SAS is hosting this year’s European Analytics 2015 conference in Rome November 9 – 11. This three-day inspiring event will give you the chance to boost your company’s analytics culture in an international environment to make sure your knowledge and expertise meet the demands of the digital era. But what if we could travel back in time to the ancient Rome and take today’s analytics software with us? Would SAS be of any use for the Romans?

In the 6th century BCE the Roman king Servius Tullius instituted the census. The word "census" originated from the Latin word censere ("to estimate"). During ancient Roman times every five years every male Roman citizen in the empire had to register for the census. There’s even a reference to a Roman census in the Bible, where the birth of Jesus occurred in Bethlehem, because Mary and Joseph traveled there to be enumerated in the census. The census was used to count the number of citizens in the Roman empire, the potential military strength of the empire to attack other countries, and for tax revenue purposes.

But imagine the extended use of the census if only the Romans could have benefited from today’s SAS analytics software….

SAS Forecast Server could have been used when planning a school system, as there is a need for a forecast of the number of pupils who are likely to go to school, in order to ensure that the schools will be built in locations with appropriate capacity.

The most efficient roads could have been designed with SAS/OR Software to optimize traffic and transportation.

With SAS Enterprise Miner the Romans could have discovered interesting patterns with regards to the spread of diseases, the harvest of grains, lost and won battles, and they even might have done some accurate predictions!

SAS Visual Analytics could have supported the senate in making decisions, for instance by visualizing characteristics of the population in the entire empire.

If you want to understand how your company can benefit from SAS Analytics software, then don’t hesitate to join us in Rome for Analytics 2015. I’m sure Servius Tullius would have been delighted to be there! According to me he would be particularly interested in attending some presentations of the SAS Talks track, which will be presented by employees in R&D and Product Management. Just a sample of employees flying over from headquarters to present include:

Explaining the Past and Modeling the Future: What's new in econometrics and time series Ken Sanford, Principal Research Statistician in Advanced Analytics R&D - SAS

Exploiting Parallelization in Optimization Manoj Chari, Senior R&D Director in the Advanced Analytics R&D Division - SAS

Statistical Model Building for Large, Complex Data: Four New Directions in SAS/STAT® Software Bob Rodriguez, Senior Director Research & Development -SAS