After attending the SAS Day at Texas A&M University on Oct. 2, I came away with a new perspective on some of the different educational offerings to help fill the analytic talent gap (which according to studies and research continues to grow). In essence, there is a yin and yang of
What age women do men prefer on dating websites? - Let's have a look at the data... When I first started using computers in the early 80s, I thought it would be great to have everyone take a survey, and then let computers show you who your best matches were.
You might assume that a battle-tested businessman with a gruff exterior and a taste for salty language lacks an inner child, but you’d be wrong. Exhibit A is this little-known fact: I have a soft spot for animated Disney movies. Now, I could try to bluff a bit and say
I wrote “Business Transformation” to guide leaders through a journey to transform their organizations. I included methodologies and examples gathered throughout my 29-year consulting career to assist them. Every executive and leader focuses on how to use resources to produce value. Of course, value can be defined in many terms
Part 1: The challenge and the opportunity Mental illness continues to profoundly affect the nation’s population and, for the most part, remains greatly under analyzed. This is the first entry in a series about the mental health problem in the US, and how an analytic approach can improve care for
One of the hottest trends today in the business intelligence and analytics spaces is “self-service.” The word self-service is thrown around lightly in many situations and often carries different expectations for different people and organizations. Before we go into the details of self-service analytics it is important to have a
Is the type of car you drive more likely, or less likely, to get a speeding ticket? Let's analyze some data to find out! Do red cars attract more attention from the police, and get more tickets? How about cars with a 'racing stripe'? Or cars with a big chromed motor,
Have you heard the old saying that "Banks only loan money to people who don't need it"? Let's analyze the data and see if that is true!... I'm very much a car-guy, and I love learning about all the new vehicles, and love the new-car feel ... and even the smell. It's hard to not like a
Would you build a house without a proper foundation? Most of us wouldn’t dare, but that’s exactly what many retail businesses are doing today. When building a house, if you don’t get the foundation right, paint, wallpaper and fixtures won’t matter much. It’s no different in the retail industry. Success
It’s a great time to be a sports fan – and an even better time to be a sports and data fan as these two worlds continue to meld together. For the last couple of years nearly every conversation about sports, analytics or both had to have at least one
The first time I used the Internet it blew my mind. As a diplomat brat, at any point in time everyone I knew was everywhere but where I was. Thanks the miracles of Gopher, Veronica, IRC and email, the tyranny of distance didn’t seem so oppressive any more. When I
If you're a SAS user, chances are you're a bit of a science/technology/engineering/math nerd -- and also a fan of The Big Bang Theory. Therefore this SAS analysis on The Big Bang Theory should be right up your alley! Yesterday (September 22) was the start of the 8th season for the TV series,
Light years from Earth, within the constellation Virgo, two galaxies crashed into one another. Not something you could’ve seen peering into the night sky with the naked eye. We know it happened because astronomers pieced together images from several powerful telescopes to create what CBS News called a “cosmic magnifying
Imagine la siguiente situación: usted va al médico y le dice que algo le duele en la zona inferior del pecho. Ahora basado en esta corta descripción usted espera a que él le dé un diagnóstico y a que le sugiriera alguna terapia específica incluyendo un tiempo y un costo.
My previous post pondered the term disestimation, coined by Charles Seife in his book Proofiness: How You’re Being Fooled by the Numbers to warn us about understating or ignoring the uncertainties surrounding a number, mistaking it for a fact instead of the error-prone estimate that it really is. Sometimes this fact appears to
Data-driven marketing is all about how marketers can harness data and analytics to create a more customer-centric, fact-based approach to customer engagement. This, combined with quality execution leads to better customer experiences and improved customer equity. However when looking at customer-brand interactions in silos such as in the call centre
Imagine this situation: You go to you doctor and tell her that "something hurts in the lower chest area." Now, based on this short description of your pain, you expect her to come up with a precise diagnosis and a specific therapy suggestion, including treatment time and associated cost. Sound
Let’s go back in time to the summer of 2007. The original iPhone had just been launched. Miley Cyrus was Hannah Montana. The San Antonio Spurs were NBA Champions, and LeBron James was the savior of Cleveland Cavaliers. Insurance Executives were only concerned about legacy replacement systems. On the surface,
Capital investment in production capability is the weakest link in the business value chain. It always has been and likely always will be. It’s the driving force behind the tendency towards cartels, collusion and monopolies. While it can make the first entrant into a brand new market, in the long
Writing my previous post about digital banks got me thinking about the widespread use of analytics. In his book Digital Bank, Chris Skinner states that data should be seen as the most critical asset for digital banks. Actually, this holds true for almost every company nowadays. If you don’t have data of
In my previous post Sisyphus didn’t need a fitness tracker, I recommended that you only collect, measure and analyze big data if it helps you make a better decision or change your actions. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to know ahead of time which data will meet that criteria. We often, therefore, collect, measure and analyze
In his pithy style, Seth Godin’s recent blog post Analytics without action said more in 32 words than most posts say in 320 words or most white papers say in 3200 words. (For those counting along, my opening sentence alone used 32 words). Godin’s blog post, in its entirety, stated: “Don’t measure
It's easy to plot events that happened at a certain time, but what about events that extended over a range of dates, such as recessions? ... This blog post teaches you a nice trick to use for that! Let's say you have a plot of the labor force participation rate
Did you hear that Prince William is getting a new job? Next year, he’ll fly emergency helicopters for the East Anglian Air Ambulance. The prince, who’ll donate his salary to charity, called his new gig “one of the finest forms of public service.” The Duke of Cambridge won’t get any
If you read SAS blogs but never click through to the comment sections, you're missing some great information. Need proof? Check out some of these comments from the last few weeks. And then leave one of your own. Kelly McGuire has been studying the effects of negative hotel reviews online.
I’m sitting here staring at a book on my shelf entitled, “Impending Crisis”. Even knowing the copyright date, 2003, it could still be about any one of several possible crises: healthcare, financial, energy, education, environment. But no, in this case the impending crisis in question is provided by the subtitle: “Too many jobs,
You may have heard the phase that big data is the new oil. Well (pun intended), if that is the case, then analytics should be thought of as the fracking technique used on data to improve the value you get from this new oil. Fracking is actually just one
You are the new SAS Administrator. After the initial shock or excitement, you sit back and wonder, “What does that MEAN???” In an enterprise environment there are often divisions of duties. The SAS Intelligence Platform is no exception. Just take a look at the architecture. Just looking at this picture,
For those of you who are classic rock fans, you may remember Alice Cooper’s title track “School’s Out for Summer” on the album “School’s Out.” That song captures students’ excitement of a taking a hiatus from the classroom. But for professors, summer is a time to continue their own education
