Tag: Big Data

If Netflix had used my viewing history to create its new show

Netflix has made a big splash in the news with its use of big data. By analyzing millions of data points about the viewing habits of its customers, the movie delivery giant used the insight it gained to devise the “perfect show”. One of the defining characteristics of the show, […]

A weekend full of bad decisions

Most people try to hide the evidence of their bad decisions. But this weekend I decided to share mine to social media. I hope that it’s not a career-limiting move. Actually, I made quite a few good decisions as well, outnumbering the bad ones. Still, I had many missed opportunities, […]

NOTE: Now I see Visual Analytics

I’ll confess that whilst there was a lot said about SAS Visual Analytics at this year’s SAS Global Forum, I came home with some confusion over its architecture, functionality and benefits. I was fortunate to spend some quality time with the software …

Finding patterns in big data with SAS/GRAPH

When working with “big data” you usually have too many points to view in a plot, and end up subsetting or summarizing the data. But now, in SAS 9.3, you have an alternative! For example, the following scatter plot of 10,000+ points is just a visual “b…

High-performance analytics: it may be a show, but it’s not an act

Last Friday morning I took a meeting with SAS CEO Jim Goodnight. Despite the hassle, I was happy to rearrange my busy schedule to squeeze him in. Ha! Just a little joke there about my inflated sense of importance! Actually, the meeting was part of a regular series called “Conversations […]

An Analytical Valley: Big Data and Data Scientists (and SAS Programmers)

Tom Davenport reported an observation that Silicon Valley is becoming more analytical since companies in the Valley such as Google, Facebook, eBay, LinkedLn all have strong presences in analytics. Besides such predominant companies, I’d also like to add Yahoo to the list although Yahoo is no longer in its peak. Yahoo is the largest sponsor […]