Blogs

Blogs

Advanced Analytics

Move beyond spreadsheets to data mining, forecasting, optimization – and more

Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Mike GillilandNovember 26, 2014 0

IBF blog series on Forecast Value Added

Calling All Forecasters Have you tried Forecast Value Added analysis? What did you find out? Are you willing to share your learnings (at least those that can be revealed publicly)?Would you like to be featured in a new blog series on FVA, published by the Institute of Business Forecasting? The IBF was

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Advanced Analytics

Imre PólikNovember 25, 2014 0

SAS/OR slides from talks at the 2014 INFORMS Annual Conference

The 2014 INFORMS Annual Conference in San Francisco was quite a success. Record attendance, diverse program, great city, lovely weather: who can ask for more? SAS and, in particular, SAS/OR was well-represented with a number of talks in all areas of operations research. Here is a somewhat arbitrary selection, please click

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Mike GillilandNovember 24, 2014 0

Lancaster Centre for Forecasting survey

Can you spare a few minutes to assist researchers at the Lancaster Centre for Forecasting? We have been commissioned by the European Journal of Operational Research to write a review article on Supply Chain Forecasting. In undertaking this task, we would like to ensure that the topics covered reflect the priorities

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics | Data Visualization

Renato LuppiNovember 18, 2014 0

Yes, we have analytics: the brain game

Many vendors claim they have analytics, and a lot of users have embraced the belief that analytics is the way to go. But what does analytics really mean, especially to business users without statistics backgrounds, and how much do they need to know about analytics to be able to make

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Mike GillilandNovember 14, 2014 0

Gaming the forecast

Business forecasting is a highly politicized process, subject to the biases and personal agendas of all forecasting process participants. This is why many -- perhaps most -- human adjustments to the forecast fail to make it better. And this is why relative metrics, such as FVA, are so helpful in

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Steve PolilliNovember 14, 2014 0

Forecasting: Crystal ball or competitive edge?

Perhaps forecasting is a little of both, crystal ball and competitive edge. It’s a crystal ball of sorts because it helps leaders get answers to questions like, “How many? Or, “How much?” to decide what actions best help the business. And it’s definitely a competitive edge when it results in

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Mike GillilandNovember 11, 2014 0

Getting real about uncertainty

In his Spring 2014 article in Foresight, Paul Goodwin addressed the important issue of point vs. probabilistic forecasts. A point forecast is a single number (e.g., the forecast for item XYZ in December is 635 units). We are all familiar with point forecasts, as these are what's commonly produced (either

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Mike GillilandNovember 11, 2014 0

SAS Summer Fellowships in Forecasting and Econometrics

The Advanced Analytics division of SAS Research & Development has announced three Summer Fellowships in the areas of Forecasting and Econometrics. The SAS forecasting fellowships are open to doctoral candidates in mathematics, statistics, computer science, and related graduate departments in the United States. They offer the opportunity to work closely

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Advanced Analytics

Matthew GalatiNovember 10, 2014 0

Do you have an Uncle Louie? Optimal wedding seat assignments

Do you have an Uncle Louie? Yep - we all do! You know what I mean - this guy: When my wife and I were planning to get married, we had all sorts of big decisions to make. Where would our future home be? How many kids would we have?

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Advanced Analytics

Ed HughesNovember 4, 2014 0

SAS-Related Talks at the INFORMS 2014 Annual Meeting

The INFORMS 2014 Annual Meeting will be held In San Francisco from November 9-12; conference hotels are the Hilton San Francisco and the Parc 55 Wyndham. More than 35 SAS staff will participate, and SAS will have three adjacent booths representing SAS/OR (and all of Advanced Analytics), JMP, and the SAS

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Advanced Analytics | SAS Events

Kenneth SanfordNovember 3, 2014 0

Econometric reflections from Analytics 2014

This post will violate the “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” rule, because last week I had the pleasure of attending and participating in the Analytics 2014 event there and want to share some of what I heard for those who couldn’t attend. I was joined by over 1,000

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Advanced Analytics | Learn SAS | Students & Educators

Polly Mitchell-GuthrieOctober 27, 2014 0

Unicorn hunting: finding data scientists outside traditional academic disciplines (part 2)

Finding people with the range of skills classified as data science can be a challenge, which is why some call them unicorns (do they really exist?), so I recently posted ten tips on finding unicorns. In my first post I elaborated on tips 1 and 2 (1. hire from an

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization

VirtualOil Rolling Five-Year Portfolio Oct 2014

Ian JonesOctober 24, 2014 0

Analytic benchmarking against a virtual oil portfolio

Volatility. It’s a business reality for energy market participants and it’s been a wild ride for the oil marketing business over the past few weeks. How has your energy risk data helped you navigate the recent increase in volatility and precipitous price drop? This month, we are launching a recurring

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Mike GillilandOctober 22, 2014 0

Guest blogger: Len Tashman previews Fall 2014 issue of Foresight

In 2015 Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting will celebrate 10 years of publication. From high in his aerie in the Colorado Rockies, here is Editor-in-Chief Len Tashman's preview of the current issue: In this 35th issue of Foresight, we revisit a topic that always generates lively and entertaining

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Advanced Analytics

Ed HughesOctober 21, 2014 0

Operations Research (and much more) with SAS

Welcome to the blog “Operations Research with SAS: Optimize, Simulate, Understand.” For those of you without an operations research background, a brief explanation: operations research (OR) is the study of the operations of systems, with a focus on making them function more efficiently and more effectively. The overall goal of

