How Analytics Enhances Sustainability in Agriculture
Analytics can help to surface broad macro-scale issues about productivity, demand, and ideal methods of cultivation.
English
Lunchbox lineup
When my son started kindergarten last year, I was excited to embark on the lunchbox packing adventure. The year started out strong but about a month or two in, the novelty wore off. Sound familiar? While this school year looks very different for most of us, the dreaded school lunchbox
Building custom apps on top of SAS Viya, Part Two: Understanding the integration points
Welcome back! Today, I continue with part 2 of my series on building custom applications on SAS Viya. The goal of this series is to discuss securely integrating custom-written applications into your SAS Viya platform. In the first installment of this series, I outlined my experiences on a recent project.
Kids, Anxiety, and Resiliency
This blog is reposted from March 2015. Many of our kids are dealing with high levels of anxiety related to the pandemic and online school so it seems like a good time to re-post it. I recently read an article I loved on how to explain anxiety to children. Even
Inclusive terminology: Knowing better, doing better
Inclusion and diversity are strengths. The SAS company culture is built on a foundation of caring for one another and holding ourselves and others accountable. That includes recognition and accountability for where we can improve. Our work of inclusivity is evolving and continuous. We must frequently re-examine the way we speak, act
4 analytics use-case domains for municipalities to exploit
Local government gets some bad press. There is no doubt that some could be better, but many are strongly focused on delivering high-quality services for their citizens. However, these "good news" stories seldom make the press – even in local newspapers in slow weeks. Like most public sector organisations around
People Behind the Models: Matthew Galati
As COVID-19 began to spread rapidly, curious minds from across the company were tapped to create analytic models to help – fast. “In the early stages of the pandemic, SAS created a companywide internal organization with the goal of providing analytics to help combat the pandemic. The COVID-10 Science Advisory
Matrix balancing: Update matrix cells to match row and column sums
Matrix balancing is an interesting problem that has a long history. Matrix balancing refers to adjusting the cells of a frequency table to match known values of the row and column sums. One of the early algorithms for matrix balancing is known as the RAS algorithm, but it is also
Using locale-specific format catalogs to create reports in multiple languages
This blog post, inspired by my work on this topic with a SAS customer, focuses on how to create and use locale-specific informats to read in numeric values from a Microsoft Excel file and then transform them into SAS character values. I incorporated this step into a macro that transforms ones and zeroes from the Excel file into meaningful information for multilingual readers.
Internships open doors: Carlotta’s career story so far
My name is Carlotta Pacifici, I’m 25 years old and I live in Rome. Last November, I started an internship at SAS while completing my degree course in statistics at the University of Rome La Sapienza. How it began I first got to know SAS in the first year of
Using SAS to convert IP addresses into numerical IP values
As citizens of the Internet, we are all familiar with IP addresses -- probably more so than our Internet founding fathers had ever intended. These addresses are typically represented in a 4-piece segmented list of numbers separated by dots. Here is an example: "149.173.5.120". Each segment is called an octet
SAS Grid Manager and SAS Viya: A Strong Relationship
Because SAS Viya provides distributed computing capabilities, customers wonder how it compares to SAS Grid Manager. SAS® Grid Manager and SAS® Viya® implement distributed computing according to different computational patterns.
All hail the SAS programmer!
