Blogs

Blogs

Data for Good

See how data is being used to address humanitarian issues around the world

Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonAugust 18, 2015 0

What areas do venture capitalists invest in medical research?

The Wall Street Journal recently published a study of the top 17 medical areas (or body parts) that venture capitalist investments are likely to benefit. They used graphs to summarize the results, but "the graph guy" in me just couldn't resist trying to improve them. Did my improvements help? -

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Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonJuly 9, 2015 0

Bald eagles return to the United States!

Bald eagles, the national bird of the United States, came perilously close to becoming extinct here, but are now making a comeback! Let's look at the data with a SAS map! When I was growing up in the 1970s & 80s here in North Carolina, I spent a lot of time

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Analytics | Data for Good

Will JonesJune 12, 2015 0

Child welfare experts urge data sharing and the use of analytics to protect children, families

I remember when I first started in public child welfare 21 years ago and the word "outcomes" was introduced. At that time, we believed that if it felt good and children and families seemed happy that we were doing a good job - those were our outcomes. We were wrong.

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Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonJune 11, 2015 0

Mapping the 50 US hospitals with the highest price markups

A recent study by Bai & Anderson has found that some hospitals charge 10x (ie, 1000%) higher than the standard rates set by Medicare. Many news agencies have posted the list of the 50 US hospitals that have the highest markup. But I am more visually oriented, so of course I used SAS

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Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonJune 9, 2015 0

Tracking West Nile virus mosquitos in the US

Have you ever been bitten by a mosquito? What are the odds it carried the West Nile virus? ... Perhaps a lot higher than you thought! Here's a picture of a mosquito that kept 'bugging' me around my computer desk at home - good riddance, I say!

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Analytics | Data for Good

Will JonesMay 18, 2015 0

National Foster Care Month recognizes those striving to give kids stable lives, and bright futures

In 1988 President Ronald Reagan proclaimed May as National Foster Care Month as a way to recognize foster parents for opening their homes to and caring for children in need. This annual celebration has grown to generate awareness of foster care and a recognition of all involved. The children, foster

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Data for Good

Kay MeyerMay 7, 2015 0

Spread the word! National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day highlights an ongoing crisis

Everyone loves a “mental health” day, one of those days when we get to relax and escape from the everyday worries and stresses of life. Imagine the challenge of dealing with true mental health issues everyday – especially as a child or youth where mental health issues can cause isolation,

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Data for Good

Becky GraebeMay 1, 2015 0

How to be a part of the data-for-good movement

It’s an incredibly exciting time for data science. Just ask Jake Porway, former New York Times Data Scientist and now CEO of DataKind, who opened his April 28 SAS Global Forum keynote by asking busy conference goers to pause and reflect on the revolutionary times we are living in. “Cell phones

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Analytics | Data for Good

Paula Henderson

Paula HendersonApril 28, 2015 0

What can we learn about at-risk kids to create more positive child welfare outcomes?

“What we do to our children they will do to society.” Greek philosopher Pliny the Elder said that more than 2,000 years ago, and it’s just as true today. In 2013, more than 600,000 children in the US were confirmed victims of maltreatment in the home, according to U.S. Department

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Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonApril 22, 2015 0

More reasons to stop smoking!

Smoking is an addictive habit that can kill you - if you don't believe me, check out the infographic in this blog post. Recently a friend of mine was on the episode of the Dr. Phil show that focused on "quitting smoking." Here's a picture of Traci with Dr. Phil

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Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonApril 17, 2015 0

Analyzing wait times at VA health care facilities

Data about the monthly wait times at VA facilities in the US are now available, but it's a bit overwhelming to try to analyze them in tabular form - plotting the data on a map made it a lot easier!... Here in the US, when our soldiers finish their commitment in

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Government | Health Care

Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonApril 15, 2015 0

A custom map to help track the flu

Has this year's flu been better or worse than you thought it would be? There are a lot of factors that help determine whether or not you're likely to get the flu. Is there a bad strain going around? Did the flu vaccine target the right strain? Did you get

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Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonFebruary 20, 2015 0

Visualizing the eradication of smallpox

Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1979, after an extensive vaccination campaign in the 19th and 20th centuries. This blog post contains a visual analysis of the final years of this disease in the US ... In my previous blog post, I imitated and improved infectious disease graphs from a recent Wall

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Health Care | Life Sciences

Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonFebruary 17, 2015 0

How to make infectious diseases look better

The Wall Street Journal recently published some graphs about seven infectious diseases, and I tried using SAS to improve the graphs ... it's a veritable infectious disease (graph) bake-off! Let's start with Measles ... here's a screen-capture of WSJ's measles graph: In general, their graph is eye-catching, and I learned a lot

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Health Care | Life Sciences

Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonJanuary 22, 2015 0

What's the solar power potential in your area?

Have you ever wondered whether the area where you live is a good location for producing solar power? Let's create a SAS map to help find out! To get you in the right frame of mind, here is an awesome picture of some Arizona sunshine, that my good friend Eva

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Energy & Utilities

Data for Good

Ross KaplanDecember 24, 2014 0

A ‘Compelling Event’ for Cost Containment in Healthcare?

