Tag: SAS

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Mining health-related data: How to benefit scientific research

gshmueli

Image from KDnuggets.com While debates over privacy issues related to electronic health records are still ongoing, predictive analytics are beginning to being used with administrative health data (available to health insurance companies, aka, “health provider networks”). One such venue are large data mining contests. Let me describe a few and then get to my point about their contribution to pubic health, medicine and to data mining research. The latest and grandest is the ongoing $3 million prize contest by Hereitage Provider Network, which opened in 2010 and lasts 2 years. The contest’s stated goal is to create “an algorithm that … Continue reading Mining health-related data: How to benefit scientific research

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ASA’s magazine: Excel’s default charts

gshmueli

Being in Bhutan this year, I have requested the American Statistical Association (ASA) and INFORMS to mail the magazines that come with my membership to Bhutan. Although I can access the magazines online, I greatly enjoy receiving the issues by mail (even if a month late) and leafing through them leisurely. Not to mention the ability to share them with local colleagues who are seeing these magazines for the first time! Now to the data-analytic reason for my post: The main article in the August 2010 issue of AMSTAT News (the ASA’s magazine) on Fellow Award: Revisited (Again) presented an “update to … Continue reading ASA’s magazine: Excel’s default charts

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SAS On Demand Take 3: Success!

gshmueli

I am following up on two earlier posts regarding using SAS On Demand for Academics. The version of EM has been upgraded to 6.1, which means that I am now able to upload and reach non-SAS files on the SAS Server – hurray! The process is quite cumbersome, and I do thank my SAS programming memory from a decade ago. Here’s a description for those instructors who want to check it out (it took me quite a while to piece all the different parts and figure out the right code): Find the directory path for your course on the SAS … Continue reading SAS On Demand Take 3: Success!

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Data mining competition season

gshmueli

Those who’ve been following my postings probably recall “competition season” when all of a sudden there are multiple new interesting datasets out there, each framing a business problem that requires the combination of data mining and creativity. Two such competitions are the SAS Data Mining Shootout and the 2008 Neural Forecasting Competition. The SAS problem concerns revenue management for an airline who wants to improve their customer satisfaction. The NN5 competition is about forecasting cash withdrawals from ATMs. Here are the similarities between the two competitions: they both provide real data and reasonably real business problems. Now to a more … Continue reading Data mining competition season