SAS Blogs

Data for Good

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

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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Health Care

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,

Health Care

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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Health Care

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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Health Care

Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonAugust 5, 2014 0

Tracking Ebola: Layering customized SAS maps

There are many ways to use SAS in Health & Life Sciences, and one of my favorite is using it to track the spread of diseases. This post demonstrates how to layer several customized maps to track the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa. In this blog post, I describe how I

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Health Care

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!

Health Care

Analytics | Data for Good

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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Government

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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Health Care

Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonJuly 7, 2014 0

Where will the next earthquake strike?

This morning, a fairly strong earthquake struck southern Mexico - can SAS analyze past earthquake data to help predict future earthquakes?... I don't have any pictures of earthquake damage, but here's one I took of the main house/prop from the Snow Camp Outdoor Theatre here in North Carolina - I imagine this

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Insurance

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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Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonMay 16, 2014 0

How cold was it? - It was so cold that...

As you might have guessed, this is a blog post about cold temperatures, and ice! Sometimes ice is a great thing. Here's a picture of my freezer, for example (don't judge - I'm a bachelor!) .. And sometimes ice is a beautiful but dangerous thing, as this picture of my

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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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Insurance

Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonApril 16, 2014 0

Why learn SAS instead of Excel? ... Medicare data

Would you like to analyze the 9 million lines of Medicare payment data that was recently made public? You'll need lots of luck if you're planning to use Excel ... whereas this is the kind of thing SAS was built for! Here's a sneak-peek at what the text data looks

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Health Care

Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonMarch 28, 2014 0

How could SAS be used to help find missing planes?

I'm sure that anyone in the world would do whatever they could to help find the missing Flight 370 ... and this is my attempt to do what I can. In my previous blog post, I showed how SAS could be used to visualize the locations where planes have disappeared. This blog

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Insurance | Travel

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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Health Care

Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonFebruary 5, 2014 0

Saving the monarch butterflies

Recent studies show that the annual winter migration of millions of monarch butterflies from the US to Mexico is at risk of disappearing - can SAS graphics help change that?!? When I was a kid (not that long ago), one of my main activities was the 4-H Entomology project. I

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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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Analytics | Data for Good | Data Visualization

Robert AllisonOctober 29, 2012 0

Will there be analytics for Frankenstorm?

“Frankenstorm” is what the U.S. National Weather Service is calling the combination of Hurricane Sandy, an early winter storm heading east, and a blast of arctic air from the North. SAS headquarters is located in the middle of the U.S. east coast ... and we barely missed being the bulls-eye for this

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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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Health Care

Analytics | Data for Good

Dr. InsightOctober 2, 2012 0

Can super-powered messaging save Datapolis?

The lines at clinics, hospitals and pharmacies seemed endless. My people, the people of Datapolis, were growing wearier by the day… The targeted, on-time communications intended to inform citizens about new healthcare options and relieve stress on the system were arriving late, or being delivered to the wrong consumers. And

Health Care

Analytics | Data for Good

Dr. InsightSeptember 20, 2012 0

The League of Analytic Heroes is growing...

The League of Analytic Heroes is growing. With the addition of each new member, we are better able to combat the chaos of big data. Illumino and Magnacomm are eager to welcome their newest team member. Keep your eyes on www.analyticheroes.com for his arrival. He's already got his eye on

Health Care

Data for Good

Ross KaplanJuly 20, 2012 0

Is fraud a dirty word in health care?

It is becoming clear that a fair percentage of the health care community, particularity outside of the United States, are uncomfortable using the word, “fraud.” Instead, you see the words "risk" and "error" used more often to describe fraud. There appear to be many different reasons for the discomfort with

Health Care

Data for Good

Dr. InsightApril 17, 2012 0

Who will help me save Datapolis?

The men, women and children of Datapolis are falling ill at an alarming rate, forcing me to turn my attention away from my ongoing battle with Obscuro and toward helping the Datapolis Council of Elders distribute its medicine before it is too late. As it happens, just as we most

Health Care

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