In parts one and two of this blog posting series, we introduced machine learning models and the complexity that comes along with their extraordinary predictive abilities. Following this, we defined interpretability within machine learning, made the case for why we need it, and where it applies. In part three of
With the recent midterm elections here in the US, I frequently saw congressional district maps popping up in the news. And being a GraphGuy, I wanted to fully understand these maps, to see if I might could improve them. If you're interested in congressional district maps, follow along as I
Phil Simon chimes in with some tips on how to set these folks loose.
Migration, version road maps and configurations were the themes of several questions that came up in a recent webinar about combining SAS Grid Manager and SAS Viya. This blog post gives the answers.
How different is different? Descriptive analytics is powerful. You get to see your data and seeing is believing as they say. But blindly believing what you see is not always the best strategy. Asking someone else if they see what you see helps but is still subjective. Objectivity starts with
Fall…it’s my favorite time of year. The air is crisp, the leaves are colorful and exercising outdoors is once again appealing. Most of all, its this time of year that I turn my attention to one of my favorite events of the year: #GivingTuesday. While Cyber Monday and Black
When solving optimization problems, it is harder to specify a constrained optimization than an unconstrained one. A constrained optimization requires that you specify multiple constraints. One little typo or a missing minus sign can result in an infeasible problem or a solution that is unrelated to the true problem. This
With today being an election day here in the US, I see a lot of people wearing the 'I Voted' sticker. This got me wondering if I could create my own sticker ... using SAS software and simple graphics primitives. :-) So I started by using Proc Gslide to create
I've collected accelerometer data with a third-party app. I've used some SAS tricks to import all of my data readings in a single step. Now I'm ready to create a report of these data in SAS Visual Analytics.
The only constant is change – Heraclitus As online user behavior continues to evolve, user expectations are growing as well. More and more, users expect to be known; thus, web personalization and targeted content are becoming mission critical and an expectation, not an exception. Using SAS Customer Intelligence 360, we
You can communicate with various clients (SAS, Python, Lua, Java, and REST) in the same place using SAS® Cloud Base Analytics Services (CAS) in SAS Viya. But before you can do any analysis in CAS you need some data to work with, and a way to get to it. Check out this dynamic data selection tip using SAS Viya and Python.
What’s the most important component of analytic analysis? The data? The model? The deployment? Getting the business problem right? All the above? Or does it simply depend on who you ask? While the model gets all the attention, and the data requires most of the effort, there is that step
In part one of this blog posting series, we introduced machine learning models as a multifaceted and evolving topic. The complexity that gives extraordinary predictive abilities also makes these models challenging to understand. They generally don’t provide a clear explanation, and brands experimenting with machine learning are questioning whether they
What does it take to see the work we do as more than a source of income? It's about looking beyond the day-to-day tactical items of a to-do list. For our employees, it's about connecting to the significant contributions SAS makes to the world. And our own Jared Peterson experienced
Will the real Pareto distribution please stand up? SAS supports three different distributions that are named "Pareto." The Wikipedia page for the Pareto distribution lists five different "Pareto" distributions, including the three that SAS supports. This article shows how to fit the two-parameter Pareto distribution in SAS and discusses the
In their new book, SAS Viya: the R Perspective, Kevin Smith and Xiangxiang Meng provide an overview of using R with the SAS Viya platform. Read on to see how R programmers can use CAS.
Who says technical people can't have fun!?! Similar to Throwback Thursday / #TBT (when people post one of their old/nostalgic photos on social media), I like the tradition of Fun Friday when I use a fun data topic to test our software - a test can be just as rigorous using
Health care is facing an unprecedented need to reform, drive quality and cut costs. Growth in targeted, specific treatments and diagnostic technology, coupled with a rise in people with long-term and multiple chronic conditions, is creating unsustainable demand on the system. To thrive – or even merely survive – health
The TEXT plot was introduced with SAS 9.4M2 to facilitate placement of text strings in a graph. This replaces the MARKERCHAR feature of the SCATTER plot statement, which is still available, but it is better to use TEXT plot in most cases. The syntax is: text x=column y=column text=column </
As machine learning takes its place in numerous advances within the marketing ecosystem, the interpretability of these modernized algorithmic approaches grows in importance. According to my SAS peer Ilknur Kaynar Kabul: We are surrounded with applications powered by machine learning, and we’re personally affected by the decisions made by machines
SAS Technical Support has had several requests from customers who want to use SAS® software to help download their files from a website when there is no application programming interface (API) to do it. This post shows how to automate downloads using PROC HTTP and DATA step, and how to use the HTTP DEBUG statement.
I've worked at SAS for over 27 years and have often been asked: What does SAS do? or Why should I choose SAS? It all boils down to one question: Why SAS? While there are many approaches to answering this question, I recently came up with three short, yet powerful,
Innovation is born from curiosity. And at SAS, curiosity is in our values, our DNA, and in our history. Curiosity drove our founders to create SAS, and it all started with a simple question: Is there a better way to analyze data? Year after year, we continued to grow by
We have updated our software for improved interpretability since this post was written. For the latest on this topic, read our new series on model-agnostic interpretability. While some machine learning models – like decision trees – are transparent, the majority of models used today – like deep neural networks, random forests, gradient boosting
Artificial intelligence often seems misunderstood, especially in fraud. The same is true of machine learning. One of the amazing things about them is they ask the unasked questions. This occurs as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) go about their daily work. So, what is the unasked question? Too
President Donald Trump - people seem to either love him or hate him. Which makes for an interesting data-analysis topic ... tracking Trump's approval rating. Follow along as I explore some data! I'll start with what I consider the 'best' approval-rating graph I've found so far. Here's a screen-capture of
Jim Harris says people still play a pivotal role in data-driven decision making.
This article is the first in a series of three publications covering REST APIs and their use in, and with SAS. Today, I want to cover a basic example using SAS Viya REST APIs to download an image from a report in SAS Visual Analytics.
What skills will students need in order to pursue a lucrative career in analytics? I recently interviewed two professors to find out. In my first post, the professors discussed the importance of teaching and learning analytics. Today, we'll hear their top advice for students studying analytics, such as: get a
How do you deploy your model so that business processes can make use of it? This post explores how SAS Viya applications can directly add models to a model repository, and specifically focuses on how to deploy them with SAS Model Manager to Hadoop.
