Move beyond spreadsheets to data mining, forecasting, optimization – and more
How are you determining customer satisfaction? How do you move the needle? This SAS user mines the unstructured data in patient surveys with SAS Text Miner.
Unlike BASE SAS tables, OLAP cubes must exist in within the metadata in order to access from any of the OLAP Viewers. In addition to having some metadata OLAP cubes have a physical file structure presence (at least for MOLAP/HOLAP because it's a different story for ROLAP). When you refresh
When I read the way that this user is working with SAS, I took a look around support.sas.com to find examples to allow you to work with your own data. (Take a look at this.) If this example isn't quite right for you, plug in your own key words.
I previously described how to use Mahalanobis distance to find outliers in multivariate data. This article takes a closer look at Mahalanobis distance. A subsequent article will describe how you can compute Mahalanobis distance. Distance in standard units In statistics, we sometimes measure "nearness" or "farness" in terms of the
Big data is one of the hottest topics in business. When you hear those words - BIG Data - you almost surely think of: HUGE financial services firms scoring terabytes of historical and current risk data GLOBAL telecommunications companies mining petabytes of structured and unstructured data INTERNATIONAL retailers repricing hundreds of thousands of products across
Unlike prior versions of SAS OLAP technology, 9.2 provides more options for maintaining and refreshing OLAP cubes. With this comes some discussion about what each one does alone, and how pairing these techniques really provides SAS OLAP Server Administrators and cube developers a cornucopia of OLAP options. PROC OLAPOPERATE Remember
A variance-covariance matrix expresses linear relationships between variables. Given the covariances between variables, did you know that you can write down an invertible linear transformation that "uncorrelates" the variables? Conversely, you can transform a set of uncorrelated variables into variables with given covariances. The transformation that works this magic is
What is surface complexation? Everyday I have to look something up on Google or in the dictionary. For example, do you know what a Cthulhu is? I had to search for that term after I tweeted that I thought a SAS surface plot graph was beautiful. Mike Nemecek from SAS
Churn is a huge concern for insurers, credit card providers and telecommunications companies - even utilities. This Post-It Note author says that his company has found a way to reduce customer turnover - churn - by 10 percent using SAS Data Miner.
It's Friday the 13. That can conjure up all kinds of scary thoughts, or you might consider it a lucky day. Which is it for you? This SAS user doesn't rely on luck or chance with his or her important projects. SAS is used to predict failures and outages!
If you live in the US, do you remember the Dunkin Donuts commercial from about 30 years ago. It opens with a devoted donut maker climbing out of bed, saying "It's time to make the donuts." (Donut makers have to get up early so that you and I can have
Today, every organization is running on too few resources - getting it done with fewer people, a reduced budget and less time. Grid computing enables SAS to automatically use a centrally managed grid infrastructure to achieve workload balancing, high availability and parallel processing. Do what once took days in minutes
As you probably remember, this innovation series is really Brainstorming 2.0. I've taken the Post-It Notes that SAS users put on the Innovation Wall and reposted them here to help spark new ideas for using SAS. I'm also adding posts here and there when I have an interview with a customer
From the largest corporation to a small startup, data overload can be a crippling problem. Just ask this big guy ... Now you know. Happy holidays!
The holiday season has just begun here in Cary, North Carolina. My favorite holiday is Christmas, but your's may be another. I'll try to outline some of the ones that are celebrated here and for some of my other global readers - I may miss an important holiday when I try
In one minute (and 10 seconds, but are you measuring that?) you can add a custom measure (also known as calculated members) to your OLAP cube. Watch this video to create a simple calculation multiplying units * price. Remember that this mechanism is not just used for multiplications, you can
It's the holiday season again in the US. Every December, many of us break out the holly, mistletoe, fir and SAS software to ring in the Christmas spirit. What's that? Do you mean to tell me that you don't use the world's leading business analytics software to play Jingle Bells! Well,
I've heard it said that perception is everything, but can you really track and measure customer perception in a way that will allow you to effect change? The answer is yes.
~Contributed by Martin L. Olesen I began using SAS 6.04 in 1992 for my own projects and as a teaching assistant. Professionally, I have worked in SAS since 1997, after graduation. I use Base SAS, SAS/STAT and SAS/OR. I work in an Icelandic bank doing credit risk analysis and rating
Now this is the way you sports fans should be thinking of using SAS! Of course there are no real specifics here, but you guys are pretty smart. Here's an older story about using SAS for sports, and I'm sure you've all seen Money Ball by now. Today's series entrant is
We'll interrupt the series on Why Forecasts are Wrong, with a report from the inaugural Analytics 2011 conference, held last week in Orlando. A2011 drew over 1025 attendees (from 44 states and over 25 counties). The Analytics conference series features a wide range of topics (including forecasting, optimization, data mining, text
Writing is usually very easy for me - I close the door and concentrate on the task at hand. But today, my mind is wandering. Maybe it's the changing season (it's fall in the US) that makes me think of all of the SAS users who might be reading my posts:
This week brought big news of one of the most cruel and heartless tyrants of the 21st century. This man is known for narcissistic behavior, surrounding himself with a cadre of beautiful women, sleeping in a different place every night, picking new favorites each week, and bringing tears and untold suffering
In my Friday series about innovation, I've decided to include some personal stories of unusual and unique uses of SAS. Once a month or so, I'll swap out the Post-it Notes for a profile of someone who has used SAS in an innovative way to solve a problem or, like
Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of reading Tom Wallace's new book, Sales & Operations Planning: Beyond the Basics. This is not an introductory "how to" book -- Tom and Bob Stahl have already written those -- but instead covers nine major companies that have implemented (and extended!) S&OP
Functionality to upload files onto the SAS server (from 9.2 on) is available using stored processes and an html input type="file". I introduced this topic last year in my blog post using the SAS Stored Process Developer Guide sample. Of course, it is never as easy as the sample is
There are days that I could use code like this to make two of myself. No, that would never work; then I would be bored with so much time on my hands! In this new series, called Friday's Innovation Inspiration, we'll take a look at Post-It Notes from the 2011 Innovation Walls. SAS users filled
Chris Hemedinger, author of the SAS Dummy blog, read last week's Innovation Inspiration post and was reminded of a couple of cool things he'd seen SAS users do. He also told me of one of his most recent rock star moments. (In all fairness to Hemedinger, he didn't call his
I used to get an email with a joke in it every Friday from my former boss, he called it Friday's Funnies. Some were really funny. Some - not so much. Well, I've decided to start my own Friday treat - a new series - called Friday's Innovation Inspiration. I'll be using
