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SAS® VISUAL ANALYTICS – HANDS-ON

USING FORECASTING AND SIMULATION

SAS FORUM 2015

JEPPE DEIGAARD

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About SAS® Visual Analytics Whether you are a business user with limited technical skills, a statistician or a data scientist, faster insights are at your fingertips. Get all the benefits of data visualization tools with absolutely no coding required. Sophisticated analytics, including decision trees, network diagrams, on-the-fly forecasting and scenario analysis have been seamlessly integrated with ease-of-use features such as auto charting, ‘what does it mean’ pop-ups, and drag-and-drop capabilities. After completing this workshop, you will have:

Created a Visual Analytics exploration containing a visualization using o Forecasting and simulation

Example of visualizations with forecasting, decision trees and text analytics.

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1. Forecasting and Simulation

1. Click Google Chrome in the task bar at the bottom of the screen.

2. Select SAS Visual Analytics Hub from the menu.

3. Log on as the user sdkstudent\sasdemo with the password Orion123. If you see this userid and dots for password already predefined, then click Sign In.

4. To open the Data Explorer, double-click the application shortcut for the Data Explorer on the SAS Home page.

5. Select SAS Forum 2015 Data Analyse and click Open. An empty data exploration appears with the data source Insighttoy5_transformed selected.

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6. Starting with a blank workspace, select Line Chart from the toolbar.

7. From the Data tab, select Transaction Month and Year and Sales Rep Actual and drag them

over the workspace.

8. Now that we have a time series-based line chart, all we have to do is ‘turn on’ forecasting in the Roles tab to display a forecast.

9. You can increase the periods forecasted by changing the duration in the Properties tab. Change it to 18 months and click on the checkbox.

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10. We can improve the accuracy of our forecast by adding measures that we believe should have an influence on the revenue. Select and drag the following variables over in the ‘Underlying Factors’ box.

a. Order Marketing Cost b. Sales Rep Orders c. Sales Rep Rating d. Sales Rep Target e. Vendor Distance

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11. By adding underlying factors to our forecast, many things have happened: a. The solution has evaluated and determined if the additional variables were having an

influence on the forecast results. Notice how ‘Vendor Distance’ is greyed out and does not influence the forecast.

b. The forecast itself has been recalculated and is now much more precise, as evidenced by the much tighter confidence interval.

c. A new feature, ‘Scenario Analysis’ has been added, allowing you to perform simulations and goal seeking.

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12. If you click on the ‘Scenario Analysis’ button in the Roles tab, you can now change the future

values of the Underlying Factors and see the impact on the forecast. a. Using the mouse with drag and drop change the value of an underlying factor, and click

on Apply to save your changes.

b. Alternatively, right-click and use the dialog box to change multiple values.

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c. Again, remember to click on Apply to save your changes.

13. With Goal Seeking, you change the value of the Target, and Visual Analytics will optimize the

values of the underlying factors to arrive at your desired target. You can decide to work with all the underlying factors, or just some of them, and you can also set boundaries, so your underlying factors will make sense from a business point of view (e.g. to avoid ending up with negative headcounts).

a. Select which underlying factors will be affected in your goal seeking exercise, and set boundaries for them.

b. Right-click on your target variable, and set the desired goal. Remember to click on OK

then Apply.

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14. If you click the Table View button, you will see the values that have changed (in bold) as a result

of your scenario simulation or goal-seeking exercise.

15. If you hover over the upper right corner of your visualization, you will see that you can ‘Show Details’. If you select the Results tab, you can see the underlying data supporting this forecast. You can right-click and select ‘Export Data’ to obtain a csv file of the current data supporting this forecast. If you select the Analysis tab, more explanation will be given on forecasting as well as the algorithm that was used.

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