SAS Academic Program Research Newsletter - Fall 2006 Edition

SAS never stops working to add power to our software to meet your research needs. In this newsletter, we will tell you about some of the latest software developments from SAS and then include examples of innovative research with SAS from Japan, Brazil, the United Kingdom and France. We will also tell you about programs from SAS to support applied research and teaching and an innovative new program being developed to offer a Masters in Analytics. We are always in search of examples of how SAS is used in research to add to the collections in the Digital Library of Analytics, a growing body of work showcasing the power of SAS used around the world in disciplines from archaelogy to zoology. As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions.

Getting Statistical Software Out to You Faster

Statistical software development never stops at SAS. While our users are enjoying the new features and capabilities of a new release, we are fast at work on what will become the next release of SAS/STAT® software.

Sometimes, we complete new software some time before the next release of SAS is scheduled. A few years ago, we decided to find a way to get that new software to our users without waiting for that next release. We instituted a web download program for new statistical procedures and used it to introduce the experimental GLIMMIX procedure to our customers. Several thousand Windows users have put the new procedures through its paces, and since then we have made a production version available to both Windows and UNIX customers.

Researcher Turns Career from Theoretical Proability to Medical Practice

North Carolina State University and SAS to Collaborate on Data Analytics Education

North Carolina State University Chancellor James Oblinger and Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS, the leader in business intelligence, announced an initiative to create a new graduate degree program in the rapidly expanding field of data analytics.

Analyzing Income Inequality Based on the Expenditure Micro-data set of Susenas

The Graduate School of Economics at Tokyo International University offers a Masters degree under which students receive lectures and tutorials for research, submit a thesis, and take a presubscribed examination to obtain their degree delivered in English. The policy of education and research at this Graduate School is to train creative professionals not only in Japan but also internationally who have the ingenuity to face diverse policy problems in order to challenge and to stretch their abilities in an analytical and comprehensive way from global perspectives. The focus is placed on developing basic research ability for economic theory, history and statistical analysis as well as the ability to explore domestic and international policy challenges.

One of the PhD candidates in this program, Kadarmanto, wrote a paper and presented it at SAS Forum Tokyo 2005. The paper received high praise for the quality of analysis and the presentation received an award of encouragement. The paper was titled "Patterns of income inequality in Indonesia 1990-2002: An Empirical Analysis Based on the Expenditure Micro-data set of Susenas."

The purpose of the research was to carry out an analysis of income inequality approached by consumption-expenditure per capita, trying to identify how much inequality exists. It determines the pattern of income inequality over the period 1990-2002 and examines the sources of income inequality through disaggregating the inequality indices.

Brazilian Fellowship Student Using SAS Text Miner to Analyze Customer Satisfaction

Marcelo Schiessl, a master student at the Universidade de Brasília (UNB) is participating in the SAS Fellowship Program for students. He is doing his research in Information Architecture in the Science Information and Documentation Department. Marcelo is using SAS® Text Miner to analyze textual data from a financial services institution. His work intends to generate customer satisfaction indicators that could direct the definition of product and service strategies as well as create a base of frequently asked questions (FAQ).

In a help desk setting, customers submit problems or queries online or via call center to the vendor of a product and receive solutions or answers. This interaction is contained in an unstructured textual format difficult to manage effectively. While it can be a rich information source, often it contains redundant and poorly organized documents. This work is about applying text mining techniques in order to cluster and organize documents in this textual database. In this context, the application of the text mining intends to show that using appropriate tools and methodologies it is possible to maximize the discovery and the use of new and useful information encoded in textual format. Text mining has enormous potential for research in the Portuguese language and this work contributes to its development in this subject. Marcelo is the first user of Text Miner in Brazil.

Malaysian Professor Reports: SAS Data Mining Training for Educators

Report from Dr Rasimah Aripin, UiTM ( Universiti Teknologi Mara Malaysia)

The annual SAS Summer Program for Educators Teaching Data Mining is a special program for university professors around the world who are currently teaching or planning to teach data mining courses at their institutions. Attendance is by invitation only with candidates nominated by the SAS office in the respective country. Those attending this program are indeed fortunate to have the opportunity to be trained by experienced instructors using the latest technology and course materials. I had the opportunity to attend the most recent program held at California State University, Long Beach, California.

