The case for automating data management
In the first post of a two-part series, Phil Simon plays point-counterpoint with himself.
English
Vectorize the computation of the Mandelbrot set in a matrix language
When my colleague, Robert Allison, blogged about visualizing the Mandelbrot set, I was reminded of a story from the 1980s, which was the height of the fractal craze. A research group in computational mathematics had been awarded a multimillion-dollar grant to purchase a supercomputer. When the supercomputer arrived and got
SAS Event Stream Processing on SAS Cloud - my journey
In a previous post, Zero to SAS in 60 Seconds- SAS Machine Learning on SAS Cloud, I documented my experience with a SAS free trial on the SAS Cloud. Well, the engineers at SAS have been busy and created another free trial. The new trial covers SAS Event Stream Processing
35 (not an Adele album)
In July 1984 I was a public health nurse assigned to Willow Spring, Holly Springs and Fuquay, bustling between three public schools, home health visits, and a clinic on Fuquay Avenue that shared space with the local DMV office—a small white frame house divided in half to provide two essential
A machine learning balancing act: Payments, customer experience, fraud detection
The range of potential payment services has expanded rapidly over the last few years. Increasingly, we all want the flexibility of being able to pay with new payment methods, from contactless through to Apple Pay, mobile wallets and beyond. Digital natives, such as millennials, don’t just want this – they
The *real* country names in Europe
Have you ever had one of those moments when something you had assumed was true all your life, turned out not to be true? I remember that happening in my high school Spanish class (taught by the wonderful Señor Shoaf), when he let us in on a little secret -
Building a recommendation engine with SAS
How we built a recommendation engine for new topics on communities.sas.com. We used data, machine learning, and DevOps to build a scoring engine with SAS.
A DATA step compiler trick to get the record count
Years ago I saw a line of SAS code that was really puzzling. It was a statement that started with: if 0 then … ; What? This was a statement that would always be evaluated as false. Why would anyone write such a statement? Recently, I was discussing with a
How do I explain a flat-line forecast to senior management?
How do you explain flat-line forecasts to senior management? Or, do you just make manual overrides to adjust the forecast? When there is no detectable trend or seasonality associated with your demand history, or something has disrupted the trend and/or seasonality, simple time series methods (i.e. naïve and simple
Celebrating Future Leaders on #NationalInternDay
It’s National Intern Day! Created by WayUp, National Intern Day is a holiday dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the future leaders of the world: Interns. At SAS, we feel like every day should be Intern Day, but National Intern Day presents a unique opportunity to celebrate the unique value interns
Curious about CBD?
In the previous blog, The Endocannabinoid System, I reviewed how the endocannabinoid system (ECS) works, what it affects and a few ways to optimize how it functions. The use of exogenous cannabinoids like CBD is one way to change how your ECS is working, and it’s a hot topic right
Implement the Gumbel distribution in SAS
SAS supports more than 25 common probability distributions for the PDF, CDF, QUANTILE, and RAND functions. Of course, there are infinitely many distributions, so not every possible distribution is supported. If you need a less-common distribution, I've shown how to extend the functionality of Base SAS (by using PROC FCMP)
What Would a Digital Dial-Back Look Like for You?
I recently hosted a Digital Dial-Back Challenge. For two weeks participants chose a form of technology they wanted to assess and potentially reduce their use of. This was not a detox. Instead, by creating a plan including strategies and "alternative actions", participants found increased opportunities to be aware of their
Our Storytellers: Keith Teo
If you're curious what makes SAS a great workplace, one answer always rises to the top - our people. It's no secret that the people who work here are some of the best and brightest - not to mention the most passionate, accountable, authentic and curious people you'll ever meet. And at SAS, Your
Do you need data hunters?
Without the right data, any analytics initiative is just an illusion. For machine and deep learning efforts, new sources of data are always in demand. In a few of our Innovation at Scale study interviews, respondents pointed to the rising need for data hunters. I asked our resident guru on
3 tips for building a better data lake
Guest blogger Khari Villela shares tips to help you skip common pitfalls of building a data lake.
