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Analytics

Melissa SavageJanuary 25, 2013 0

Analytics fuels recommendations in new Department of Transportation innovation handbook

Analytics is a key piece in nearly all 31 recommendations outlined in The Innovative DOT: A Handbook of Policy and Practice. Crafted by the State Smart Transportation Initiative, in partnership with Smart Growth America, the handbook provides 31 recommendations for state transportation officials looking for ways to increase efficiencies and

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Advanced Analytics

Waynette TubbsJanuary 25, 2013 0

Friday's Innovation Inspiration - Efficient credit scoring

The traditional methods of making credit decisions relied mostly on human judgment; those have been replaced by methods that use statistical models. Today, statistical models are used not only for deciding whether to accept an applicant (application scoring), but also to predict the likelihood of defaults among customers who have

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SAS Administrators

Margaret CrevarJanuary 23, 2013 0

Improving performance: Understand the problem

My team and I are often called on to help customers optimize SAS system performance, particularly when the root cause of performance problems is hard to track down. This is the first of a two-part article on practices and tools we’ve found most useful.

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Work & Life at SAS

Ashley Bailey, MS, RDN, LDN, IFNCPJanuary 23, 2013 0

Tackle Your Super Bowl Snacks

Super Bowl XLVII is almost here! Whether you’re a Ravens or a 49ers fan or just watching the game for the commercials, Super Bowl snacks always seem to take center field and are the true MVPs. According to an article from Huffington Post, Americans will eat nearly 11 million pounds

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Learn SAS

Rick WicklinJanuary 23, 2013 0

Breaking bad programming habits. What's yours?

I like to be efficient in my SAS/IML programs, but sometimes I get into bad habits. Recently I realized that I was reshaping a bunch of SAS/IML row vectors because I wanted to write them to a SAS data set. This is completely unnecessary! The SAS/IML language will create a

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeJanuary 21, 2013 0

Bar Chart with Target and Attribute Map

A commonly requested graph is a bar chart with response and targets. With SAS 9.3, the SGPLOT procedure supports new "parametric" plot statements called HBARPARM and VBARPARM. These statements are special versions of the HBAR and VBAR statements and they expect summarized data for each category or category+group combination. Also,

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Analytics

Bill ColemanJanuary 21, 2013 0

Iceberg, ho! Analytics can keep local government afloat

It was a moonless night in April 1912 when the pinnacle of ocean travel technology and luxury, the RMS Titanic, collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,500 passengers and crew. A primary cause of the tragedy was that the captain and

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Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerJanuary 21, 2013 0

Turn your data set into a DATA step program

Sometimes I need to "disassemble" a SAS data set into a DATA step program. It's kind of like creating a "freeze-dried" version of the data that you can carry around and use anywhere, re-hydrating it in the SAS session where you next need it. Some example uses for this: Build

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SAS Events

Tricia AanderudJanuary 21, 2013 0

Paper accepted? 3 tips for preparing

Yea! My paper was accepted at the SAS Global Forum 2013. There’s nothing better than getting an email from your section chair saying your paper has been accepted. Steve Overton was correct in his The Wait is Killing Me post. Angela Hall and I were invited to conduct a Hands

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Click New for Output Parameters

Angela HallJanuary 21, 2013 0

Maintaining prompt selections in multiple Web Report Sections (v4.3)

SAS Technical Support has a wonderful how-to guide for using one set of prompt values across multiple sections of a Web Report Studio report. This works great in 4.2, however there is one additional item that I discovered in a 4.3/9.3 install. With the addition of PROC STP and SAS

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Learn SAS

Rick WicklinJanuary 21, 2013 0

Reading big data in the SAS/IML language

A SAS/IML user on a discussion forum was trying to read data into a SAS/IML matrix, but the data was so large that it would not fit into memory. (Recall that SAS/IML matrices are kept in RAM.) After a few questions, it turned out that the user was trying to

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Advanced Analytics

Waynette TubbsJanuary 18, 2013 0

Friday's Innovation Inspiration - Social network analysis and automation

Big data seemed like all of the other marketing hype that we hear. But as the months have gone by, it seems clear that everyone is dealing with big data. You know, data coming in so fast that you can't adequately analyze it (at least not as efficiently and quickly

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJanuary 17, 2013 0

A neat new trick to trim your macro variables in 9.3

SAS macro variables are a great way to store a calculated value, so you can use it later in your code. They are not just limited to the data step -- you can also use macro variables in title statements, axis statements, etc. By default, the macro variable will be padded with

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Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerJanuary 16, 2013 0

Side effects of working at a great place

I'm now into my 20th year of working for SAS. This year in November I'll have my 20th "SAS-iversary" and thus mark the beginning of my third decade here. I've worked here since the Clinton administration. I've met SAS employees who were actually not yet born when I attended my

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SAS Administrators

Gregory NelsonJanuary 16, 2013 0

It’s All about the Data, Dummy!

