Fun facts about a SAS technical editor

Shelly Goodin
Shelly Goodin|February 22, 2012

In the March issue of SAS Publishing News, you'll find an interview with SAS technical editor Mike Boyd. I decided to put the spotlight on this multi-talented man for many reasons:

  • Technical editors typically don’t receive the recognition they deserve.
  • I’ve sought Mike’s expertise on a number of marketing projects and benefited from his kind professionalism and instruction.
  • Mike is fascinating!

I’ve captured some of my favorite portions of Mike’s interview in this post and hope that you'll enjoy getting to know his favorite proofreader’s mark, his grammatical pet peeve, his former stint as a puppeteer, and what is most rewarding to him about technical editing.

Shelly Goodin (SG): Mike, how long have you been a copyeditor?
Mike Boyd (MB): More than 20 years. I've had several positions where my title included "editor," including being a technical editor with other hardware and software companies. In the Army and at colleges and universities later, I did editing for public relations and news releases. When I was an instructional designer, I also did a lot of editing.

(SG): What do you most enjoy about your job?
(MB):Taking something that is complex and making it easier to understand. The nature of the content that our writers work with is complicated. Due to the fact that the material is new or fresh to me, I sometimes can see ways to make the content easier to follow. I also like unofficially representing the users by asking myself, "How will they see this?" I'm often the last person to review and test a book and online Help before they go to the customer.

I've been a technical writer, and it's a difficult job. A technical writer's responsibilities are varied, and the level of detail that technical writers must deal with is extraordinary. I'm fortunate to work with great writers who are amazing in all that they do. It's always a learning process for me.

(SG): Do you have a favorite proofreader's mark? A grammatical pet peeve?
(MB): Hmmm. Tough questions.
Favorite proofreader's mark: Delete. Editing something or just reading something online or in the newspaper (Sometimes, I can't stop editing.), I often see something that can be removed to make the content easier to read and more concise.
Grammatical pet peeve: Subject-verb agreement. I very rarely see it in the SAS content that I edit, but I do see it a lot in other content I read. There's an old joke: Subject and verb always has to agree. Unfortunately, some people don't get that joke.

(SG): Tell us three things that most people don't know about you (that you'd like them to know)...
(MB): While in college, I was "Worry Worm" on "Hopscotch House," a children's television program broadcast in Indianapolis for a while. Worry Worm was a hand or sock puppet. I operated him (You might say I had a hand in him.) and did his voice. I learned the art of fine whine.
I was a voice actor in plays performed at Gallaudet University.
I compiled a book of my great-grandfather's poetry and essays.

You can read Mike's interview in its entirety here.

 

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Your chance to ask an author recruiter almost anything

Shelly Goodin
Shelly Goodin|February 20, 2012

On Thursday, February 23, SAS Press acquisitions editor Shelley Sessoms and I will take questions about getting published, why you should publish with us and the publishing industry in general. If you like our books or have considered writing your own SAS or JMP book, join us on Twitter at 2 p.m. ET. You can follow Shelley Sessoms (@ssessoms) and me (@SASPublishing) and our conversation by using the #SASPress hashtag.

Shelley Sessoms and Shelly Goodin

This is SAS Publishing's fourth live Twitter chat. In the past, we've hosted similar conversations with SAS authors Rick Wicklin, Emmett Cox, Tricia Aanderud, and Angela Hall about their recent books, as well as their writing experiences. Now, we're focusing on our publishing program and hope that many of you aspiring writers (we know you're out there) and fans of our books will join in. If you can't make it to the live event this Thursday, feel free to submit your questions here on this blog.

Some of the topics we anticipate covering include:

  • hot topics we're recruiting authors for
  • how to submit your book proposal
  • unique features of our publishing program
  • what we can offer that self-publishing can't
  • qualities needed in an author
  • new and upcoming books
  • all the places you can meet with Shelley while she's on the road

We hope you can join us and look forward to your questions!