Travel around the world, always in perfect weather!
The guys over at reservations.com recently posted a really interesting idea, and a map to go along with it! They worked out an itinerary where you could spend one year traveling around the world (staying in a different place each week), and always be in a comfortable temperature around 70-75°
Extreme values: What is an extreme value for normally distributed data?
Is 4 an extreme value for the standard normal distribution? In high school, students learn the famous 68-95-99.7 rule, which is a way to remember that 99.7 percent of random observation from a normal distribution are within three standard deviations from the mean. For the standard normal distribution, the probability
Usage of machine learning models in forecasting
About four weeks ago i attended the ISF forecasting conference in Thessaloniki for the first time. It was a great conference with a lot of focus on forecasting methods. This year one of the hot topics was how to use machine learning in forecasting. One of the key questions was
How the RANK procedure calculates ranks with groups and ties
The RANK procedure (PROC RANK) is useful for ranking numeric variables in a data set across observations. You often see PROC RANK used to rank data into quartiles, deciles, or percentiles. This action requires that you use the GROUPS= option in the PROC RANK statement. This blog answers three questions
Ring of fire: Visualizing 5,000 years of solar eclipses
When a new Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, the Moon can cast a shadow on certain regions of the Earth. This natural phenomenon creates a solar eclipse, meaning the Moon covers, or eclipses, your view of the Sun if you're in that region. No surprise that in
Fun with Mandelbrot sets and Proc SGplot
A few years ago Mandelbrot sets and fractals were all the rage! (Am I showing my age? Hahaha!) I thought creating some plots of this type of data would be a good way to sharpen my SAS programming skills, and it would make a nice/interesting example to help teach people
Models for the real world – the deployment hassle
Building a predictive model is generally not the end of the project. Indeed, there is a major difference between building a model and actually getting it ready for people to use in their products and services. Even if the purpose of the model is to increase knowledge of the data,
The Art of Simplicity
A cup of dark roast coffee, sunrise porch time, fresh sheets, a garden tomato, the smell of a new book, a glass of red fireside.....These are a few of my favorite things. All so simple, yet they bring me so much joy. Henry David Thoreau author, naturalist, philosopher, was born
Passing comma-delimited values into SAS macros and macro functions
Have you ever tried to pass comma-delimited values to SAS macro or to a SAS macro function? How can SAS distinguish commas separating parameters or arguments from commas separating parts of the values? Passing comma-delimited value as an argument to a SAS macro function Let’s say you want to extract
Intelligent ways to use data to make your organisation more disruptive
Organisations across the globe are caught in the midst of a digital revolution – one that has sent shockwaves rippling through every industry. Business leaders recognise the scale and pace of change: 68 per cent of executives surveyed by Accenture say that they expect their industry to be significantly disrupted
Write numeric and character matrices to a data set from SAS/IML
In the SAS/IML language, a matrix contains data of one type: numeric or character. If you want to create a SAS data set that contains mixed-type data (numeric and character), SAS/IML 15.1 provides support to write multiple matrices to a data set by using a single statement. Specifically, the CREATE
Caregiving: Creating a Care Team
“Sharon” is overwhelmed by caring for her parents: both of their caregiving needs are increasing, she is weary from lack of sleep and fearful that her own health is in jeopardy. Her siblings live out of the area and seem unable to help. In addition to caring for her parents,
Caregiving with Siblings: Family Meetings
Last month I wrote a blog about sibling rivalry in caregiving which began with the following thoughts: 'As we are all well aware, providing caregiving for our parent(s) is complicated and messy. Siblings can often be both a blessing and a curse in this process, providing much needed relief and
"It's not fair!" Sibling Rivalry in Caregiving
As we are all well aware, providing caregiving for our parent(s) is complicated and messy. Siblings can often be both a blessing and a curse in this process, providing much needed relief and support, or perhaps creating additional stress and barriers to important decisions and resources. Why is this the