Just as we all eagerly awaited announcement of the $1 million prize winner of the Pillsbury Bake-Off(R), every forecasting software vendor has endured the "bake-off" hosted by organizations in the market for new forecasting software. Software selection teams utilize a bake-off to help evaluate competing vendors. Vendors are given a
As I mentioned in a recent post, I've just completed reading Dear Undercover Economist by Tim Harford. I acquired a copy of Tim's book at the SAS Professionals Convention, and I was fortunate enough to meet Tim in person and have him sign the book. He impressed me as very
The F2010 Business Forecasting Conference wrapped up on June 8. Chaired by Tim Rey of Dow Chemical and Jerry Oglesby of SAS, this was another strong event, bringing together 248 forecasters from business, government, and academics, representing 27 states and 11 countries. It was also an opportunity for all to
I spent last week in the UK for the SAS Professionals Convention. It was my first time visiting the UK. If my experience is any indication, then the area (just outside of London) is constantly warm and very bright. However, I did visit very near the summer solstice and I'm
I'm at the SAS Professionals Convention in Marlow, UK, where over 100 SAS users participated in one of the largest SAS certification events ever held. Also present at the event: a mother duck working to achieve a milestone of her own, by hatching a family of ducklings. According to the
~Contributed by Steve Benfield, Senior Director of Corporate Communications ~ Need a translation? Here you go: What In The World Is Wrong With “SGF?” Make sense now? Surely I don’t need to spell out SGF for an audience of SAS users, do I? Well, a quick Google search will tell
If you send me an e-mail message next week, this is what you can expect in return. Thanks for your e-mail. I'm attending the SAS Professionals Convention in Marlow, UK. That's right, I'm in Merry Old England, the birthplace of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Ginger Spice, and Doctor Who.
What do you do when you and your spouse are both SAS users, but one of you likes to point-and-click and the other really likes to write SAS programs? Is it possible to share a SAS environment, or are these irreconcilable differences that can lead only to a nasty custody
I am pleased to announce publication of The Business Forecasting Deal: Exposing Myths, Eliminating Bad Practices, Providing Practical Solutions, available now in a convenient carry-everywhere size (approx 6” x 9” x 1”), or for download to your Kindle. Table of contents, sample sections (including the Prologue, Forewords by Tom Wallace
I'm using this post to share links to several SAS-related blogs created by others. This is me acting generous by sharing -- it's not me acting lazy by shirking an original post. Really. Datum Reparo! AnnMaria waves her SAS Enterprise Guide magic wand, utters a few (magic?) words, and makes
"Less Wrong" is the name of the blog where I found this layman's explanation of Bayes' Theorem. As I've pointed out before, I'm not a statistician. But I can comprehend basic statistical explanations such as the explanation of the Monty Hall problem. Understanding the concepts and being able to apply
I've known Jim Cox for a long time. He's the SAS R&D manager for SAS Text Miner, and a gifted singer. We almost never talk about work stuff, because Jim is waaaaay too smart for me. That's why I was so pleased to discover Jim's series of blog entries about
Like any good SAS professional, I subscribe to the SAS Samples RSS feed. The other day I found this sample that shows how to create a PDF report about the contents of a SAS Information Map. It's a nice example: it shows how to use the INFOMAPS engine and ODS
As Shane reveals on his blog, your SAS session is equipped to read data that are encoded for all types of machine architectures and locales. ASCII, EBCDIC, 32- or 64-bit, English, Japanese, Greek, Hebrew: the list goes on and on. SAS accomplishes this by using a feature called Cross-Environment Data
Susan and Lora share all of the details on the OpenMic blog. (You can also see it on the SAS Publishing Facebook page.) I was pleased to have reviewed the book for technical content before it was published. As usual, Susan and Lora did a great job; they know what
Why does this SAS program produce an error? proc means data=sashelp.cars mean median min max; by origin; run; It's because SASHELP.CARS is a SAS data set, and SAS data sets observations are stored and processed sequentially, and a BY group operation requires that the observations are already grouped and sorted
Was it the economy? the timing? the location? or the brilliant and good looking Forum panel? That will be for history (or you) to decide. What we do know is that is that the Institute of Business Forecasting’s Best Practices Conference in San Francisco, April 28-30, drew a large and
SAS catalogs have been around for a long time. Not quite as long as the Sears or L.L. Bean catalogs, but SAS customers have used catalogs to store and retrieve content for many years. A SAS catalog is a special type of SAS file that acts as a container, like
Curt Monash posted a nice summary of the current and planned offerings that help to make SAS analytics more available "in the database" -- allowing you to analyze your data quickly without having to move it around so much. If you use SAS with Teradata, Netezza, or DB2, much of
This is the topic of an 8-minute video tip from SAS Education. What's great about this tip: not only does it show you how to keep historical versions of reports and data that you create in your projects, but it also provides a nice example of cross-tab reporting in SAS
My friend Tom Reilly of Automatic Forecasting Systems posted this comment on the INFORMS discussion group on LinkedIn: Some use all of the data and some withhold data to find the best forecasting model? Withholding is arbitrary as changing the withhold from x to y means a completely different model
I've just read that Sony plans to discontinue the manufacture of 3.5-inch floppy disks. [Update: a more complete tribute to the floppy disk is over on Geek News Central.] The announcement made me nostalgic for the days when we shipped The SAS System on floppies. I don't think we've done
Little SAS Book author Susan Slaughter attended SAS Global Forum this year, as she always does. She had to travel to Seattle this time to get her hands on an early copy of her own new book, The Little SAS Book for SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2, which she updated with
I had the pleasure of attending Gongwei Chen’s SAS Global Forum 2010 presentation, Get Certified as an Advanced SAS® Programmer in Six Months or Less! As you might expect, Gongwei is a Certified Advanced Programmer. To become certified at the advanced level, a programmer must pass both the SAS Base
For a service organization like ours, there are few things more valuable, let me correct that, nothing is more valuable, than feedback from our users. We are really lucky in this regard; SAS users are not bashful about sharing their opinions when it comes to “their” software. We certainly benefited
Dave Thomas interviews SAS CMO Jim Davis at SAS Global Forum 2010 in Seattle. Davis talks about the launch of SAS Social Media Analytics and the apparently awakening over analytics even in a tough economy. Web Links:YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZgSLLIkAgE SAS.com:http://www.sas.com/apps/webnet/SGF2010VideoBlog/index.html?videoID=isgf10episode12
SAS CEO Jim Goodnight talks about SAS' new offerings in High Performance Computing and Social Network Analysis, price changes for SAS OnDemand for Education and this year's SAS Global Forum conference in Seattle. Web Links:YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBdv5ofvaGk SAS.com:http://www.sas.com/apps/webnet/SGF2010VideoBlog/index.html?videoID=isgf10episode11
Jean Balent gave a quick 20-minute presentation of her ideas that may help programmers become more organized and therefore more productive. The presentation is a shortened version of her paper, How to become an organized SAS programmer. In fact, her tips may be useful in other areas of your career.
In one area of the Convention Center, writing on the wall is actually encouraged. The Innovation Wall, a giant semi-circular display in the Demo Area, shows a timeline of SAS innovations on one side with open space on the other for attendees to write about how they’ve innovated with SAS.
From agriculture to wholesale, 29 industries were represented at SAS Global Forum 2010. Which industry was the most well-represented? Here's a breakdown of the top ten by percentage of attendees: 1. Government (13%) 2. Education (12%) 3. Healthcare insurance (10%) 4. Pharma (9%) 5. Consulting and systems integration (8%) 6.