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Advanced Analytics | Students & Educators

Polly Mitchell-GuthrieOctober 17, 2014 0

Missing unicorns - 10 tips on finding data scientists (part 1)

As this article on the mythical data scientist describes, many people call this special kind of analytical talent "unicorns," because the breed can be so hard to find. In order to close the analytical talent gap that McKinsey Global Institute and others have predicted, and many of you experience today, SAS launched

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Advanced Analytics

Emily LadaOctober 16, 2014 0

How discrete-event simulation can help project prison populations

In 2011, the passage of the federal Justice Reinvestment Act (JRA) brought significant changes to North Carolina’s criminal sentencing practices, particularly in relation to the supervision of offenders released into the community on probation or post-release supervision. A recent New York Times article highlighted how NC has used the implementation

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Mike GillilandOctober 9, 2014 0

Foresight/SAS webinar October 30 on temporal aggregation

On Thursday, October 30, 11 am ET, Aris Syntetos delivers the next installment of the Foresight/SAS Webinar Series, "Forecasting by Temporal Aggregation." Based on his article in the Summer 2014 issue of Foresight, Aris provided this preview: When we attempt to improve forecast performance we usually consider new or alternative forecasting

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Mike GillilandOctober 8, 2014 0

Significant Digits in Business Forecasting

My favorite dog trick is the group hug. This is achieved by taking a dog's bad habit (rising up on strangers who don't really want a 70# dog rising up on them), and "flipping it" into something cute and adorable. It's all a matter of controlling perception, and that is

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Advanced Analytics

Rick WicklinOctober 8, 2014 0

The name of a parameter in the parent environment

SAS/IML 13.1 includes a handy function for programmers who write a lot of modules. The PARENTNAME function obtains the name of the symbol that was passed in as a parameter to a user-defined module. How is this useful? Well, suppose that you want to create a SAS/IML module that prints

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics | Customer Intelligence | Data Management

Alan LipsonSeptember 30, 2014 0

Get your house in order to cash in on retail’s omnichannel promise

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

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Mike GillilandSeptember 4, 2014 0

5 steps to setting forecasting performance objectives (Part 2)

And now for the five steps: 1. Ignore industry benchmarks, past performance, arbitrary objectives, and what management "needs" your accuracy to be. Published benchmarks of industry forecasting performance are not relevant. See this prior post The perils of forecasting benchmarks for explanation. Previous forecasting performance may be interesting to know, but

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Mike GillilandSeptember 4, 2014 0

5 steps to setting forecasting performance objectives (Part 1)

It is after Labor Day in the US, meaning we must no longer wear white shoes, skirts, jackets, or trousers. But even if you are now going sans-culotte, it is time to begin thinking about organizational performance objectives for 2015. Setting forecasting performance objectives is one way for management to shine...or

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Mike GillilandSeptember 4, 2014 0

Reminder: September 30 deadline for IIF/SAS Research Grants

I wanted to pass along this reminder from Pam Stroud at the International Institute of Forecasters: Grant to Promote Research on Forecasting For the twelfth year, the IIF, in collaboration with SAS®, is proud to announce financial support for research on how to improve forecasting methods and business forecasting practice.

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Advanced Analytics | Machine Learning | SAS Events

Polly Mitchell-GuthrieAugust 29, 2014 0

Building a $1 billion machine learning model

At the KDD conference this week I heard a great invited presentation called How to Create a $1 billion Model in 20 days: Predictive Modeling in the Real World – A Sprint Case Study. It was presented by Tracey de Poalo from Sprint and former Kaggle President and well known

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Advanced Analytics | SAS Events

Kenneth SanfordAugust 27, 2014 0

Why corporate economists are hot again and a great source for analytical talent

A while back The Wall Street Journal published the article “Corporate Economists Are Hot Again“ that chronicles the resurgence of in-house economists in corporate America. The role of a corporate economist may bring about visuals of classic economist stereotypes (watch Ben Stein play to this stereotype as a teacher in

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Advanced Analytics | Machine Learning

Polly Mitchell-GuthrieAugust 22, 2014 0

Looking backwards, looking forwards: SAS, data mining, and machine learning

Looking forward, ten of my SAS colleagues and I are heading to New York City this weekend for KDD 2014: Data Science for the Social Good, which runs August 24-27. This event’s full name is the 20th Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining,

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Advanced Analytics

Gerhard SvolbaAugust 8, 2014 0

An intuitive approach to the appropriate use of forecasts

It is a mild summer evening in July at Lake Neusiedl here in Austria. The participants of the traditional YES Cup Regatta are sitting with beer and barbecue chops on the terrace of our clubhouse. The mood is relaxed, and everyone wants to tell their story after two eventful races.

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Advanced Analytics

Rick WicklinJuly 28, 2014 0

Lexicographic combinations in SAS

In a previous blog post, I described how to generate combinations in SAS by using the ALLCOMB function in SAS/IML software. The ALLCOMB function in Base SAS is the equivalent function for DATA step programmers. Recall that a combination is a unique arrangement of k elements chosen from a set

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics

Mike GillilandJuly 18, 2014 0

Forecasting and supply chain blogs

In the summer heat, when The BFD alone isn't quite quenching your thirst for forecasting know-how, here are several other sources: CatchBlog -- by Steve Morlidge of CatchBull From his 2010 book Future Ready (co-authored with Steve Player), to his recent 4-part series in Foresight dealing with the "avoidability" of forecast

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