CARY, N.C., Oct. 3, 2005 -- SAS, the leader in business intelligence, is preparing to host M2005, the world's largest data mining conference, this month in Las Vegas. M2005, scheduled for Oct. 24 and 25 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel, will feature new sessions, workshops and keynote presentations.

The eighth annual conference will highlight best practices in predictive analytics, unstructured data, Web mining and more. Last year's conference, M2004, attracted more than 700 data mining practitioners and business decision makers from more than 340 business, academic, and government organizations in 21 countries, making it the largest data mining conference in the world. Attendees laud the conference as a venue for introducing not only new theoretical concepts and models but the latest data mining applications and creative techniques. These applications include bioinformatics, financial services, emerging technologies and data mining in education.

Co-chairs for M2005 are Jerry Oglesby, SAS' director of higher education consulting, and Michael Berry, the co-founder and principal of Data Miners. "The quality of speakers and the relevance of the topics addressed during these two days are unparalleled," said Oglesby. "M2005 is unequaled by any conference of its kind in providing attendees a forum for learning and exchanging new ideas."

Featuring four keynote addresses and more than 30 session presentations that reach across industries and business functions, M2005 is valuable for anyone in business, academia, or education who needs to learn how to fully harness and exploit the power of their data. Keynote speakers include:

-- David Hand, head of the statistics section at Imperial College in London and author of more than 20 data mining books.

-- David Salsburg, author of the internationally acclaimed book, The Lady Tasting Tea, and a retired research fellow from Pfizer.

-- Johannes Gehrke, professor of computer science at Cornell and the faculty director of the Cornell Theory Center.

-- Gregory Smith, vice president for information technology and chief information officer at the World Wildlife Fund.

M2005 will include a new Poster Session that showcases submissions from attendees, a preconference workshop on Sunday, Oct. 23, as well as two afternoon keynote presentations during the show. Professors Jay Coleman of the University of North Florida and Allen Lynch of Mercer University as well as Mike DuMond from ERS Group will discuss how they use the power of SAS(R) predictive analytics to pinpoint with remarkable accuracy which NCAA basketball teams will be selected for the annual championship tournament, which teams will win their games, and which high school football players will be recruited by colleges.

Immediately following the conference, Oct. 26-28, M2005 will offer additional training courses. Participants will be able to choose from seven courses, including Advanced Predictive Modeling, Mining Textual Data Using SAS Text Miner, and Predictive Modeling Using SAS Enterprise Miner(TM). For more information, visit the M2005 Web site at http://www.sas.com/events/dmconf/index.html, or contact the conference manager at (919) 531-1276.

About SAS

SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at about 40,000 sites - including 96 of the top 100 companies on the FORTUNE Global 500(R) - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R). Visit us at www.sas.com.

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Copyright (C) 2005 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.

SAS Institute Inc.
Faye Merrideth, 919-531-4261
faye.merrideth@sas.com
www.sas.com/presscenter