When I think of Cream of Something Soups, I immediately envision iconic 1950s ads of creamy casseroles made by happy, smiling home cooks in aprons and pearls. My second thought then quickly turns to: what are those cream of...something or other...soups really made of?! The answer: WATER, MUSHROOMS, VEGETABLE OIL
I sometimes wonder whether some functions and options in SAS software ever get used. Last week I was reviewing new features that were added to SAS/IML 13.1. One of the new functions is the CV function, which computes the sample coefficient of variation for data. Maybe it is just me,
Often, we have data where most of the observations are clustered within a narrow range, with a few outliers positioned far away. When all the data is plotted, the axis is scaled to accommodate all the data, thus skewing the scale. Techniques to handle such data have been addressed earlier
There's recently been a "States I've Visited" application going around on Facebook, where users create a map showing all the US states they've visited, and then post it on their page for their friends to see. I wondered if SAS could do a better job?... Here's a screen-capture of one
On a cold and wet December morning in 2008, at approximately 1:30 AM, I pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned supermarket in Arlington, TX. With sleet pelleting my windshield, I saw three additional sets of headlights enter into the parking lot from different directions. All three cars converged
Many vendors claim they have analytics, and a lot of users have embraced the belief that analytics is the way to go. But what does analytics really mean, especially to business users without statistics backgrounds, and how much do they need to know about analytics to be able to make
All of us are familiar with common fraud types. Insurance fraud, credit card fraud, identity theft, and tax evasion are among the most recognized areas. But, there are many other fraud types that have a big impact on our daily lives, yet receive little attention in the media and among
Perhaps nowhere is the saying “time is money” more true than in the construction industry. There is no better indicator of project cost and budget over/underrun than the number of days on-site. Reducing that number has a near 1:1 relationship with cost cutting, so it’s no wonder that days on-site
Is fraud like a snowflake, and every one is unique? Not really. There is, however, an increasing number of methods and schemes that show up and expand the range of issues we need to look for every day. To celebrate International Fraud Awareness Week this year, I'm going to spend
Recently, I spoke with Sally Carson about the Junior Professional Award, a SAS Global Forum 2015 program for people who have used SAS three years or less. The award offers free registration, free training and lots of opportunity to learn and become involved. This is the third year that Junior
Have you ever noticed that some SAS/IML programmers use the CALL statement to call a subroutine, whereas others use the RUN statement? Have you ever wondered why the SAS/IML language has two statements that do the same thing? It turns out that the CALL statement and the RUN statement do
This week I had the opportunity to present a 1/2 day seminar on creating clinical graphs using the SG procedures during an In-House SAS Users' group meeting. I have presented this seminar quite a few times now, and I always learn something. The audience was very receptive, with some people
Business forecasting is a highly politicized process, subject to the biases and personal agendas of all forecasting process participants. This is why many -- perhaps most -- human adjustments to the forecast fail to make it better. And this is why relative metrics, such as FVA, are so helpful in
Big data is of no use unless you can turn it into information and insight. For that you need big analytics. Every piece of the analytics cycle has been impacted by big data, from reporting, with the need to quickly render reports from billions of rows of data, through advanced
Perhaps forecasting is a little of both, crystal ball and competitive edge. It’s a crystal ball of sorts because it helps leaders get answers to questions like, “How many? Or, “How much?” to decide what actions best help the business. And it’s definitely a competitive edge when it results in
Are you a legitimate hard-working company that has been threatened with a lawsuit, by a patent troll? If so, the graphs in this blog should make you happy! Speaking of 'happy' and 'troll' - here's a picture of a happy Troll Doll from my friend Hannah. Don't you just hate
Have you ever received an error or warning in SAS macro and did not know what to do next or even where to look? Now there is an answer! And debugging your SAS macros just got easier. All macro errors and warnings are now documented in the SAS 9.4 Macro
For most people, this time of year means celebrating cherished, personal traditions… helping those less fortunate…flocking to stores in droves…the company holiday party… For the SAS Security Intelligence team, it means identity theft…benefits fraud…unemployment insurance fraud...insider threats. Why? Because next week is International Fraud Awareness Week! And we’re celebrating by
As the team of nearly 50 peer-reviewers finalize their review and recommendations, I want to reflect on the amazing accomplishments of the SAS Global Forum 2015 teams: Nearly 700 sessions were submitted by the SAS user community and SAS experts! More than 150 selections are online and available for preview!
When we think of acne, we typically think of teenagers and raging hormones. However, there has been an upsurge of adult acne over the last 50 years. Why, you ask? Well, one probable cause is changes to our food supply and dietary habits. Nutritional voids and dietary excess can have
There are times when I harken back to the classic television show M.A.S.H. For those of you too young to remember, the story centered around a mobile Army surgical hospital in the midst of the conflict in the Korean peninsula. While they weren't the first people to see the patient, the unit
Did you know that applying a new SAS license file for many SAS solutions is a two step process? Because many of SAS’ most of popular solutions (including SAS® Visual Analytics, SAS® Enterprise MinerTM and SAS® Customer Intelligence) depend on the middle-tier architecture for primary user access, information about licensed
When I studied high school geometry, I noticed that many homework problems involved right triangles whose side lengths were integers. The canonical example is the 3-4-5 right triangle, which has legs of length 3 and 4 and a hypotenuse of length 5. The triple (3, 4, 5) is called a
In his Spring 2014 article in Foresight, Paul Goodwin addressed the important issue of point vs. probabilistic forecasts. A point forecast is a single number (e.g., the forecast for item XYZ in December is 635 units). We are all familiar with point forecasts, as these are what's commonly produced (either
The Advanced Analytics division of SAS Research & Development has announced three Summer Fellowships in the areas of Forecasting and Econometrics. The SAS forecasting fellowships are open to doctoral candidates in mathematics, statistics, computer science, and related graduate departments in the United States. They offer the opportunity to work closely
Do you have an Uncle Louie? Yep - we all do! You know what I mean - this guy: When my wife and I were planning to get married, we had all sorts of big decisions to make. Where would our future home be? How many kids would we have?
I was recently asked about how to use the SAS/IML language to efficiently add a constant to every element of a matrix diagonal. Mathematically, the task is to form the matrix sum A + kI, where A is an n x n matrix, k is a scalar value, and I is the
By infusing analytics through every phase of the guest journey, hotel managers can help shore up the complicated balance between the guest experience and revenue and profit responsibilities – delivering memorable and personalized guest experiences, while maximizing revenue and profits. To accomplish this, hotels need to be able to collect,
It's time for a fall fraud roundup. Bad deeds swirl around like so many dry leaves, and I'd like to highlight a few of them this week. It can happen anywhere, even in sports, and no, I'm not picking on those shoplifting Dallas Cowboys here. An MLS referee was suspended for workers' compensation
If someone asks you whether SAS runs in the cloud, there are exactly two wrong answers: "yes" and "no". Instead, this question should spark a discussion. It should be a discussion about which of the five characteristics of cloud computing they are interested in. The answers will point you in
