SAS Academic Program University Newsletter - Fall 2006 Edition

Job titles are a harbinger of changing corporate practices. Late last year Computerworld published an article on the increasing trend towards the Chief Analytics Officer title. A job search on the Monster.com jobs engine site returns more than 1000 positions with the keyword "analytics". By no coincidence, a similar search using the keyword "SAS" also generates more than 1000 hits. Experience with SAS analytical software provides an excellent foundation for an analytics-driven world. In fact, Marcel van Rooyen, quoted in the Computerworld article, is a former recipient from SAS Australia of the SAS Fellowship Program for students. In this issue, we will highlight schools in the United States, France, the UK, Germany, Argentina, Chile, Japan, Brazil, and Italy who are leading the way by incorporating analytics into the classroom. We will also tell you about how SAS ensures that you receive the latest updates to our analytics and resources we offer for training educators in how to follow this path. As always, we welcome your comments and questions at aigeditor@sas.com.

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.

Cologne University of Applied Sciences Leverages SAS BI Server

An article (in German) posted in last month's EU.MA.Portal reports on the Cologne University of Applied Sciences' efforts to offer students cutting-edge technology. With about 16.700 students in 66 study courses and 413 professors, the university is the largest one of its kind in Germany. Its hallmarks are application-oriented and subject-comprehensive teaching as well as dynamic course enhancements, integrated practical experiences, and a short duration. "Vocational-competency" is one of its main goals. In order to fulfill this self-commitment, they take very seriously the often-demanded networking between science and economy.

For this reason the Faculty of Business Sciences sets great value on familiarizing the students with questions of corporate management, the usage of reporting systems, and generating strategically relevant information - those questions gain more and more importance in professional practice. "Business Intelligence" is both the topic of its own course and applied as a cross-section topic in courses such as human resource management or information management.

The University decided to place the SAS® BI Server in the center of the Business Intelligence lectures because the SAS® 9 Platform is considered virtually standard for reporting and strategic controlling in both large-scale and upper middle-class enterprises. Professor Lindner from the University's Faculty of Economic Sciences explains "We use SAS because the SAS BI Server replaces local spread sheet solutions as well as other reporting and analysis applications in many companies. The reason is that companies have a deficit in compiling reports - for instance due to heterogeneous databases or unequal topicalities." Working with SAS while studying guarantees the students a real advantage when they start their careers, because many companies demand a well-founded Know-how in working with SAS. A second reason for the decision for SAS is the unique Academic Program: The SAS Academic Club has been encouraging the intensive exchange between academic institutions and the economy for many years. "SAS appears here extremely dedicated; the SAS Academic Club is a real precursor", says Professor Lindner.

SAS considers the partnership with the Cologne University of Applied Sciences as an outstanding example in Germany, proving the motto of the SAS Academic Program: Bridging the Gap Between Academia and Business!

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.

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.

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.

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.

News: Universidad Austral Teaches SAS in Masters in Data Mining

Universidad Austral, one of the most prestigious academic institutions in Argentina, chose SAS Argentina to achieve the highest performance in their masters program in Data Mining, Knowledge Discovery, and Knowledge Management offered by the School of Engineering. The partnership will allow the university to use some of the leading solutions in the market to educate their specialized students and users. The focus will be on data mining, promoting and teaching concepts, applications and their importance in today's market. Universidad Austral chose SAS due to its reputation in order to maximize the value delivered to their students and enhance the institution's development.

Universidad Austral needed to evolve their software platform to better use their resources and entered into partnership with SAS to install the foundation SAS analytical tools (Education Analytical Suite) and SAS® Enterprise Miner^TM for the IT lab.

News: SAS Supports Launch of First Italian Masters in Innovation Management

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: University of the Free States (South Africa)

University of the Free State Joins SAS South Africa Academic Alliance

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: 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: 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.

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: Analytics Expert Davenport to speak at SAS UK Forum

Professor Tom Davenport of Babson College in the USA will be delivering the keynote address at this year's SAS UK Forum. His address is titled "Competing on Analytics". Professor Davenport is a thought leader on the implementation of business intelligence sytems, and he will challenge businesses to put analytics at the heart of their business intelligence strategy. This is a vitally important issue for business schools as they prepare students for the analytics-led business future.

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: 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: 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.

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