world of data that we marketers depend on so much, and as a result, I think
Don Wedding played a baseball simulation game called Sports Illustrated/Avalon Hill Superstar Baseball back when he was in grade school in Toledo, Ohio. The game involved rolling specialized dice, and then referring to cards representing the performance of the greatest baseball players of all time. The problem was Wedding knew
I had the chance to interview Natalie Kortum and Jack Chen of Dell at the Analytics 2013 conference in Orlando about how analytics is taking over business today and in the future. They both think we’ll see some big changes in the next five years. One of the most interesting
A couple of weeks back I described q way to create a Schedule Chart using the SGPLOT procedure. In that case, I used the HIGHLOW plot to draw bar segments, both for a single and grouped case. A natural extension is to create one with links between each segment. So,
SAS has been used to track the spread of many things, such as wild animals, tornadoes, and money launderers -- but this time I'm using it to track the spread of Walmart stores across the U.S. over time! Since its start in the 1960s, Walmart has grown to be the largest
I was looking at someone else's SAS/IML program when I saw this line of code: y = sqrt(x<>0); The statement uses the element maximum operator (<>) in the SAS/IML language to make sure that negative value are never passed to the square root function. This little trick is a real
A few years back we were in Orlando for the Blended and Online Learning Symposium. In addition to our conference sessions, we had the opportunity to introduce new users to Curriculum Pathways in our booth. Again and again we heard the same refrain, "You can’t really be free!" Actually we get that
Okay, given the title of this article, I might be overselling the content a bit. Read on to see if your life will be transformed. I've just returned from SESUG, and this question came up during one of the presentations. While this tip might seem basic, it was news to
Many people today just use their computer to play Angry Birds or post pictures of their most recent meal on Facebook ... but what would some of the great minds of the past have done with a computer?... For example, Charles Minard was creating impressive information graphics without a computer over 100 years ago,
SAS conferences are amazing events, with great presentations, keynote talks, classes and workshop, experts from the SAS Institute, networking opportunities and so much more! With so many things to do and so much happening at once, SAS conferences can be overwhelming. Plan to get the most out of your conference
If you've ever tried to use PROC FREQ to create a frequency table of two character variables, you know that by default the categories for each variable are displayed in alphabetical order. A different order is sometimes more useful. For example, consider the following two-way table for the smoking status
I am happy to report that my new book "Getting Started with the Graph Template Language in SAS" is now shipping. A colleague suggest it would be useful to post some articles with the same theme of "Getting started". I thought that was a great idea, and decided to start a new
Reacting to the demand in the rapidly changing environment of an emergency department can be a major challenge. Frequent mismatches between patient need and the health care professionals available to provide that care can result in significant human and financial costs. Analytics 2013 Orlando presenters, Kevin Armstrong of Vanderbilt University
Anne Hawley’s "Introduction to Statistics” professor asked the class what percentage of students at St. Lawrence University in New York state were smokers. Although the answer (according to a survey of students) was closer to 10 percent, most of the class guessed a much higher number, possibly due to the fact
Stick to the basics. Did you ever get that advice? Two of the papers at MidWest SAS Users Group 2013 used that most fundamental of SAS processing concepts—the Program Data Vector—to show why users might encounter unexpected errors in their DATA step programs. In The Secret Life of DATA STEP,
Sir Terry Leahy speaks with the clarity and purpose of someone used to speaking the language of data. When he was CEO of global retail giant Tesco, he presided over an organization that became the UK’s biggest retailer and enjoyed sustained robust growth - more than 10% annually over 20
We as marketers always try to secure the customer at the center of our universe. We learned this basic truth from early years as marketers but often times we stray from that guiding principal. We get distracted by product development, product innovation, chasing that next shiny object and the buzz we can
Picture your "typical" sports fan - body paint, tailgating, banners on the car, and so on. You can easily imagine that person as a brand evangelist. Now think of someone you know who loves to read. Would you ever put the sports fan and the book lover in the same
SAS has had a good week. No. 1 in Analytics The company remains No. 1 in advanced analytics -- per IDC and Forrester, not just according to marketers like me. And we remain committed to innovation. Our data visualization offering, SAS Visual Analytics, is now used by more than 500
In SAS Grid Manager environments, SAS administrators must often set up separate configurations based on a mix of requirements for departments, client applications and user roles. To accomplish this in previous SAS releases, administrators must define multiple SAS Application Server contexts, each with its own grid server definition and associated options.
This graph certainly makes it clear! I can see right through your lies! Clearly, you know what you're talking about! We need more transparency in our organization! What was that all about, you might ask?!? ... I was just getting all the obvious puns out of the way, so I
Considering the large investment every organization makes in people, the impact of hiring and retaining talent can’t be overstated. With the pace of change facing most marketing organizations, what I see specifically is the need to find and retain people that are innovative, agile and anything but complacent. A tall order?
Ginger is one of those spices that is good in anything! Sweet or savory. Ginger has a sweet, pungent spicy kick to it. You can find ginger fresh in the produce section of most stores, or as the dried ground spice. But, if you’ve never cooked with fresh ginger, you
A challenge for statistical programmers is getting data into the right form for analysis. For graphing or analyzing data, sometimes the "wide format" (each subject is represented by one row and many variables) is required, but other times the "long format" (observations for each subject span multiple rows) is more
Imagine working in partnership with someone who gives you only part of the information you need to do your job. Need to call a supplier to place an order? OK, here are the first three letters of the company name. Want to see how much profit a store made on a
I'm currently at the SESUG conference with hundreds of SAS users. I've presented a few talks, and I've attended a few more. The presentation rooms can be large and dimly lit, and the projectors at these conference hotels are not always the brightest nor are they exactly "high def". To
There’s a lot of talk about the gap between the demand for analytics talent and the short supply. Jennifer Priestley of Kennesaw State led a panel at Analytics 2013 to discuss how universities are minding the gap. I caught up with her to ask what schools need to be doing
Analytics, to me, has always been about continuous education and giving people the chance to learn new insights. The SAS Day at Houston CityCentre earlier this month is a shining example. Hosted by the Department of Statistics as Texas A&M University, the event showed how analytics guides decisions across many
SAS/IML programmers know that the VECDIAG matrix can be used to extract the diagonal elements of a matrix. For example, the following statements extract the diagonal of a 3 x 3 matrix: proc iml; m = {1 2 3, 4 5 6, 7 8 9}; v = vecdiag(m); /* v = {1,5,9}
Another benefit of attending the Analytics conference is the SAS Training and SAS Certification exams offered before and after the conference. We interviewed an attendee who just finished the exam for his SAS Certified Predictive Modeler using SAS Enterprise Miner 7 credential. Here’s his advice for people interested in SAS Certifications.
