Closing data gaps to promote integrated health care
Learn why integrating EHR data with pharmacy and claims data improves patient care.
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Intelligent decisioning in insurance: The escalating customer experience need
The coronavirus pandemic has changed many things in many industries – and not always in the most obvious way. Insurance companies have seen both fewer claims and fewer sales. As a result, many have realised that the process of digitisation, often started slowly before lockdown, must now be accelerated. More,
5 tips to rock your virtual event
Imagine driving in a foreign country at night with no GPS and half a tank of gas in the pouring rain. And you have to reach your destination before sunrise. That’s a little like how it felt when COVID-19 turned our 2020 plans upside down, and we raced into the
Data science in the wild: Barriers to successful data science
In my last blog post, I talked about the importance of establishing the right team for data science projects. Here, I’m going to talk about some of the barriers that can prevent successful adoption of data science. You can read my whole "data science in the wild" blog series here.
Removing repeated characters in SAS strings
SAS' Leonid Batkhan explains the data cleansing task of removing unwanted repeated characters in SAS character variables.
The expected value of the tail of a distribution
The expected value of a random variable is essentially a weighted mean over all possible values. You can compute it by summing (or integrating) a probability-weighted quantity over all possible values of the random variable. The expected value is a measure of the "center" of a probability distribution. You can
6 steps for end-to-end processing of fraud and corruption detection
Detecting malpractice and crime – whether it is fraud, people smuggling, avoiding customs or organised crime – is a complex process. Detection is all very well and a necessary step. But what are the outcomes that your organisation needs? And what workflows and triggers do you need in place to
Approaching the Holiday Season during the Pandemic
As I approach the Thanksgiving and December holidays, I feel deflated. Plans to gather and reenact time-honored traditions have been dismantled and discarded due to the pandemic. I have allowed myself to feel the sadness and the loss. And I have begun to ask myself some questions: What do these
Tips to simulate binary and categorical variables
When there are two equivalent ways to do something, I advocate choosing the one that is simpler and more efficient. Sometimes, I encounter a SAS program that simulates random numbers in a way that is neither simple nor efficient. This article demonstrates two improvements that you can make to your
Coronavirus: per million, per 100k, or percent?
A user commented on one of my previous maps ... "How can there be 820 cases of Coronavirus per 100,000 people? - There aren't even 100,000 people in my county!" Well, when you want to compare something like the number of COVID-19 cases between two areas that have differing populations,
Living a Meaning-Fun Life
This blog is part of the Aging Well series and is written by Robin Gault-Winton, MSW, owner of the organization, Playing at Life. Play is something done for its own sake. It’s voluntary. It’s pleasurable. It offers a sense of engagement. It takes you out of time; and the act
Spice It Up — 3 Seasoning Blends You Never Knew You Needed
If your salt and pepper shakers are the only seasonings that have seen the light of day in recent weeks, it’s time to step up your game with homemade seasoning blends. They’ll soon become your secret weapon to making healthy, mouth-watering meals in a flash.
The sample skewness is a biased statistic
The skewness of a distribution indicates whether a distribution is symmetric or not. The Wikipedia article about skewness discusses two common definitions for the sample skewness, including the definition used by SAS. In the middle of the article, you will discover the following sentence: In general, the [estimators] are both
Data science in the wild: The data science playground problem
You’ve finally done it. You managed to stay awake through the endless series of MOOC videos, and you’ve mastered the IRIS data set. You've learned that lm() will build you a pretty nifty model in R, and you can fit a Classifier with SciKit Learn. You know your Neural Net
Allowing for complexity, starting with our words
A few years ago I wrote a blogpost titled, An End to "But": More kindness and complexity in our words. I'm revisiting the concept as it seems apt for our times. With most of us living in increased isolation, the voice in our head may feel louder than ever. Now
Data visualizations: What are they really communicating?
Editor's note: This blog post is the first in a series of posts, originally published here by our partner News Literacy Project, exploring the role of data in understanding our world. Charts and graphs are useful tools for communicating complex information. They allow consumers to see — rather than read or calculate — differences
Do low mortgage rates bring you joy(plots)?
When it comes to plotting mortgage rate data, I often look to Len Kiefer for inspiration. He recently posted a retro-looking graph on twitter that caught my eye ... and of course I had to see if I could create something similar using SAS. For lack of a better term,
How COVID-19 redefined the customer experience
The pandemic has done more to drive consumer adoption of online channels than any digital transformation initiative – but companies should be careful what they wish for. 2020 has been a difficult year for everyone, and as the coronavirus continues to impact lives, health and the economy, it would be
Back to School Optimization
Public and private schools are struggling to figure out how to bring face-to-face instruction to students during this pandemic. Health risks to students and teachers, parents struggling with child-care options and/or support for virtual learning, and schools’ capacities and budget limitations make this problem a severe logistical challenge. Schools need
Why data scientists should be looking at analyst evaluations
An analyst report offers an unbiased, side-by-side, third-party evaluation of the technology in the market. These analysts know how to put the vendors through the paces and require proof of any claims that are made.
Confidence intervals for eigenvalues of a correlation matrix
A fundamental principle of data analysis is that a statistic is an estimate of a parameter for the population. A statistic is calculated from a random sample. This leads to uncertainty in the estimate: a different random sample would have produced a different statistic. To quantify the uncertainty, SAS procedures
Uncovering the truth about sharks with analytics
[Editor's note: This post was co-authored with Fritz Lehman, COO of Zencos] In 1976, the blockbuster movie Jaws was the number one grossing film. Why? Because it had a great villain – the great white shark. The movie told a vivid (and all too familiar) story about plans gone awry
Your recipe for unlimited capacity starts in the cloud
The first principle of analytics is about bringing the right analytics technology to the right place at the right time. Whether your data are on-premises, in the cloud, or at the edges of the network – analytics needs to be there with it. Being true to this principle means we
Coronavirus: Know the terms, stay the course
Jim Harris examines coronavirus terms that are crucial to data-driven decisions in the pandemic.
The need for change even when successful
The companies I usually deal with, especially healthy and successful ones, often don’t believe that they need to change. However, I think this is where problems take root. I believe changes should be made when things are going well because when they have gone wrong, it's too late. You no
Anatomy of a swing state
Every presidential candidate has a list of states they’re expected to win, but there are always states that are too close to call because they have similar numbers of registered voters for each of the two dominant political parties: Democrat and Republican. It’s in these “swing” states that candidates invest
5 things every student should know about data science
SAS has always believed in the power of education, but in today’s data-driven economy, it’s more important than ever to ensure our students are introduced to data science at an early age. We as a company are focusing our resources on creating student experiences in data literacy, computer science and
Introducing the SAS academic case library
A global teaching resource for post-COVID-19 academia During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments used data science modelling to justify actions around lockdowns, and then again, in due course, when they eased restrictions. These actions affected billions of citizens’ lives and livelihoods. The importance of analytical calculation and competence was brought home,
How to make sure AI and ML models survive and thrive
SAS' Véronique Van Vlasselaer reveals why managing model performance is as important as putting them into production.
What to Wear After Swimming
No access to locker rooms? It's cold outside! How do I get out of my swim suit for the ride home? Won't it be cold? These are some of the most common questions we've had since we re-opened the Natatorium. Gracefully changing out of your wet suit into dry clothes
