Last week Bruno asked about creating a Schedule Chart using SG Procedures. To me, such projects are very interesting and challenging...How much mileage can we get out of the current set of SGPLOT procedure features to create a visual that was not part of the original requirements? The clear choice for
The other day I showed how to check your data cardinality by using a simple SAS program. I also promised to provide a custom task that makes the process even easier within SAS Enterprise Guide. Today I'm delivering on that promise. I've just added the custom task to the support.sas.com
We are in the final countdown to the Analytics 2013 Conference to be held next week, October 21-22 at the Hyatt Regency Orlando. There is a power-packed agenda for the conference, featuring four very strong keynote presentations from Dr. Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS; Ed Gaffin, Walt Disney World; Will Hakes,
As technology has changed the way people communicate, do business and generally lead their lives, CMOs have shifted their strategies to lead data-driven marketing in ways that maximize new opportunities and mitigate new risks. As the second in a two-part blog post, I’m sharing the recurring themes I’ve taken away
Every summer we try to attend the Pitt County Tech Fest, a great event for teachers in Eastern North Carolina. Two years ago I noticed that one session was filled to overflowing, with participants literally standing in the hallway straining to hear the presenter. The topic? Flipping the middle school
This article is about rotating matrices. No, I don't mean "rotation matrices," I mean rotating matrices. As in turning a matrix 90 degrees in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. I was reading a program written in MATLAB in which the programmer used a MATLAB function called ROT90, which rotates a
Although the NSA and news media have given metadata a bad name in the popular press, the fact remains that information about the nature of your data is extremely valuable. For example, I posted an article yesterday about data cardinality. Cardinality measures the uniqueness of values in a variable. Cardinality
This robin chick chirped away in my backyard on a glorious summer afternoon. While papa robin hovered above, the chick hopped on ground following Dad. Soon Dad disappeared after leading the chick to a tree where two gray squirrels smacked their lips at the sight of an easy lunch. Lifting
Technology has dramatically changed the way people communicate, do business and generally lead their lives. It’s increasingly online, and it’s increasingly mobile. In turn, those technologies have created tons of data-driven marketing opportunities, and it turns out that there are some recurring themes in how CMOs are leading the charge. Big
From what I've seen, the energy industries appear to be at a tipping point in their interest and adoption of advanced analytics. If there's any question about how analytics can be used to benefit these industries, consider a few examples:. How much demand for electricity will there be and when?
As you've probably guessed, I'm a "visual" person - I like to see things (in a chart/graph/map) rather than just reading about them (in a data table and summary statistic). Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of statistics and analytics -- but I'm an even bigger fan of
If you have been reading the articles in this blog, you already know that the Graph Template Language (GTL) forms the underlying foundation for all graphs produced automatically from SAS analytical procedures and custom graphs created with the SG Procedures and the ODS Graphics Designer. SG procedures and Designer provide
"Do I really need a detailed technical architecture before I start my SAS Deployment?" My team gets asked these questions all the time: Do we really need to spend the time for the above exercise? Why can’t we just start doing the deployment of SAS and fix issues if they come
Data cardinality is an important topic for for data analysis. In mathematical terms, cardinality is simply the number of elements in a set. But in data applications, cardinality signifies the number of unique values for a given field of data. Related terms include number of levels (thank you, PROC FREQ
On Kaiser Fung's Junk Charts blog, he showed a bar chart that was "published by Teach for America, touting its diversity." Kaiser objected to the chart because the bar lengths did not accurately depict the proportions of the Teach for America corps members. The chart bothers me for another reason:
The demand for SAS Certifications has never been bigger. The number of SAS Certifications awarded has doubled over the last three years and in August the program had its biggest month ever with 1,195 certifications awarded. Here’s another impressive stat. More than 59,000 SAS Certifications have been awarded since the
The Inside SAS Global Forum video series has been officially launched for 2014. Yes, the conference is still several months away, but it is not too soon to plan! Your first item of business: submit your proposal for content. Then next: register for the conference. Anna Brown and I provide
Don't ask me how it happened, but in my quest for even more SAS fame, I managed to muscle my way onto the set for Inside SAS Global Forum, the video series that focuses on everything that you need to know about SAS Global Forum 2014. After a brief cooling
The National Academy of Engineering identified fourteen "Grand Challenges for Engineering" that must be addressed in order to achieve a sustainable, economically robust, and politically stable future. (see the full list here) The challenges are a call-to-action for solutions to some of the most pressing issues in the 21st century:
Yesterday I read a Christina's blog article on the winners of the Best Presentations honor at MWSUG 2013. Two papers caught my (graphical) eye, both by Perry Watts. Perry has done a marvelous job describing how creatively use GTL to make graphs that may not be obvious at first glance.
If you know what this means, you’ll love our news! SAS Global Forum 2013 was the official “Year of the Poster”, and conference chair Rick Mitchell and his team more than tripled the number of poster submissions. Posters are indispensable for visual content. Poster presentations are also a huge asset
Should you ever guess on the SAT® or PSAT standardized tests? My son is getting ready to take the preliminary SAT (PSAT), which is a practice test for the SAT. A teacher gave his class this advice regarding guessing: For a multiple-choice questions, if you can eliminate one or two
My aunt Susanne is an elderly lady, who lives at the countryside and looks forward to celebrating her 80th birthday soon. Since the 1960's she has had a telephone connection with her fixed line provider. At that time, and for many years later, in the country where my aunt lives,
I have a challenge for you - guess which of these three email offers below are what I consider "sloppy marketing." Base your decision on these demographics- the recipient is a 50-year old married male with two kids at home, has stable employment, is a homeowner with a good credit rating, active
This week's SAS tip is from Michael Tuchman and his innovative book PROC DOCUMENT by Example Using SAS. Michael's book fills an important gap. For instance, in her review of the book, SAS user and senior statistical analyst Wendi Wright said: "Currently, I believe PROC DOCUMENT is a highly underused procedure and after reading
Want to know the secrets to landing a job as an analytics professional? I went straight to the source – the expert speakers of Analytics 2013 to find out. Here’s some of their advice… What advice would you give students considering a job in analytics and those already in the
Congratulations to Best Paper Winners from MidWest SAS Users Group conference! You'll want to read these, and check the MWSUG 2013 proceedings for other useful papers from the recent conference. Start planning now for MWSUG 2014 in Chicago.
In my last blog post I described how to implement a "runs test" in the SAS/IML language. The runs test determines whether a sequence of two values (for example, heads and tails) is likely to have been generated by random chance. This article describes two applications of the runs test.
I first spoke with Jill Dyché in March about her "Big data in big companies" research with Tom Davenport. They had interviewed a handful of organizations, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank and UnitedHealthcare. They ended up speaking with executives from more than 20 companies about their big data
Recently I delivered a SAS Talks session: SAS 9.4: What’s New for SAS® Administrators . We had a large group attend and subsequently had a wonderful flood of questions that we couldn’t always keep up with. So I wanted to follow up with some of the popular questions:
