Customer segmentation is a very basic component of most modern marketing strategies. The process involves dividing a customer base into groups of individuals who are similar in specific ways that matter in the context of your marketing programs. You can use segmentation to target groups effectively and allocate marketing resources
Chris started a tradition for SAS Press authors to post a photo of themselves with their new book. Thanks to everyone who helped with the production of Statistical Programming with SAS/IML Software.
Dear Readers, You might visit this blog for many reasons, chief among them to learn useful information about SAS. You know that I often post tips about SAS Enterprise Guide, and sometimes people go so far as to call this a "SAS Enterprise Guide" blog*. But for all of the
Suppose that you compute the coefficients of a polynomial regression by using a certain set of polynomial effects and that I compute coefficients for a different set of polynomial effects. Can I use my coefficients to find your coefficients? The answer is yes, and this article explains how. Standard Polynomial
You don't have to wait for Black Friday to save this season...SAS Global Forum Registration opens today! I would definitely recommend checking out the Early Bird Registration Rates.
Let's face it: ever since cats learned how to access the Internet, they've managed to besmirch their prestigious status as the "smarter-if-a-bit-aloof" pet. They've starred in many demeaning YouTube videos, bringing shame to their species for the sake of some cheap laughs. But I'm here to tell you: there are
I just got back from a great conference in San Diego at the 2010 meeting of the Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) where I gave several presentations on PROC IML and SAS/IML Studio. If you didn't make it to San Diego, you can still read my 2010 paper on
Sampling with replacement is a useful technique for simulations and for resampling from data. Over at the SAS/IML Discussion Forum, there was a recent question about how to use SAS/IML software to sample with replacement from a set of events. I have previously blogged about efficient sampling, but this topic
I recently returned from the 117th Annual Conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) held in Orlando, Florida. It was a tad surreal to be back with the association members and colleagues with whom I worked so closely for almost eight years when I called IACP my
Before the two most recent SAS Global Forums, I wrote posts introducing you to SAS presenters and SAS user presenters. In 2009 (my first SAS Global Forum), I wrote the SAS Presenters Series and introduced SAS professionals including I-Kong Fu, Chris Hemedinger and Daniel Jahn. In 2010, the introductions included
I love to teach SAS programming and in this blog, I hope to share best practices, tips, tricks and answer some frequently asked questions by our SAS users. I’m constantly learning more nuances of SAS and more programming languages like SQL. Why the interest in language? As you probably know,
In a classic Saturday Night Live skit back in the 70s, Dan Aykroyd portrays a man promoting his book about being mauled by a bear. Aykroyd says, “I want to emphasize – Never feed a marshmallow to a grizzly bear like this” He places a marshmallow partly in his mouth
This post is about an estimate, but not the statistical kind. It also provides yet another example in which the arithmetic mean is not the appropriate measure for a computation. First, some background. Last week I read a blog post by Peter Flom that reminded me that it is wrong
Let's pretend for a moment that you don't have SAS installed on all of your office computers. But you've got some great content locked away inside SAS data sets. Is there a way to get to the content of that data, without having to push the data through a SAS
Increase the odds of winning for you and your company in 2011 by attending SAS Global Forum at Caesar’s Palace, April 4-7, in Las Vegas. For the past 36 years, this conference has attracted over 3,000 SAS users and over 400 SAS professionals from across the globe. It’s a sure
Today I'm in San Diego at the 2010 meeting of the Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS). I am giving several presentations on SAS/IML and SAS/IML Studio: A tutorial workshop on SAS/IML Studio for the SAS/STAT User. The material in this tutorial is a small sampling of Chapters 4–11 of
This is the second in my two-post interview series with Gert Laursen and Jesper Thorlund, authors of the book, Business Analytics for Managers: Taking Business Intelligence Beyond Reporting. Part one covered data visualization and the cross-functional purpose of business analytics. Here, we talk about analytic talent, measuring innovation and educating
In this blog and in the book Statistical Programming with SAS/IML Software, I present tips and techniques for writing efficient SAS/IML programs for data analysis, simulation, matrix computations, and other topics of interest to statistical programmers. When I was writing my book, one of the reviewers commented that he wasn’t
Many forecasting software packages support hierarchical forecasting. You define the hierarchical relationship of your products and locations, create forecasts at one or more levels, and then reconcile the forecasts across the full hierarchy. In a top-down approach, you generate forecasts at the highest level and apportion it down to lower
How can you change a programming trick into a programming treat? Try this algorithm: If you develop a clever snippet of code, squirrel it away. This snippet is a "trick." If you use the trick a second time, copy and modify the code. The trick has become a "treat." If
More than 30 Premier Business Leadership Series attendees gathered for a roundtable discussion of social media in retail. "Is Your Company Antisocial? How to Effectively Engage Consumers Through Social Media and Mobility," was hosted by Michelle Thomas, Senior Brand Marketing Manager at Zappos. She was joined by Lori Schafer and
When Chris Brogan started his social media marketing agency New Marketing Labs, he stated that he would only work with Fortune 100 companies. He had no clients at the time, but lo and behold, Fortune 100 companies came calling. Now the agency’s client list includes Sony, Microsoft, PepsiCo, all of
How do you maintain a local feel in a central organization of 810 department stores in 45 states? Speaking at The Premier Business Leadership Series in Las Vegas, Steve Nevill, Executive Vice President of Inventory Management and Support for Macy’s.shared how the retailer (which had $23.5 billion in sales in
Organizations have massive amounts of data at their disposal, yet they often fail to utilize it in any meaningful way. But analytics is enabling many firms to aggressively use their data in key business processes with impressive results. You have more information at hand about your business than ever before,
Jim Davis, SAS CMO’s keynote address at the Premier Business Leadership Series this morning was about anticipating and managing change, including these six questions all organizations need to ask: Where should we leverage business analytics? Any part of a business can benefit, but the payoff is greatest where you are
Banks and bankers took a beating as a result of the recent financial crisis and recession. That beating wasn’t reserved for large Manhattan banks. Smaller community banks and regionals were painted with the same brush as the one used for those who nearly broke our global financial system – customers
Monster.com was the pioneer in the online recruitment industry. To maintain its competitive advantage more than a decade later, the company has taken the data-driven road using research, business intelligence and predictive analytics. Jean-Paul Isson, Vice President of Global BI and Predictive Analytics at Monster Worldwide spoke today about how
At the Premier Business Leadership Series today, Paul Arsego of Northeast Utilities offered up these ten steps to advancing business analytics adoption – to a packed house of attendees. Given the standing room only for his presentation – and the attendance at this conference -- it seems that people are
Are you up to date on your hotfixes for SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1? If you're not certain of the answer, you'll find out next week when you might see this message appear: This version of SAS Enterprise Guide will expire on December 1st, 2010. If you've applied any SAS Enterprise
The SAS/IML language provides the QUAD function for evaluating one-dimensional integrals. You can also use the QUAD function to compute a double integral as an iterated integral. A One-Dimensional Integration Suppose you want to evaluate the following integral: To evaluate this integral in the SAS/IML language: Define a function module
