I can’t believe that it has been almost two months since SAS Global Forum in Washington DC! As always, I was reinvigorated and came back with even more ideas on how to improve the way that we do things, apply new lessons and try some things out – along with
Improving teacher effectiveness is no simple task. Whether a part of a formal evaluation system or for formative feedback, looking at student growth data can be a valuable part of the development process for teachers and administrators. Lubbock Independent School District (Lubbock ISD) uses SAS® EVAAS to improve teaching and
In my book Simulating Data with SAS, I specify how to generate lognormal data with a shape and scale parameter. The method is simple: you use the RAND function to generate X ~ N(μ, σ), then compute Y = exp(X). The random variable Y is lognormally distributed with parameters μ
We're entering the busy season for forecasting events, and here is the current calendar: Analytics2014 - Frankfurt The European edition of Analytics2014 kicks off tomorrow in Frankfurt, Germany. Five hundred of the leading thinkers and doers in the analytics profession hook up for two full days of interaction and learning.
The Analytics 2014 conference in Frankfurt, Germany gets started tomorrow, but today many of the speakers and attendees are arriving at the Frankfurt Marriott. I caught up with Beth Schultz, editor-in-chief of AllAnalytics.com to hear about her keynote presentation and to find out the benefits of being part of the
This blog post describes a neat example of some cool SAS capabilities, and also teaches you a little more about the state where SAS software is made... Here at the SAS headquarters in Cary, NC, the main TV news channel is WRAL TV5. And my favorite segment during the news is Scott
Insights from decision trees and other basic analytic techniques show that you don’t always need complex analytics to solve business problems and add value. This was the message from Dr. James (Jim) Foster, Director of Research and Process Development, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), at last month’s inaugural IE Group ‘Manufacturing Analytics
Principle 9: Risk management reports should communicate information in a clear and concise manner. Reports should be easy to understand yet comprehensive enough to facilitate informed decision-making. Reports should include meaningful information tailored to the needs of the recipients. While the data management and data aggregation principles have been heavily
Sometimes you have data in SAS/IML vectors that you need to write to a SAS data set. By default, no formats are associated with the variables that you create from SAS/IML vectors. However, some variables (notably dates, times, and datetimes) should have formats associated with the data values. You can
I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard this question at SAS Global Forum: "So, does this SAS Studio thing replace SAS Enterprise Guide?" SAS Studio is a pretty big deal. It's groundbreaking in several ways: It's a web-based programming interface to SAS. It runs in your
Frequently you may want to modify the default colors, line patterns and symbols that are displayed on the graphics output produced by the Statistical Graphics, or SG procedures, and the Graph Template Language, GTL. Enhancements in SAS 9.4 have made that task much easier! In the examples below, we will look
Bootstrap methods and permutation tests are popular and powerful nonparametric methods for testing hypotheses and approximating the sampling distribution of a statistic. I have described a SAS/IML implementation of a bootstrap permutation test for matched pairs of data (an alternative to a matched-pair t test) in my paper "Modern Data
Whether you’re counting carbs for glucose management, crunching calories for weight loss or beefing up your protein intake to build muscle mass, food tracking apps can be an invaluable resource for your health and fitness goals. A novelty a few years ago, these apps are now in abundance giving us
A little-known but useful feature of SAS/IML 12.3 (which was released with SAS 9.4) is the ability to generate a vector of lowercase or uppercase letters by using the colon operator (:). Many SAS/IML programmers use the colon operator to generate a vector of sequential integers: proc iml; x =
Fear was written large on the faces of my class as I walked in to set up my SAS Enterprise Guide (EG) course. Participants talked in hushed tones and I wondered what this was all about. I was soon to find out during the introductions. Here are some snippets from
Do you “wish upon a star” that you had a better way to sync up meteor showers with your busy schedule? … Here’s a great SAS calendar chart that can help! There’s been a lot of talk about the possible new meteor shower coming up this weekend. The Earth will
So far in our Ask the Statistician blog and video series, we have heard responses from statisticians at the Analytics 2013 conference about: The many ways statistics benefit their organizations. The types of statistical analyses used to solve business issues. Best practices for explaining results. How they put statistical
I’ve recently had the opportunity to learn a little more about administering SAS Visual Analytics. The sessions introduced me to two new GUI interfaces that simplify the work for SAS administrators. In my last post, I shared how to load data into memory using the SAS Visual Data Builder. After
In a previous post, I stated that you should avoid matrix multiplication that involves a huge diagonal matrix because that operation can be carried out more efficiently. Here's another tip that sometimes improves the efficiency of matrix multiplication: use parentheses to prevent the creation of large matrices. Matrix multiplication is
Giovanni Monopoli is the Strategic Analysis and Financial Planning Manager within the Finance Department at QVC Italy. Next month, he’ll be presenting at the Analytics 2014 conference in Frankfurt, Germany about how the broadcast channel uses analytics – specifically SAS Forecast Studio. With live broadcasts 17 hours a day, QVC
Principle 7: Accuracy - Risk management reports should accurately and precisely convey aggregated risk data and reflect risk in an exact manner. Reports should be reconciled and validated. Successful demonstration of Principle 7 requires senior management to rely upon the information presented in risk reporting. Since forward-looking strategic decisions are
I love working with SAS Technical Support because I get to see real problems that SAS customers face as they use SAS/IML software. The other day I advised a customer how to improve the efficiency of a computation that involved multiplying large matrices. In this article I describe an important
Data federation is a relatively new term used to describe a form of data virtualization. Data virtualization, however, is not new. It has been around since at least the 1960's when virtual memory was introduced to simulate additional memory beyond what was physically available on a machine. While data federation is a
As you might have guessed, this is a blog post about cold temperatures, and ice! Sometimes ice is a great thing. Here's a picture of my freezer, for example (don't judge - I'm a bachelor!) .. And sometimes ice is a beautiful but dangerous thing, as this picture of my
In just three short weeks I’ll be in Frankfurt, Germany for the Analytics 2014 conference. There will be hundreds of people from 32 different countries in attendance. It will be exciting to hear how people all over the world, in many different industries, are using analytics. As host of the
Imagine this scenario: Every device we encounter in our day-to-day routine – from our refrigerators and automobiles to our water and gas meters – has embedded sensors that read real-time information and generate unfathomable amounts of data. Now take this scenario one step further. Imagine what kinds of insights we’d
A recent Charlotte Observer article provided a thoughtful investigation of growth and achievement in North Carolina’s Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools). The article juxtaposed two very different, yet highly effective, schools. The first, Ranson Middle School, is a low-achieving school with 84% poverty that demonstrated the highest academic growth of any similar
In light of the recent reports that glaciers in Antarctica are melting, what SAS graphs might be useful in analyzing the data?... When floating sea ice melts (such as at the North Pole), it doesn't raise the sea level - but when ice on land melts (such as glaciers at
SAS administrators often ask for a utility that can detect orphaned SAS WORK and SAS Utility directories on their back-end SAS compute systems. These orphaned directories result when a SAS Enterprise Guide or any other SAS GUI application is terminated incorrectly, and the SAS session does not terminate properly. SAS
There has been lots of awareness-raising lately about the safety of our food supply including the tools we use to cook and store our food. Many nutritionists, health care providers and scientists agree that reducing exposure to toxins whenever possible makes good sense. The Environmental Working Group (EWG), an environmental
