Tag Archives: Visual Analytics

What is SAS Visual Analytics?

SAS Visual Analytics was highlighted at this year’s Global Forum opening session as one of the biggest developments for SAS in recent memory. In essence it is a powerful data visualization tool that uses a high-performance SAS LASR Analytic Server and a distributed computing environment to improve the data exploration and model development process by making it faster, more automatic, and adding a web-based, interactive user interface. Most users do not have access to this product since it is so new, but it can be advantageous to develop a knowledge of analytic products currently available in the industry.

According to SAS, Visual Analytics allows users to:

  • Visually explore huge amounts of data extremely quickly
  • Execute analytic correlations in seconds
  • Deliver results quickly wherever needed (V.A. supports web reports and mobile devices such as the iPad).

Users wishing to learn more about this new product offering from SAS can read about key features, system requirements, and access both screenshots and demos through the SAS Visual Analytics site: www.sas.com/technologies/bi/visual-analytics.html.

UConn SAS Day

I attended a UConn SAS Day last week at the UConn School of Business Graduate Business Learning Center in Hartford, CT. Ram Gopal, department head of Operations and Information Management at UConn, gave welcoming remarks highlighting UConn’s new MS in Business Analytics and Project Management program that is now available at the Hartford campus. The first presenter, Pete Bothwell, Senior VP of Enterprise BI & Analytics at Travelers, focused on analytics in the property and casualty environment. The second presenter, Jon Sall, co-founder and Executive Vice President of SAS, demonstrated the use of JMP, a SAS tool used for graphic data analysis which can be used to bundle large amounts of data into meaningful statistical graphics. He used it to showcase processing times for data sets of various sizes and shapes, ending with an impressive graphical display of census data over time cycling through thousands of variables. Finally, the last presentation delivered by Radhika Kulharni, VP R&D Analytics at SAS, complemented John Sall’s topic on how SAS can be used to process large amounts of data in seconds. She focused on the use of distributed computing environments such as SAS GRID and products such as SAS Scoring Accelerator and SAS Analytics Accelerator which are used to process data inside the database itself, minimizing I/O and processing time. She then discussed the use of applying these analytic capabilites to customer behavior: for example, tailoring a coupon for a particular customer.

To view more on SAS Visual Analytics tool:
http://www.sas.com/technologies/bi/visual-analytics.html

For more about JMP:
www.jmp.com