In the past couple months, this scenario has occurred twice. So thought I'd share a quick remedy ~ and save for my future reference when this occurs again :). In Star Schemas, there are sometimes occasions where the data quality isn't exactly perfect. And sometimes, for some users/companies, this is
We're having an early spring in North Carolina. Trees are budding, flowers are blooming, and the warmer temperatures make even a pistol whipping more enjoyable. What better way to take advantage of the new season than filling your spring with educational opportunities in forecasting. Plan in Perfect Sync with Customer
Loony. Zany. Brilliant. Hysterical. Those are some of the adjectives I use to describe The Far Side® cartoons by Gary Larson from the 1980s and early '90s. I recently rediscovered an old book, The Far Side Gallery 2, which collects some of the best of Larson's wonderfully wacky cartoons. Every
I recently asked chair Debbie Buck some questions to help us learn more about the upcoming conference. Here’s what she had to share – good reading ahead! 1) How is this year’s conference different from SAS Global Forum 2010? What’s New? SAS Global Forum 2011 includes a number of changes
This week I made a quick trip to Predictive Analytics World in San Francisco. It was my first appearance at that event, and some great things are going on at it and related conferences. It was held in conjunction with the eMetrics and Conversion conferences—all put on by Rising Media.
SAS Global Forum 2011 just over two weeks away. The R&D and product management teams are preparing the demos to show on stage during the highly-visible opening sessions. A tremendous amount of work goes into planning the program. It's great to see what they come up with. When it comes
This blog post is the ninth in our series and I can promise you that you will still be amazed by what you learn about this SAS user and friend. Today, I’ve had the privilege to interview Toby Dunn. I met him for the first time in Savannah, Georgia, in
In a previous blog post, I showed how to use the SAS/IML SORT and SORTNDX subroutines to sort rows of a matrix according to the values of one or more columns. There is another common situation in which you might need to sort a matrix: you compute a statistic for
I’m amazed that so many financial institutions seem to hold fraud at a seemingly low priority. Fraud is often viewed as “the cost of doing business.” What if your view of fraud could be altered so that it became “the profit of doing business”? With the growth in new payment
Last week, SAS held its annual analyst conference in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where SAS leaders and SAS customers spoke to a room full of industry analysts about the direction of SAS products and business strategy for 2011 and beyond. It's a pretty exclusive event, so not many attend. But -
Tapan and I had the chance to talk with Karen Washburn, Manager for the SAS Business Knowledge Series, a SAS Education Division program, who is joining us at Predictive Analytics World this week! Karen will be participating in the conference and seeking out new partners to join the Business Knowledge
Sorting is a fundamental operation in statistical programming, and most SAS programmers are familiar with PROC SORT for sorting data sets. But did you know that you can also sort rows of a SAS/IML matrix according to the value of one or more columns? This post shows how. Sorting a
OLAP Calculated Members need to be tested to ensure that the numbers are correct in various tools. What we recently found was that the member tested properly in the OLAP Studio View Cube but then in Web Report Studio, the measure wasn't correct. Essentially, it was calculating the custom measurement
Bill Franks, Chief Analytics Officer (CAO) of Teradata spent some time with us this week to talk about next week's Predictive Analytics World activities! Predictive Analytics World that takes place during Data Driven Business Week March 14-15 in San Francisco. Any thoughts you would like to share about the upcoming
Business Intelligence is a phrase that means many things to different organizations, which is why all BI vendors have their own definition. The term was coined in 1958 by Hans Peter Luhn of IBM*, who described it as “the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a
In my spare time, I enjoy browsing the StackOverflow discussion forum to see what questions people are asking about SAS, SAS/IML, and statistics. Last week, a statistics student asked for help with the following homework problem: I need to generate a one-dimensional random walk in which the step length and
Contributed by Gert Laursen--author, head of customer intelligence at Maersk Line, and business intelligence thought leader in Denmark Dear reader, In my new book, Business Analytics for Sales and Marketing Managers: How to Compete in the Information Age, you can learn how you can use analytics to reach your sales
I met Phil Holland nearly three years ago at my first SAS Global Forum. Actually, he and I met on Twitter before the conference. Phil, as @hollandnumerics, talked with me many times on Twitter about his plans for attending SAS Global Forum. He and I were excited about SAS'; plans
My colleague I-Kong Fu introduced me and several of other SAS colleagues to Nathan Gilliat, co-founder of AnalyticsCamp, which is an unconference for analytics. Whatever flavor of analytics you work with—web, email, social media, marketing, big enterprise BI, you name it—this is the place to meet and learn from interesting
In November, I introduced a series of interviews called SASonality. The term was meant to define a person – SAS user or SAS staff – who had made a lasting impression, both in the way that he or she uses SAS and cares for and treats others. The problem is
Several times a year, I am contacted by a SAS account manager who tells me that a customer has asked whether it is possible to convert a MATLAB program to the SAS/IML language. Often the customer has an existing MATLAB program and wants to include the computation as part of
When I began my job at SAS in 1999 (I was only 14 years old at the time), one of my responsibilities was taking over the production of a listserv called NEWDOCNEWS. The listserv consisted of all the new titles from Books By Users (now SAS Press) and SAS Documentation
Recently we reached out to Tyler Smith, who has been involved in the SAS users community through local, regional, and international meetings for a number of years, and pick his brain about the conference. Tyler has used SAS for nearly 20 years and received multiple invitations to speak at SAS
String comparisons in SAS software are case-sensitive. For example, the uppercase letter "F" and lowercase letter "f" are treated as unique characters. When these two letters represent the same condition (for example, a female patient), the strings need to be handled in a case-insensitive manner, and a SAS programmer might
Gerhard Svolba, author of Data Preparation for Analytics Using SAS, is working on his second book for SAS Press and this time around he’s also writing about his experience—writing the book. I’m really enjoying his weekly blog The Creation of the Book: Data Quality for Analytics. Gerhard, who resides in
Do you have many points in your scatter plots that overlap each other? If so, your graph exhibits overplotting. Overplotting occurs when many points have similar coordinates. For example, the following scatter plot (which is produced by using the ODS statistical graphics procedure, SGPLOT) displays 12,000 points, many of which
The ODS Graphics Designer allows you to design and build your own statistical graphs in SAS, without having to learn how to program in the new graph template language (GTL). The ODS Graphics Designer is a rich user interface that allows you to design these graphs based upon your own
I don't use the SAS macro language very often. Because the SAS/IML language has statements for looping and evaluating expressions, I rarely write a macro function as part of a SAS/IML programs. Oh, sure, I use the %LET statement to define global constants, but I seldom use the %DO and
I feel the experience of participating at SAS Global Forum year after year is like relishing a warm brownie! It’s the same treat but a unique experience every time. Subtle changes in the ingredients can lead to a unique and enhanced flavor. The team behind the scenes works hard to
Will I be in Las Vegas for for SAS Global Forum 2011? "You can bet on it!" In fact, I will be there and be square, since I am one of the statisticians who will represent SAS Research and Development. This year, I'm focused on three main activities: Presenting a
