It is becoming more and more apparent that social media is a gold mine of unstructured data that is just waiting to be analysed so that the nuggets can be extracted. At SAS Global Forum, I was particularly impressed with the diversified use of sentiment analysis and the exploration that
Jenn Sykes (you probably remember her from this great sentiment analysis post last year about American Idol), presented Predicting Electoral Outcomes with SAS® Sentiment Analysis and SAS® Forecast Studio at SAS Global Forum 2012. In addition to predicting elections, Sykes tells Anna Brown from Inside SAS Global Forum, that there is a lot of unstructured data
A reader asked: I want to create a vector as follows. Suppose there are two given vectors x=[A B C] and f=[1 2 3]. Here f indicates the frequency vector. I hope to generate a vector c=[A B B C C C]. I am trying to use the REPEAT function
Recently I posted an article on this blog on how to create bar charts with log response axes in response to a question by a user. This generated some feedback suggesting that bar charts should not be used with log response axes or with a baseline of anything other than
According to Carlos André Reis Pinheiro, social networks in communications are easy to understand and detect, so Oi Telecommunications chose that route first when trying to detect fraud. Community detection for fraud proved to be somewhat different. It is a progressive search, from looking at the entire network to looking
A SAS user (who lives in the the US) emailed me a question about SAS functions. He was reading UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) datetime values from server logs, and to make future calculations and comparisons easier, he wanted to transform the value to local datetime. The INTNX() function worked great, but
Congratulations to all of you who presented at SAS Global Forum. It takes a lot of hard work to put together the research, write a paper and presentation, and then stand on stage and present to a crowd of people you have never met. You are amazing. From all of
If you have ever searched social media - Twitter, the blogsphere, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest - for your favorite topic (I'm guessing it's baby penguins or monster truck racing), then you know that it can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. Imagine how law enforcement officers feel: They
To a statistician, the DIF function (which was introduced in SAS/IML 9.22) is useful for time series analysis. To a numerical analyst and a statistical programmer, the function has many other uses, including computing finite differences. The DIF function computes the difference between the original vector and a shifted version
Google's Chief Economist Hal Varian says the sexiest job of this decade will be statistician. Anna Brown interviewed George Hurley, a Senior Research Manager, to find out what the big deal is. Take a look at his answer and then tell me why you think being a statistician is the hot
Many SAS customers are quickly adopting 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows, and they are pleased-as-punch when they find a 64-bit version of SAS to run on it. They waste no time in deploying the new version, only to find that a few things don't work quite the same as they
Waynette is exhausted after everything she did at SAS Global Forum, so she asked me to write a blog post for her so she can take some time to rest up. ??? Hey, Waynette, like you think I’m a bundle of energy after chairing the event ??? I mean, I
Each time I attend the SAS Global Forum, I learn some tricks and this year was no different. Here're 4 tips that you might find useful for the conference next year and please leave yours in the Comments Section.
Last week I introduced this series. Today I begin to dive deeper into each of the four E's. First up? Enforcement. In 2009, there were 5.5 million police-reported traffic crashes. Law enforcement officers work diligently to prevent crashes by enforcing traffic safety laws pertaining to, among other things, seat belt
Now, we all know by now that I'm not a programmer (that makes me very sad sometimes and may frustrate some of you at times), but I know a good paper and presentation when I see one. Christopher Bost knows how to teach a topic. I went to his Tuesday
During the SAS Global Forum this past week, SAS offered several demos on mobile technology including: Michael Hecht, SAS, JMP iPad App Super Demo Chris Hemedinger hosted a Live Tech Talk on Tuesday that covered the new SAS Visual Analytics Explorer with demos on Microsoft Surface and iPad Apps Remember everyone is using mobile devices
To a statistician, the LAG function (which was introduced in SAS/IML 9.22) is useful for time series analysis. To a numerical analyst and a statistical programmer, the function provides a convenient way to compute quantitites that involve adjacent values in any vector. The LAG function is essentially a "shift operator."
Getting the axis values just right generally requires some work, and the values you want can change from case to case. One such example was discussed by Dan Heath in his post on custom axis values. Here Dan shows the usage of non uniform axis values using the VALUES option on
Question: What do John Travolta, Gina Davis, and I all have in common? (I mean, besides the obvious fact that we are all awesome dancers.) Answer: We have all had makeup applied by artist Roxie Stice. I was the host for two SAS Tech Talks, which were broadcast via Livestream
In some weird twist of fate, I have gone from being anti-social media to blogging on SAS Canada and now to blogging on the SAS Users Groups blog. Crazy world! A little about myself first: I am married, been using SAS for about a year and a half, work for
Like many SAS Global Forum attendees, I took the opportunity to attend several speaker presentations, spend time at the poster session, and visit the Demo Hall each day. The activities I attended did not disappoint, and the hands-on workshop I had been looking forward to was no exception. I have to
Unfortunately, my clone attempt didn't work like Chris Hemedinger's did. With all my papers, presentations, and demo hall duties, I realized yesterday that I certainly missed a lot. Included is my to-do list for items to watch and catch up on this weekend. Not really sure how I missed the
As always, SAS Global Forum holds a wealth of inspiration. The conversations that I have with you guys while I'm there almost always start with, "I just heard/saw/read the coolest thing. I can't wait to get home and get started using this!" For those of you who missed this year's
I had an amazing time at SAS Global Forum this year, from the Tweet Up/Geek Out on Saturday night to the closing session where Chris Hemedinger cloned himself for a high-performance speech. I had the great fortune of presenting a pre-conference workshop with Greg Nelson of Thotwave. If you are
You saw Justin Choy and Dr. Goodnight demonstrate the amazing capabilities of SAS Visual Analytics on stage during Opening Session and the Technology Connection at SAS Global Forum. I heard a lot of ooohs and ahhhs (Some were from me, I'll admit.). I also had conversations with SAS users later
There's recently been a lot of discussion and release of products around high-performance analytic architectures and in-memory computing. It seems like every vendor in the BI and analytics realm has jumped on this bandwagon. Is it all the same stuff? Or are there signficant differences? No question in our minds, the
Chris Hemedinger, Principal Technical Architect and veritable SAS celebrity, shared observations from his many years participating in SAS Global Forum as well as his favorite moments from this year’s event in a rousing keynote during a packed Closing Session yesterday. His presentation, “You don’t have to go home … but
Creating bar charts with log response axis has come up a few times in the past few days. Before we look into how we could do this, it would be worth pointing out the considerable opinion in the blogosphere against use of log response axes for bar charts. See BizIntelGuru and
Disasters happen every day. Often times they occur at inconvenient hours and in remote locations. So it’s important to have a plan - before the emergency - to get qualified personnel to those locations in the most efficient way. Pilots are an example of qualified personnel who could act as
Nine Publications colleagues describe their favorite moments of day two at SAS Global Forum. A paper, the SAS authors' dinner, SAS Visual Analytics, eBooks, documentation, attendees, and more made the list. Kathy Council – Vice President, Publications I’ve enjoyed two full days of conference activities and many meet-ups with attendees. Great folks! I
