Did you check your email and/or favourite social media site before leaving for work this morning? Did you do it before getting out of bed? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. I do it every morning as a little treat while I “wake up” and whether I realize it or not,
In my book Simulating Data with SAS, I show how to use the SAS DATA step to simulate data from a logistic regression model. Recently there have been discussions on the SAS/IML Support Community about simulating logistic data by using the SAS/IML language. This article describes how to efficiently simulate
I speak with executives in every industry – in companies big and small – and they all have the same challenge: They’re overwhelmed with data. The problem? There’s a huge gap between the amount of data they possess and the number of employees who can analyze it. This lack of
The healthcare big data revolution has only just begun. Current efforts percolating around the country primarily surround aggregation of clinical electronic health records (EHRs) & administrative healthcare claims. These healthcare big data initiatives are gaining traction and could produce exciting enhancements to the effectiveness and efficiency of the US healthcare
As you develop a program in the SAS/IML language, it is often useful to create graphs to visualize intermediate results. The language supports basic statistical graphics such as bar charts, histograms, scatter plots, and so on. However, you can create more advanced graphics without leaving PROC IML by using the
At PharmaSUG 2014 in San Diego, I had the pleasure of attending "Swimmer Plot: Tell a Graphical Story of Your Time to Response Data Using PROC SGPLOT", by Stacey Phillips. In this paper, Stacey presented an interesting graph showing the effects of a study drug on patients' tumor size. Stacey
Having spent a good part of my career “owning” the data hub in IT for analytics solutions, I think I can say, the myth that IT controls all things data has become less and less true through the years – and eventually it will be completely false. Or maybe it
Last month, SAS launched our new no-cost software for higher education teaching, learning and research – SAS® University Edition. Available to students, professors, academic researchers and lifelong learners, SAS University Edition provides local access to BASE SAS®, SAS/STAT® software, SAS® Studio, SAS/IML® software and SAS/ACCESS® Interface to PC Files. SAS University Edition
My esteemed colleague and recently-published author Jared Dean shared some thoughts on how ensemble models help make better predictions. For predictive modeling, Jared explains the value of two main forms of ensembles --bagging and boosting. It should not be surprising that the idea of combining predictions from more than one
A colleague asked me an interesting question: I have a journal article that includes sample quantiles for a variable. Given a new data value, I want to approximate its quantile. I also want to simulate data from the distribution of the published data. Is that possible? This situation is common.
Today it is common knowledge that a classroom teacher is the single largest in-school influence on student academic growth[1]. So when South Carolina received ESEA flexibility in July, 2012, the State Department of Education immediately began an initiative empowering teachers to increase their own effectiveness. Known as the Educator Evaluation System
Recently, a user posed a question on how to plot stacked frequencies on a time axis. The data included frequencies of different viruses by week. The data is modified to preserve confidentiality and is shown below. The user's first instinct was to use a bar chart with stacked groups. This works for automatically computing frequencies
Principle 11: Risk management reports should be distributed to the relevant parties while ensuring confidentiality is maintained. Early in 2013, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) issued guidelines for banks regarding risk data aggregation and reporting. Known collectively as BCBC 239, these principles were designed to ensure that banks
I've pointed out in the past that in the SAS/IML language matrices are passed to modules "by reference." This means that large matrices are not copied in and out of modules but are updated "in place." As a result, the SAS/IML language can be very efficient when it computes with
In 1965's Subterranean Homesick Blues, Bob Dylan taught us: You don't need a weatherman / To know which way the wind blows In 1972's You Don't Mess Around with Jim, Jim Croce taught us: You don't spit into the wind By combining these two teachings, one can logically conclude that:
Let’s be honest. When well planned, a SAS Grid Computing platform as the basis for a shared, highly available, high-performance analytics environment can pay for itself many times over. However, it is critical that your overall objectives and computing environment be well understood for you to achieve success with your
Today is my 500th blog post for The DO Loop. I decided to celebrate by doing what I always do: discuss a statistical problem and show how to solve it by writing a program in SAS. Two ways to parameterize the lognormal distribution I recently blogged about the relationship between
This probably won't surprise any of my regular readers: "SAS custom tasks" is one of my favorite topics to talk about. Since 2007, I've written blogs about how you can use custom tasks to extend SAS Enterprise Guide and the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office. I've shared lots of examples,
Our tradition from Foresight’s birth in 2005 has been to feature a particular topic of interest and value to practicing forecasters. These feature sections have covered a wide range of areas: the politics of forecasting, how and when to judgmentally adjust statistical forecasts, forecasting support systems, why we should
In 1990, the North Carolina General Assembly created the Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission to evaluate sentencing laws and policies and recommend any modifications necessary to achieve policy goals. As part of the mandate, the General Assembly required the Sentencing Commission to develop a correctional population simulation model. The model
From managing excess DVD inventory to optimizing digital distribution channels, Hollywood’s supply chain transformation in the last decade has been massive. Knowing this background, and having spent a good part of my life surrounded by the entertainment industry, I was intrigued and inspired by the recent Entertainment Supply Chain Academy
SAS software can be used for many things - here's how you could use it to help save endangered sea turtles! You've seen SAS used to track endangered wildlife by the shape of their footprints, and help run Texas Parks & Wildlife. Now, how about tracking the movements of (and thereby helping
There are thousands of kitchen gadgets on the market designed to make cooking easier, quicker and more efficient. However, most of these gadgets serve one specific purpose and take up prime kitchen real estate. After a few uses they end up being thrown in the back of a drawer or
Nonlinear optimization routines enable you to find the values of variables that optimize an objective function of those variables. When you use a numerical optimization routine, you need to provide an initial guess, often called a "starting point" for the algorithm. Optimization routines iteratively improve the initial guess in an
Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches Had bellies with stars. The Plain-Belly Sneetches Had none upon thars. - from "The Sneetches", by Dr. Seuss Recently a user on the SAS-L mailing list had this challenge: "I would like to display stars in a table (created by PROC REPORT) based on variable values.
This is part 3 of a blog series on how Lubbock Independent School District (Lubbock ISD) uses SAS® EVAAS to improve teaching and learning by promoting self-reflection and aiding instructional and administrative decision-making. This is done in a district that, in the past decade, has experienced dramatic increases in the percentage
When teaching statistics, it is often useful to produce a normal density plot with shading under the curve. For example, consider a one-sided hypothesis test. An alpha value of .05 would correspond to a Z-score cutoff of 1.645. This means that 95% of a standard normal curve falls below a
Really! I did a double-take last week when a conference chair told me that there’s grant money available for students, faculty and SAS junior professionals but few have applied. In one case, there were no applications submitted. We're hoping this is just a temporary glitch, a holdup resulting from too-busy schedules
This is part 2 of a blog series on how Lubbock Independent School District (Lubbock ISD) uses SAS® EVAAS to improve teaching and learning by promoting self-reflection and aiding instructional and administrative decision-making. This is done in a district that, in the past decade, has experienced dramatic increases in the
During Opening Session at this year’s Pharmaceutical SAS Users Group (PharmaSUG) conference, attendees heard from teacher Heather Poland and two of her 14 year-old students. These special guests were representatives of Perkins K-8, a San Diego middle school classroom (7th and 8th grade) that is struggling with illiteracy. Located less