Happy belated New Year! For what it’s worth, no, I am not calling you a “dummy” or writing this just for Chris Hemedinger– just wanted to get your attention. This blog is actually an introduction to a series that I am kicking off this year entitled: "It's all about the data…"

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Advanced Analytics

Rick WicklinJanuary 16, 2013 0

Generate binary outcomes with varying probability

A while ago I saw a blog post on how to simulate Bernoulli outcomes when the probability of generating a 1 (success) varies from observation to observation. I've done this often in SAS, both in the DATA step and in the SAS/IML language. For example, when simulating data that satisfied

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Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerJanuary 15, 2013 0

It's raining analytics

I'm always looking for ways to make my job sound more relevant to people who ask me, "so what does SAS do?" SAS does so much that I can't possibly list it all, so I need some umbrella terms that can capture the essence of it (and still keep the

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Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerJanuary 14, 2013 0

A weekend full of bad decisions

Most people try to hide the evidence of their bad decisions. But this weekend I decided to share mine to social media. I hope that it's not a career-limiting move. Actually, I made quite a few good decisions as well, outnumbering the bad ones. Still, I had many missed opportunities,

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeJanuary 14, 2013 0

Multiple Classifiers vs Small Multiples

Often we have the need to see the data by two different classifiers at the same time, as requested by a recent query on the SAS Communities page. In this example I have simulated a response over time for patients by study and treatment. We want to create series plots

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Rick WicklinJanuary 14, 2013 0

Create a bar chart with an "Others" category

When a categorical variable has dozens or hundreds of categories, it is often impractical and undesirable to create a bar chart that shows the counts for all categories. Two alternatives are popular: Display only the Top 10 or Top 20 categories. As I showed last week, to do this in

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Advanced Analytics

Sascha SchubertJanuary 11, 2013 0

Why people and process matter, in addition to great technology, in predictive analytics

The increasing use of predictive analytics in mission-critical business decisions and operations brings new challenges to the forefront for many of our customers. Throughout the last year I spoke to many customers about their use of predictive analytics and where they see areas of improvement to achieve even more success

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Advanced Analytics | SAS Events

Waynette TubbsJanuary 11, 2013 0

Friday's Innovation Inspiration - Version control

Anything that you do manually leaves the door open for error; this is especially true for your file system. Aside from that, automated processes are usually faster. Magnus Mengelbier has applied this philosophy to providing version control capabilities to SAS data sets, programs and outputs.

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJanuary 9, 2013 0

How to handle percent (%) values in SAS

Being that 2013 is the International Year of Statistics, I wanted to make sure everyone knows how to handle my favorite statistic - percent (%) - in SAS! I often see data in spreadsheets/csv/etc that purport to represent "percents"... but you have to be a bit careful when working with

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SAS Administrators

Tricia AanderudJanuary 9, 2013 0

Caching data in the SAS BI Dashboard

In version 4.3 of SAS BI Dashboard, data caching is not enabled by default. Each time a user opens a dashboard, each element on the dashboard executes a query to return the result. Enabling data caching can improve dashboard performance by generating data results in advance.

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Rick WicklinJanuary 9, 2013 0

Create a bar chart with only a few categories

Sometimes a categorical variable has many levels, but you are only interested in displaying the levels that occur most frequently. For example, if you are interested in the number of times that a song was purchased on iTunes during the past week, you probably don't want a bar chart with

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Work & Life at SAS

Ashley Bailey, MS, RDN, LDN, IFNCPJanuary 9, 2013 0

Health and Wealth Throughout the Year

Happy 2013, it’s hard to believe another year has passed! New Year’s is typically a time for new beginnings and for many people New Year’s Resolutions. How many years have you vowed on January 1st to start eating healthier, lose weight, or hit the gym more? And how often have

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerJanuary 7, 2013 0

Controlling access to custom tasks in SAS Enterprise Guide

I've bragged about how easy it is to install custom tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide. It's simple: you copy the .NET assembly (usually a single DLL file) into one of the designated folders in your SAS Enterprise Guide installation, and your task just shows up in the menu. Since I

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Analytics

Krisa TailorJanuary 7, 2013 0

Health Information Exchanges recharged: Is 2013 the year for Analytics?

The creation of Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) took off in 2009 with the establishment of the State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program (SHIECAP). Recently, it seems like HIEs have been somewhat of the middle-child, garnering less attention between the health insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion. But let’s take a

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Waynette TubbsJanuary 7, 2013 0

Extended login available for SAS web sites

Don’t you just hate this: Every time you go to your favorite website or blog you have to login again? And, it does no good to simply keep the site open in your browser, because it logs you out for no activity. Well, don’t despair. We know what you want

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Learn SAS

Rick WicklinJanuary 7, 2013 0

Getting started with the SAS/IML language: A free hands-on workshop

I am pleased to announce that this year at SAS Global Forum 2013 (San Francisco, April 27 to May 1, 2013) I am giving a free hands-on workshop (HOW) entitled "Getting Started with the SAS/IML Language." If you are not familiar with the very popular Hands-On Workshop series at SAS

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