SAS offering free learning resources in celebration of programmers For more than 40 years, SAS programmers have crafted software and solutions that transform the world. From statistics to data science, to analytics and artificial intelligence, people writing code have architected a new economy with incredible opportunities. SAS Programmer Week honors
The future of government with SAS Analytics on Azure
Through our new strategic partnership, SAS and Microsoft are helping the public sector realize the power of analytics in the cloud. I spoke with Daniel Sumner, Worldwide Director of Smart Infrastructure at Microsoft, to explore the possibilities of more robust analytics and cloud strategies in government — and the technology
The HighLow plot: When a stacked bar chart is not enough
The HighLow plot often enables you to create many custom plots without resorting to annotation. Although it is designed to create a candlestick chart for stocks, it is incredibly versatile. Recently, a SAS programmer wanted to create a patient-profile graph that looked like a stacked bar chart but had repeated
AI reduces procurement fraud, error and abuse
In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on financial crime in both public and private entities. The press coverage of money laundering, tax fraud and employee embezzlement of public funds is greater than it has been in the past several years. This increased awareness leads to an increasing
Focusing on What I Can Control
Last year when I recorded an on-demand webinar on the topic of Managing Stress I had no idea that in a few short months the world would change so much due to Covid-19. Almost overnight, the everyday stressors people feel became exacerbated worldwide and this same stress and anxiety has
Three digital transformation challenge areas ahead for insurance providers in Turkey
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, SAS has formed dedicated global teams to predict and monitor the pandemic’s course and identify the likely impact for customers. In Turkey, we have identified three main risk areas for insurers and have set out some strategies to help our clients respond, recover
Building custom apps on top of SAS Viya, Part One: Where's the value?
This series is geared towards walking you through a piece of the puzzle of operationalizing your analytics: securely integrating your custom applications into your SAS Viya platform. This is particularly useful after exposing your analytics as HTTP REST APIs, as we'll see an intentionally brief example of in this first
The best way to generate dummy variables in SAS
On discussion forums, many SAS programmers ask about the best way to generate dummy variables for categorical variables. Well-meaning responders offer all sorts of advice, including writing your own DATA step program, sometimes mixed with macro programming. This article shows that the simplest and easiest way to generate dummy variables
Analyzing happiness data in 2020
Remember back to your early school days, singing with all your classmates “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands!” and then we’d all clap our hands. Being happy back then was so simple. Today, it’s hard to get away from all the negative headlines of 2020! It’s
Build a decision tree in SAS
Decision trees are a fundamental machine learning technique that every data scientist should know. Luckily, the construction and implementation of decision trees in SAS is straightforward and easy to produce. There are simply three sections to review for the development of decision trees: Data Tree development Model evaluation Data The
How to use machine learning to drive your business
Making decisions based on what ML solutions have learned has become a prerequisite for running an innovative business.
Catch a fraudster: Finding the needle in the haystack with AI
Fraud, waste and abuse (FWA) ravages the US health care system. Estimates from the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association show fraud costs health care organizations $70 billion to $230 billion each year. The precise figure is unknowable because only 3 to 10% of this fraud is ever detected. With more
Fast Times - the truth about time-restricted eating
Whether you call it intermittent fasting, time-restricted eating, circadian-rhythm fasting or simply skipping breakfast, reducing the number of hours you eat in a day has been gaining in popularity over the past decade. It has been cited as a strategy to lose weight, control blood sugar, reduce the risk of
Rewinding random number streams: An application
In the paper "Tips and Techniques for Using the Random-Number Generators in SAS" (Sarle and Wicklin, 2018), I discussed an example that uses the new STREAMREWIND subroutine in Base SAS 9.4M5. As its name implies, the STREAMREWIND subroutine rewinds a random number stream, essentially resetting the stream to the beginning.
Meet Alfred Mukudu: Helping customers digitally transform with data and analytics
Meet Alfred Mukudu in this third post of the Humans of SAS Services series.
Analytics for everyone with SAS Viya
Analytics is playing an increasingly strategic role in the ongoing digital transformation of organizations today. However, to succeed and scale your digital transformation efforts, it is critical to enable analytics skills at all tiers of your organization. In a recent blog post covering 4 principles of analytics you cannot ignore,
Whatever you are feeling right now is valid
When the pandemic began, a therapist told me that the one thing that would be consistent during this time is the fact that my emotions would be inconsistent. This would be one thing I could actually count on. My acceptance of this has been my lifeline for getting through this
Decisioning at scale: Why banks need to radically change their operating models now
Twelve years ago, the banking industry suffered deep reputational damage in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. Bankers took the blame – in some cases deservedly – for large-scale economic problems that took a severe toll on many of society’s most vulnerable people. The crisis severely shook banks