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SAS author's tip: Using text mining in CRM Applications

Shelly Goodin
Shelly Goodin|February 17, 2012

This week's SAS author's tip comes from Randy Collica and his new book Customer Segmentation and Clustering Using SAS Enterprise Miner, Second Edition. Randy, a Senior Solutions Architect for SAS, is extremely knowledgeable and approachable. In his new book, Randy uses SAS Enterprise Miner and the most commonly available techniques for customer relationship management (CRM). If you already have the first edition, four new chapters and additional updates have been added. As always, you'll enjoy Randy's straightforward style and insight.

After reading Randy's tip below, visit his author page to read a free chapter from the book and to view the appendix of data sets used in examples. Also, be sure to register for Randy's upcoming, free SAS Talks webinar on Customer Segmentation Made Simple. Event date is March 8.

The following excerpt is from SAS Press author Randall S. Collica and his book "Customer Segmentation and Clustering Using SAS Enterprise Miner, Second Edition" Copyright © 2011, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina, USA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (please note that results may vary depending on your version of SAS software)

12.5 Using Text Mining in CRM Applications

It is rather difficult to demonstrate textual data in a CRM application without actually giving you data that should not be published. So, in lieu of doing this, I will describe a text application that I performed in my business and give you the thought and mining process. The business problem given to me was not really supposed to be a text mining exercise at all. I was consulting with an internal client about his sales segmentation. He had classified each of 250 or so top accounts in that industry into one of five possible groups. Four of these groups were attitudinal segments depicting the level of their technology and their feelings that this technology would help them have a competitive advantage. The fifth group was an unknown group where the marketing and sales did not know how to classify the account. When the project came to me, the marketing clients desired to know more about these segments from a product profile standpoint, which I was able to accomplish using the techniques given earlier in Chapter 10, “Product Affinity and Clustering of Product Affinities.”

What transpired after this profiling effort was a discussion that led to the usage of our call center database that housed unstructured notes and comments that our sales representatives had entered when communicating with customers. The desired goal in this project was to use the segmentation to create some specific campaigns with differing messaging and offers tailored to each segment group. That is when I had the idea of combining the structured and unstructured call center notes together along with the accounts that were already classified into the four segment groups. Leaving the fifth (unknown) group out of the data mining, I was able to create a predictive classification model using the unstructured notes to classify the accounts into one of the four possible attitudinal segment groups. With a classification model in hand, I could then score the fifth (unknown) accounts into one of the four segments.

Figure 12.16 shows the classification of three different models: a regression model using only structured data, a decision tree using only structured data, and a memory-based reasoning (MBR or nearest neighbor model) of the unstructured notes data. The error rate on the MBR model using text notes was less than 5% on the Training, Validation, and Test data sets. The MBR model was applied to the scoring of unknown accounts, and the completed scoring allowed a more complete targeted list for use in future campaigns.

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New Business Intelligence book will help many SAS users

Aimee Rodriguez
Aimee Rodriguez|February 14, 2012

Building Business Intelligence Using SAS: Content Development Examples by Tricia Aanderud and Angela Hall just published this month. This highly anticipated book—called “a must read for anyone using SAS® BI”* —is a quick-start guide that will help users move quickly from using only one of the SAS BI Clients to using a significant portion of the system.

We asked Tricia and Angela what kinds of user communities they think will benefit most from the information offered in the book. Here’s what they said:

  • SAS Report Developers: Whether it’s creating reports in Web Report Studio, Add-in to MS Office, BI Dashboard or writing code for SAS Stored Processes, report developers will benefit from the step-by-step examples to create content in each component of SAS Business Intelligence Solution.
  • SAS Database Administrators: Typically responsible for OLAP Cube development and Information Map creation, database administrators will find both of these techniques described in detail along with tricks to make them more efficient.
  • SAS Administrators: Administrators will find instructions on how to enable capabilities for the users and best practices on organizing & managing the content developers are creating.

So there you have it—a new book that will be of use to large numbers of SAS users worldwide.

Visit Tricia’s and Angela’s  author pages to read a free chapter from their new book and to find all of the ways you can connect with them online.

* Cindi Howson, founder of BI Scorecard and author of Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App

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Review SAS Press books: registration open now!

Julie Platt
Julie Platt|February 13, 2012

The 8th annual Krispy Kreme Challenge race was just held in downtown Raleigh, NC. This event was started in 2004 as a dare among a few NC State undergrads. They had this idea to race 2 miles to the local Krispy Kreme doughnuts, down a dozen of the confections, and race the 2 miles back to campus. A race that began as a whim has turned into one that attracts thousands of runners--and as many spectators.

