SAS Forecast Server (release 12.3) is now shipping, and includes the new SAS Time Series Studio GUI. Time Series Studio (TSS), was released as "experimental" last August in 12.1, and is now in production. TSS provides an additional interface in Forecast Server, for time series data mining, exploration, and data preparation.
Mercifully, we have reached the final installment of Q&A from the June 20 Foresight-SAS webinar, "Forecast Value Added: A Reality Check on Forecasting Practices." As a reminder, a recording of the webinar is available for on-demand review, and the Foresight article (upon which the webinar was based) is available for free
Q: Is the MAPE of the naive forecast the basis for understanding the forecastability of the behavior? Or are there other more in depth ways to measure the forecastability of a behavior? MAPE of the naive forecast indicates the worst you should be able to forecast the behavior. You can
With this Q&A Part 3, we are about halfway through the questions submitted during the FVA webinar. We did over 15 minutes of live Q&A at the end of the webinar, and covered many of the submitted questions at that time, however I always prefer to issue complete written responses to
Q: Could you send me the presentation? With audio if possible. If you'd like a pdf of the slides, email me directly: mike.gilliland@sas.com For the audio, the webinar recording is available for free on-demand review: FVA: A Reality Check on Forecasting Practices Q: Can we get the case study referred here
As promised in yesterday's Foresight-SAS sponsored webinar on "Forecast Value Added: A Reality Check on Forecasting Practices," here is Part 1 of my written response to the over 25 questions that were submitted during the event. (Note: It may take a week or so to get through all of them.)
If an organization is spending time and money to have a forecasting process, is it not reasonable to expect the process to make the forecast more accurate and less biased (or at least not make it any worse!)? But how would we ever know what the process is accomplishing? To
Imagine a business offering a multitude of products and services that seemingly have little relationship to one another, and all are supported by different data systems. This is the plight of local governments. The products and services produced and managed by local governments range from utilities, solid waste and recycling to parks
Students with missing test scores are often highly mobile students and are more likely to be low-achieving students. It is important to include these students in any growth/value-added model to avoid selection bias, which could provide misleading growth estimates to districts, schools and teachers that serve higher populations of these
We’re just coming back from SAS Global Forum, and what a show! SAS Books was there to provide users with the highest-quality resources for learning SAS, and our users were there to tell us what new books they were most looking forward to reading. Kevin Smith's PROC TEMPLATE Made Easy:
"Why Should I Trust Your Forecasts?" now available on-demand The SAS / Foresight webinar series had a rousing kickoff on April 24, with Paul Goodwin asking (and answering) the question, "Why Should I Trust Your Forecasts?" The webinar is now available for free on-demand review . Be sure to stick
When you work at headquarters of the leader in advanced analytics software, you never know who you'll encounter in the lobby. It might be celebrity statistician (and New York Times FiveThirtyEight blogger) Nate Silver, of The Signal and the Noise and election forecasting fame. It might be Donald Wheeler, giant
In my last blog, I discussed the growing commitment among governors to infrastructure investment, and to coming up with innovative ways to find dollars to fund the needed improvements to the transportation network. I heard it over and over again during the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting in January
Sometimes, it is good to start with a confession. I filed my taxes at the last minute. It was past time to get some money back from the IRS before they could waste $60,000 on another Star Trek spoof video. Normally I'm one of those people that files in February,
Welcome to Part 3 of the value-added Myth Busters blog series. I have heard a variation of this many times. “Why shouldn’t educators just use a simple gains approach or a pre- and post-test? They can trust simpler methodologies because they can replicate and understand them more easily.” Simple growth measures
This week Nate Silver, renowned election forecaster (fivethirtyeight blog) and top selling author (of the excellent The Signal and the Noise), spoke at an event here in my building on the SAS campus. Unfortunately, I wasn't considered a B enough of a FD to land an invite to Nate's presentation. However,
A few weeks ago I found myself in a room full of fellow transportation geeks (a term I use with great respect) at the annual American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Washington Briefing. One panel in particular really got the room buzzing with talk about the transportation
Welcome to Part 2 of the value-added Myth Busters blog series…have you heard this one before? Educators serving high-achieving students are often concerned that their students’ entering achievement level makes it more difficult for them to show growth. “How can my students show growth if they are already earning high
Personally, I love studies. They help put things into context, and when done well, provide an independent and hopefully unbiased view of the forces that shape our lives. They are also a great way to see government funds used in strange ways. For example, the new NIOSH (National Institute for
In the past five years, value-added models have been increasingly adopted by states to support various teaching effectiveness policies. As educators make the paradigm shift from looking at only achievement data to incorporating growth data, many misconceptions have developed. Compounding this issue is the fact that not all value-added and
I’m a huge movie buff. I love all kinds of movies but sports films are at the top of my list. Field of Dreams is one of my favorites not only because it’s a great story but also because, in my opinion, it has one of the best movie lines.
Recently, I was having lunch with a city council member who shared a litany of comments about the outstanding job the city and its staff does in all areas of city operations. She remarked on how little the public understands about all the city does and how efficiently it’s done.
Analytics is a key piece in nearly all 31 recommendations outlined in The Innovative DOT: A Handbook of Policy and Practice. Crafted by the State Smart Transportation Initiative, in partnership with Smart Growth America, the handbook provides 31 recommendations for state transportation officials looking for ways to increase efficiencies and
It was a moonless night in April 1912 when the pinnacle of ocean travel technology and luxury, the RMS Titanic, collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,500 passengers and crew. A primary cause of the tragedy was that the captain and
Popularized rankings of "best places to work" (such as in 2012, SAS ranked #1 in the world in Great Places to Work®'s list of Multinational Workplaces) tend to focus on why it is so great to be an employee. As a potential customer of one of these best places to work, why
The creation of Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) took off in 2009 with the establishment of the State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program (SHIECAP). Recently, it seems like HIEs have been somewhat of the middle-child, garnering less attention between the health insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion. But let’s take a
Police Departments across the country are under constant scrutiny by elected officials, the media and the public to reduce crime, control costs, engage the public, always be accessible and, most important, always be courteous and professional. Police departments that demonstrate excellence in these areas can achieve accreditation by The Commission
Several years ago my mom, bless her heart, bought a cell phone. Now, my mom is not what one would call “tech-savvy”. She has had the same car forever, same furniture for 25 years (well, she did get it reupholstered), even the same pots and pans that came as wedding
I live in the South, but was raised by Midwestern Catholics from rural Minnesota. Think Jeff Foxworthy meets Fargo. A few of the great things that I have learned about folks in the South is their incredible politeness even when they are really saying, "Wow, what in the world are
Independent contractor. Two very simple words that have a dramatic impact on businesses, workers, and government programs. While most people have a basic understanding of the term, they often have very little understanding of the laws governing it, which vary significantly program by program and state by state. This has