Historically healthcare has been most ‘self’ motivated to improve its ‘cost containment’ processes and methods. This is evident from the significant gap that exists between the technology and process in finance versus healthcare. Many healthcare organizations (either government or commercial) are not ‘profit’ oriented – take the Blues for example,

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Data for Good | Data Visualization

Tom MorseNovember 19, 2014 0

Patient-centered health care in the new health economy

Today’s healthcare system is under tremendous pressure to reduce overall costs without losing track of the patient. Legislative changes and challenging economic realities make it increasingly difficult to deliver both improved outcomes and cost savings for the most complex patients. The Physicians Pharmacy Alliance (PPA) recognizes the changing healthcare landscape

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Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonOctober 23, 2014 0

Tracking Ebola: Using SAS bubble maps

In a previous blog post, I showed how to layer colored areas on a SAS map to show both countries, and the areas within countries that had cases of Ebola. But as the Ebola epidemic has spread, more data has become available, and in this blog I show how to

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Data for Good

Shannon HeathJuly 21, 2014 0

At SAS, healthy employees = healthy business

For 38 years, SAS CEO Jim Goodnight has run this company by a simple philosophy: Treat employees like they make a difference and they will. It was with that philosophy in mind 30 years ago that SAS opened the doors to its on-site healthcare center – with just one employee!

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Analytics | Data for Good

Paula Henderson

Paula HendersonJuly 14, 2014 0

Analytics making a difference: NYC finds Good Shepherd Services program reduces homelessness, jail stays

A recent project with a supportive housing provider in New York City showed how analytics leads to insights that can change, even save, lives. The New York City Center for Innovation through Data Intelligence (CIDI) is the analytics research arm of the City’s Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services

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Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonJuly 9, 2014 0

Live long and prosper ... but how long?

I bet a lot of SAS users know where the phrase "Live Long and Prosper" comes from ... but can we use SAS software to also help analyze 'how long'? This blog posting shows several different kinds of SAS graphs that can help answer such a question! Let's start with

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Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonJune 11, 2014 0

Tracking sea turtles with SAS

SAS software can be used for many things - here's how you could use it to help save endangered sea turtles! You've seen SAS used to track endangered wildlife by the shape of their footprints, and help run Texas Parks & Wildlife. Now, how about tracking the movements of (and thereby helping

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Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonApril 29, 2014 0

Analyzing 60 years of tornado data with an animation

With tornadoes in the news lately, I wondered how I might could use SAS to analyze tornado data. How about animating 60 years of tornado path data? ... I was using Google to search for ways to analyze tornado data, and found an example on ustornadoes.com that animates the tornado

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Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonApril 28, 2014 0

Tornadoes: Picking up the pieces with SAS

Last night, here in the U.S., an outbreak of deadly tornadoes tore across several states. Unfortunately, nobody knows how to predict a tornado with certainty, but let's brainstorm on how SAS Software can help analyze the data in the aftermath of a natural disaster like this... Being a graph guy, the first

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Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonMarch 21, 2014 0

Airplanes that have disappeared without a trace!

With all the recent news reports about the missing Flight 370, I wondered what other airplanes have disappeared without a trace ... and I used SAS to visualize that data! There was in interesting infographic on the Bloomberg website that sort of answered my question, but their map just had

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Insurance | Travel

Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonMarch 5, 2014 0

Breaking Bad (data) with SAS!

In the Breaking Bad TV series, Walter White has an impressive lab where he secretly makes the illegal drug methamphetamine (meth). Wouldn't it be cool to use SAS to show the locations of all the clandestine meth labs in the US?!? Let's do it!... In this blog, I show you

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Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonMay 30, 2013 0

Create animations like Hans Rosling!

They say "Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery"... Therefore when I imitate Hans Rosling's famous world-data animation, it's not that I'm jealous, but that I'm paying homage to him! (OK, and maybe also a little bit jealous! LOL) Well, anyway, for those of you who haven't seen it,

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Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonJanuary 31, 2013 0

Tracking tornadoes with SAS

We had some fierce wind storms all across the United States yesterday, which even spawned some tornadoes! It looks like we weathered the storm OK here in Cary (but I still need to run out to the lake and make sure my pontoon/houseboat is still there, agh!). Anyway ... as with other

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Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonOctober 12, 2012 0

Building a better meningitis map

You've all heard about the recent meningitis outbreak, right? Being a data-guy and a map-guy, I went looking for maps related to the outbreak. I found the following map on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website. It shows the states that received the recalled drug used in epidurals (for back

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Analytics | Data for Good

Vincent TalucciJanuary 24, 2012 0

A sad reality: Crises drive positive change within criminal justice

All too often an unspeakable tragedy leads to a needed policy or operational change through a newly-realized criminal justice system gap. While we continually work to minimize existing gaps, the reality is that as law enforcement evolves, so does the crime and so do the criminals. In recognition of those

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