In a way, developing SAS Press books is similar, right? Authors log hours and hours preparing, race toward their next milestones, and ultimately finish their books. On the sidelines, family, friends, editors, and reviewers cheer them on, helping them reach their goals and encouraging their best form.

While not all SAS or JMP users aspire to be authors, many of you want to be among the cheering crowd, helping your favorite authors bring new books to the market. Maybe you’re a subject matter expert. Maybe you represent a novice to a particular topic. Whatever your talents, bring them to the SAS Press program and cheer on SAS Press authors by becoming a technical reviewer. In exchange, you’ll receive much gratitude from SAS Press authors, along with a thank you from SAS—book credit!

Registration open now!

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SAS author's tip: using %NRSTR to mask macro triggers

Shelly Goodin
Shelly Goodin|February 10, 2012

As SAS user Marje Fecht said "We all want a 'SAS programming assistant' to help us complete our jobs more quickly." Fecht, Senior Partner at Prowerk Consulting, then went on to say "In her book SAS Macro Programming Made Easy, Second Edition, Michele Burlew encourages us to take advantage of the SAS Macro Facility as our 'SAS programming assistant.'"

Michele Burlew is a favorite among SAS users (and reviewers). Besides being one of the most gracious people you'll ever meet, she's used her extensive SAS expertise to write many highly usable and instructive SAS books. Chances are that if you don't own one of Michele's books, you've noticed them at conferences or heard about her work. If you like this week's featured SAS tip, I'd encourage you to visit Michele's author page to learn about all of her books, as well as her upcoming title SAS Hash Objects: A Programmer's Guide.

The following excerpt is from SAS Press author Michele M. Burlew and her book "SAS Macro Programming Made Easy, Second Edition" Copyright © 2006, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina, USA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (please note that results may vary depending on your version of SAS software)

Example 8.4: Using %NRSTR to Mask Macro Triggers

This example shows how to prevent the two macro triggers, ampersands and percent signs, from interpretation at compilation by masking the triggers with the %NRSTR function. The goal is to assign text that contains an ampersand and a percent sign to the macro variable, REPORTTITLE.

The previous examples in this section used the %STR function, which does not mask macro triggers. The %NRSTR function masks all that %STR does, and it also masks macro triggers. 

Without masking the ampersand, the macro processor interprets the text following the ampersand as a macro variable that should be resolved. The text following the ampersand in this example is Feb. Assume when the statements execute in this example, the macro variable named Feb does not exist in the global symbol table.

Without masking the percent sign, the macro processor interprets the text following the percent sign as a macro program call that it should execute. The text following the percent sign in this example is Sales. Assume when the statements execute in this example, a macro program named SALES has not already been compiled.

Execution of the first %LET and first %PUT statements generate warnings, not errors. The macro processor does assign a value to REPORTTITLE. Every time it attempts to resolve REPORTTITLE, it also tries to resolve FEB as a macro variable and SALES as a macro program invocation.

 

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Get hooked on the NOOK!

Sandy Varner
Sandy Varner|February 9, 2012

As a little girl growing up in rural North Carolina, I remember going to my Granddaddy’s fishing pond. My Daddy and Granddaddy loved to fish but as a six-year-old the fishing was boring to me. I was more interested in finding the worms to put on the fish hook.  I’d squeal as I ran my fingers around in the bait cup looking for those worms (yuck). Daddy would shush me and then I’d get so excited when I ran across another worm that I’d squeal again.  The Brim in the pond would eat the bait off Daddy’s hook so fast that I got ‘hooked’ on finding those worms for him. What great memories those are!

Today’s kids growing up in the technology era may have slightly different memories.  Maybe they’ll remember playing games or reading with their parents or grandparents on different devices: Wii, xBox, PlayStation, Nintendo DS, Kindle, iPad, or the NOOK.

Last year at SAS Global Forum, we were surprised by the number of requests we received for SAS books on the Barnes and Noble NOOK device. As with any new endeavor, we found that an ePub format at one reseller is not the same as an ePub format at another reseller.  It takes time, patience, and adaptability to work out the conversion of SAS technical books. Our Production team has gone through the NOOK conversion now and we’re ready to hear from you. What books do you want to read on your NOOK?