Web Seminar on Data Mining for Educators

In August 2006 the SAS Academic Program produced the first in a series of Web seminars that focus on the teaching of analytics in the university classroom. Dr. Ravi Bapna of the Indian School of Business and Dr. Galit Shmueli of the University of Maryland - College Park shared their real-world teaching experience to discuss how students benefit from learning analytics and data mining techniques and the importance of using statistics and modeling in the 21st-century business world. The Web seminar titled "Analytics and data mining skills give grads a competitive edge" is available here for free but registration is required.

If your institution isn't teaching students about the importance of analytics and data mining in the business world, now is the time to examine how doing so can improve their chances of gaining a true competitive edge in today's cutthroat job market. Analytics is a secret weapon of many top-performing companies today. Organizations such as Amazon.com, Harrah's, Capital One and even the Boston Red Sox have dominated their fields by employing industrial-strength analytics across a wide variety of activities, mining vast amounts of customer data to help reduce fraud, anticipate resource demand, increase acquisition, curb customer attrition and more. The seminar discusses how students find employment in a variety of industries based on the data mining and analytics skills obtained in their classes.

News: SAS Presenting at European Machine Learning and PKDD Conferences in Berlin

17TH EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON MACHINE LEARNING (ECML) and
10TH EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY IN DATABASES (PKDD)
BERLIN, 18-22 SEPTEMBER 2006

In this applied workshop of an academically-oriented conference, SAS is represented across a wide spectrum of analytic applications. The workshop chairman Carlos Soares commented: "This year we got a very rich and interesting program for this workshop." Of the 21 accepted submissions, the following will involve SAS:

1. University of Göttingen and SAS Institute: Combination of different text mining strategies to classify requests about involuntary childlessness to an internet medical expert Forum

2. Capgemini and Fraunhofer Institute, SAS Institute: Taping into the European Energy Exchange to feed the stochastic Portfolio Optimization Tool "SpOt" for Electric Utilities

3. Deutsche Post Philatelie: Deployment of Association Analysis for Cross Selling Purposes at
the Deutsche Post Philatelie

4. SAS Institute: Directions of Analytics, Data and Text Mining - A Software
Vendor's View (Invited Speaker)

News: University of the Free States (South Africa)

University of the Free State Joins SAS South Africa Academic Alliance

News: University of New South Wales

The School of Mathematics at the University of New South Wales (Australia) received the SAS Academic Intelligence Award at SAS Forum International in Geneva, where 2,000 worldwide business leaders, IT professionals and other senior managers were attending one of the two annual international gatherings of the SAS user community. Acknowledging the award, School of Mathematics Associate Professor James Franklin said, "We greatly value SAS's wide contact with the latest developments in making intelligent use of data in industry. Our close relationship with SAS helps us keep our course content at the cutting edge." MORE

"The conference was quite an experience. Excellent organisation, presentations and workshops, but above all, excellent opportunity to network, learn and exchange ideas. I spent a good deal of time discussing everything involving BI both with SAS experts and SAS customers; from in depth technical issues and BI implementation experiences to Enterprise BI strategy within the Higher Education sector. SAS Forum International. Big thumbs up."

Video interview with Aleksandar Alimpejevic, a representative of UNSW sent to SAS Forum International.

News: SAS UK Launches Unique Training Academy

In July 2006 a unique new training academy was launched to offer specialist SAS accredited training for graduates wanting a career in the pharmaceutical industry, jointly developed by SAS and SRG. SAS is the world leader in business analytics software and the standard for clinical trial data analysis, the FDA standard for electronic submission, and the choice of the Fortune 500 life science companies. Individuals experienced in SAS applications for the pharmaceutical industry are currently in short supply in the UK for a number of reasons. However the launch of the SAS Life Sciences Academy looks set to address that shortage by offering graduates the opportunity to fast track into junior SAS programming roles.

