Blog-Normal Distribution - Analytic lessons and random observations by John Sall, JMP creator and SAS co-founder

Today is the 20th anniversary of JMP's first release, and I want to thank everyone who has helped to make JMP a success.

JMP Version 1 shipped on October 5, 1989 -- or as we claimed at the time September 35 -- so that we could say we shipped in the third quarter of 1989, our goal.

JMP started as a research project in the late '80s. In the earlier part of that decade, we had spent several years rewriting SAS completely (but compatibly) to fit on personal computers.

But by 1988, we felt three big forces, which can be characterized by:

• the Vehicle -- cars as well as trucks
  
• the Roles -- detectives as well as lawyers
  
• the Technology -- pointing as well as writing

As for the Vehicle, SAS was becoming a large enterprise-scale product -- a larger investment than some users, like engineers and scientists, were willing to handle. We were producing analytical trucks, but there was a market for analytical cars, i.e., something with low investment and ease of driving. We needed a more personal-scale tool, one for the desktop project rather than for the enterprise system.

As for the Roles, statistics itself was seeing the opportunities in exploratory techniques, and the value of graphics and interactivity. The statistics profession had been molded as a testing discipline, a role like a lawyer whose job is to prove things that we already knew. What was missing was the exploratory role, like a detective, whose job is to discover things we didn't already know. Especially since John Tukey's Exploratory Data Analysis and the improvement of statistical graphics, statistics needed to serve in the detective role as well as the lawyer role. Graphics was the key enabler of seeing patterns, and points that don't fit patterns.

As for the Technology, the graphical user interface arrived with the Macintosh, and later, Windows. It is a huge difference to just point and click rather than look up and type. Applications written for batch computing through languages were not suited for graphical interactivity. It was time for some fresh design.

In response to these three forces, we formed a small group to put something together. In a year and a half, we released Version 1 of JMP. This was a very small product compared to the JMP of today, but it had all the basics of statistics and graphics, with many innovative features. We thought "jump" was a name to suggest a big step into a new future, a product that jumps in responsiveness to the mouse, and a tool that enables our customers to do the experiments and make the discoveries to take huge strides in their products and processes.

In the early years, we learned important lessons. We learned that engineers and scientists were our most important customer segment. These people were smart, motivated and in a hurry -- too impatient to spend time learning languages, and eager to just point and click on their data. We had a product that was nearly as easy as walk-up-and-use with enough delights to hold their loyalty.

We learned that engineers need design of experiments (DOE), quality and productivity support (Six Sigma), and reliability modeling. We made sure we got better in these areas -- particularly DOE. We thought that engineers should be able to just ask the computer to custom-make a design that fits their needs rather than attempting to find a pre-built design that works.

We learned how to port to Windows. We made JMP work on Windows with release 3.1, using the Altura library. This was a quick effort. Soon we were busy rewriting the whole product in a different implementation language with a portability host-interface layer, which led to a wait of more than three years before Version 4. Version 4 not only switched languages, but also introduced a new nervous system for the product, including the JMP Scripting Language.

In the last few years, JMP has matured considerably. The big driving force has been in meeting the needs of those users we talk to, who correspond with us, who sometimes invite us into their sites. We have a very dedicated group of users who keep us directed, and help us serve more and more researchers every year. Recently, I heard the group of passionate JMP users termed the “JMPerati,” analogous to Stephen Baker’s term, the “numerati.”

JMP has broadened to become more versatile. JMP now supports business visualization in partnership with SAS Business Intelligence, and this in turn has encouraged us to introduce more visualization platforms, like the drag-and-drop Graph Builder in JMP 8. JMP can now handle larger problems because of work we have done to multithread many of the bottleneck methods and to implement JMP on 64-bit systems. And we now work with various SAS teams on projects in several areas, collaborating and sharing efforts.

JMP is 20 years old, but it seems like it is just getting started. We are growing fast. Last year, our business grew faster than ever, and we are set up to grow even faster in the future.

Happy birthday, JMP, and thank you, everyone, for your contributions to JMP's success.

I had the privilege to lead off a press event this morning for North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue at the SAS Solar Farm in Cary, NC. It was a beautiful photo event on a small hill overlooking the field. Here are my remarks:

Good morning and welcome to the SAS Solar Farm. I am John Sall, co-founder of SAS Institute.

This field of solar panels was completed last December; it has 5,040 panels, generates 1 megawatt of electic power at peak and is projected to produce 1.7 million KWH per year. The panels swivel to track the sun across the sky. This solar farm will eliminate 1,600 tons of carbon emissions annually.

The solar field occupies 4.8 acres of land -- and we also use the field as a pasture for Dorper Sheep (short sheep that fit better under the panels).

Eventually, the revenues from this facility will repay our investment, but only because of the generous state and federal tax credits and NC GreenPower electric rates. Without the incentives, this solar-generating facility would not have been built.

I hope that federal legislation will be forthcoming to make alternative energy and energy conservation economic by a federal charge on fossil carbon energy sourcing; this would be the most effective, efficient and ultimately the least painful way to a sustainable energy future. Until that becomes politically viable, other measures, such as alternative energy subsidies and quantity limits will at least move us in the right direction toward sustainability and energy security.

This solar farm is one of several energy initiatives at SAS. We aim to conserve energy use as we grow more jobs here:

• Our next building, under construction over there behind those trees, is designed to achieve LEED certification at least at the Silver level.
  
• Elsewhere, our forthcoming cloud computing facility will use energy-efficient computer systems.
  
• We recently published our second annual corporate sustainability and social responsibility report, which summarizes these and other efforts.
  

SAS is happy to call North Carolina home, with the state’s support for business, research and higher education, all of this enabling better jobs, better health and long-term sustainability.

North Carolina has many opportunities in alternative energy: in solar, in biofuels and in wind. Recently, the federal Department of the Interior, under Ken Salazar, made the first step to unlock leasing for offshore wind farms, and North Carolina has some of the best opportunities.

North Carolina is a home for energy research, too. We congratulate NC State University, which last year was appointed the lead institution for a smart grid NSF grant, which led to the FREEDM Systems Center (Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management).

We welcome everyone here to this new energy farm, and we look forward to our governor’s announcements on the subject of sustainability.

It is my privilege to introduce the Governor of the State of North Carolina, Bev Perdue.




Dale Carroll, Deputy Secretary of NC Department of Commerce (left); Hilda Pinnix-Ragland, Vice President of Corporate Public Affairs for Progress Energy (second from left); and NC Gov. Bev Perdue (center) join Jerry Williams of SAS (second from right) and me (right) at the SAS Solar Farm this morning. The Dorper Sheep are in the background.

Photo by Steve Muir, SAS