I hope you took the time to read SAS Publications Vice President Kathy Council’s post Are you reading ebooks?, and Director Sean Gargan’s recent blog post eBooks, eBooks, eBooks.  Today we offer select titles for these devices:

Apple iBooks – 12 titles

Amazon Kindle – 44 titles

Google eBooks – 32 titles

Barnes and Noble NOOK – 4 titles

Whatever your favorite device, we are working to make your favorite SAS books into ebooks.

I was hooked on fishing because of playing with the bait (and the fun of being with my Daddy). I hope that Moms and Dads in today’s fast-paced world have the opportunity to take their kids fishing - even with so much competition from technology.  If you haven’t already done so, I hope that  you’ll soon try out a reading device or tablet and that you’ll get ‘hooked’ on SAS ebooks. I love print books but I also love the convenience of reading devices and tablets.

Hook ‘em, NOOK!

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eBooks, eBooks, eBooks

Sean Gargan
Sean Gargan|February 7, 2012

More than 1,000 attendees from all facets of the Publishing industry gathered in New York in January for the 2012 Digital Book World Conference.  Not surprisingly, the topic of eBooks and their impact on the industry was a focal point of the three day event.

Many of the presentations, the survey data, sales data, and hallway discussions support the comments we saw in Kathy Council’s recent blog post, Are you reading eBooks?  The answer is yes! 

An emerging topic at this year’s conference was the issue of global distribution of eBook content. The good news for SAS users around the globe is that eBook retailers and distributors recognize the importance of global content distribution and are doing something about it…

Amazon has storefronts in the United States, Canada, China, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain and the United Kingdom. They recently announced a partnership with Junglee to serve the market in India (this program is in Beta but SAS books are there now).

Apple iBookstore  can be accessed from the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, and most of continental Europe.  

Google eBooks are available in the US, Australia, Canada, Italy, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.

I did not run into anyone from Barnes & Noble at DBW.   And although we recently began offering SAS books on the Nook, they are available only in the US.  

By far the biggest international splash was made by Kobo.  Their VP of Content, Sales and Merchandising, Michael Tamblyn explained how they plan to launch in 12 new countries a year.  

SAS Publishing is committed to support your growing appetite for eBook content.  To keep tabs on our growing library of SAS books available across multiple vendors, be sure to bookmark our eBook Partners resource page.

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Find me at Statistical Practice 2012

Shelley Sessoms
Shelley Sessoms|February 6, 2012

In less than two weeks, I’ll be in sunny Florida attending a brand new conference. According to their Web site, Statistical Practice 2012 aims to bring together hundreds of statistical practitioners, including data analysts, researchers and scientists who engage in the application of statistics to solve real-world problems on a daily basis. The conference will provide an opportunity to learn about the latest statistical methodologies and best practices in statistical design, analysis, programming and consulting.

I hope the conference is an opportunity for attendees to learn specifically about SAS and what we can offer them. Attendees will have access to SAS R&D, SAS Publishing and JMP at this conference. As a member of SAS Publishing, I’ll be on hand with a variety of books that will help solve the daily problems encountered by statisticians and analysts. Attendees can browse these books and place orders (at a 20% discount!) during the conference. I’ll also be looking for new authors on topics such as bayesian analysis, cluster analysis, power and sample size, reliability analysis, and much more.

So make sure you come in out of the sun and warmth for a visit. You never know what you might learn from SAS!

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Today’s book buzz in 140 characters or less

Shelly Goodin
Shelly Goodin|February 2, 2012

Interested in saving 10% on books about rodents today? You’ve come to the right place. No, SAS Publishing isn’t making this discount (or any books about rodents) available, but I have scoped out some of today’s best publishing related tweets (announcements).

If you’re not using Twitter (yet) or even think it’s a waste of time, perhaps the following screen captures of some very recent tweets will change your mind. Just be sure to follow us at @SASPublishing when you do sign up and consider following some of the accounts listed below. You’ll never lack for book recommendations, intriguing discounts, publishing industry news and events.

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