Gail Kniveton, Business Development Director for SRG Interesource - the clinical recruitment division of SRG, says "We currently recruit SAS programmers for our pharmaceutical clients and to work in Satellite (our clinical outsourcing service for clients such as GlaxoSmithKline). One of the main limiting factors for recruiting these candidates is the shortage of available SAS experience in the marketplace. Working with SAS to launch this unique training Academy ensures two key things. Firstly, this enables us to maintain an ongoing resource of SAS programmers for our clients and secondly, this initiative further differentiates us from other competitors in the staffing marketplace.

Announcement: Refine Your Analytics Expertise with SAS Training

As the undisputed leader in analytics knowledge and technology, SAS offers the most comprehensive analytics training available anywhere. From suggested course roadmaps and conferences to our new Analytics Lecture Series, you can learn the skills to reduce uncertainty, predict with precision, optimize performance, and create value for your organization.

Announcement: Best-selling SAS Press Book Titles for Higher Education

Are you a professor or a student teaching or studying SAS? SAS Press offers many books particularly suited for use in higher education. A sampling of the most popular selections is available from our online bookstore, organized by these categories:

basic statistics
advanced analytics/predictive modeling
research/clinical
data mining
business intelligence

College and university professors may request desk copies. Code and data for these books are available for download, too. We invite you to consider using our documentation as part of your curriculum!

Announcement: Did You Know that SAS Offers a Point-and-Click Interface?

As a SAS user in academia, you may know SAS is the industry leader in analytics. What you may not know is that the software package licensed by your academic institution most likely includes SAS® Enterprise Guide^TM, a user-friendly, point-and-click interface that provides quick access to the analytic power of SAS. SAS Enterprise Guide is a powerful Windows application with an easy-to-use interface that enables self-sufficient, fast access to much of the analytic power of SAS software. It's helpful for SAS users at any skill level, and it can be used to create charts, graphs and reports for class exercises, research projects and so much more. We've created a useful Web page to give professors and students plenty of information about the key benefits of SAS Enterprise Guide for academia, including a free, on-demand Webcast about the product, a free tutorial, information about software training, and instructions on how to obtain SAS Enterprise Guide if it is not already part of your institution's software package. Additional SAS resources also are available to help professors incorporate SAS Enterprise Guide into their curricula and to support teaching and learning with SAS.

Announcement: SAS Learning Edition 4.1: Coming Soon!

SAS® Learning Edition 4.1 will be available in November 2006. This innovative and comprehensive personal learning version of SAS will be provided on two CD-ROMs, giving you the freedom to learn at your own pace from a PC. This latest and expanded version will include Base SAS®/V9.1.3, SAS/STAT®, SAS/GRAPH®, SAS/QC®, SAS/ETS® and SAS® Enterprise Guide® 4.1 and will be bundled with The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide 4.1. Whether you are a professor, student, or business professional, this is a great way to teach yourself SAS! (Note: Professors will be able to request a free evaluation copy.)

Announcement: SAS Student Ambassador Deadlines for 2007

The SAS Student Ambassador Program is a competitive program designed to recognize and support student researchers who use SAS technologies in innovative ways to benefit their respective industries and fields of study. To be considered, students must submit their research for an international SAS conference and apply to the SAS Student Ambassador Program. Student ambassadors from the United States, Latin America and Canada attend SAS Global Forum (formerly known as SAS Users Group International, or SUGI), while student ambassadors from Europe, the Middle East and Africa attend SAS Forum International. Winners receive the title of SAS Student Ambassador, conduct a presentation and have all travel, lodging and conference registration expenses for SAS Global Forum or SAS Forum International paid as part of the award. However, the true and long-lasting benefits are the experiences, opportunities and knowledge that students gain. SAS skills are in great demand, and international conferences are excellent ways for students to gain exposure for the skills they have developed through their research. While at the conferences, student ambassadors will have the opportunity to interact with an international audience of SAS users including researchers, business leaders, SAS experts and specialists from every industry and sector.

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