Using fast food prices as an index of purchasing power

Robert Allison
Robert Allison|May 22, 2013

I recently read an interesting article in The Economist, where they describe “The Big Mac index.”  This is an index they invented as a lighthearted guide to compare currencies in different countries. In their article they create a multi-panel display (similar to a dashboard) where they compare the index for several countries using [...]

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Visualizing NFL fans on a map, based on Facebook ‘like’ data

Robert Allison
Robert Allison|May 16, 2013

Are you an NFL fan, or curious about analyzing social media data? — Well, in either case, this blog’s for you! I recently read a fascinating Facebook article that included a U.S. county map showing which NFL (U.S. football) team had the most ‘likes’ in each county (based on ~35 million [...]

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Creating fancy 'infographics' with SAS

Robert Allison
Robert Allison|April 11, 2013

I haven’t seen an official definition of ‘infographic’ that I really like … but in my mind it’s something 1/2 way between data visualization & artwork.  It borrows elements from graphs & dashboards, and combines that with an artistic poster. If you perform a Google image search on infographic you’ll see [...]

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Basketball tournaments, Moneyball, and sports analytics

Robert Allison
Robert Allison|March 21, 2013

A big part of  ”winning” these days (be it sports or a business) is performing analytics better than your competition.  This is demonstrated in awe-inspiring fashion in the book (and movie) “Moneyball.”  And on that topic, I’d like to show you a few ways SAS can be used to analyze sports data [...]

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Census block maps in SAS

Robert Allison
Robert Allison|March 14, 2013

I’ve heard many customers ask “Can SAS do/use/handle census block maps?” My answer was “of course!” … but I never really had any examples to show/prove that.  Well, now I do! :) First, you need to locate & download the shape files for the census blocks you’re interested in plotting.  For [...]

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Death and taxes (a visual analysis)

Robert Allison
Robert Allison|March 4, 2013

It’s said that the only things you can’t avoid are Death and Taxes … Well, in this blog, I’m going to avoid the “Death” one (for now), and just show you some graphs on taxes in the U.S., since the deadline for paying 2012 taxes is quickly approaching!   :-) I created these [...]

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Baseball's loss is your gain: The ODS Graphics course is here!

Mike Kalt
Mike Kalt|February 28, 2013

It’s been quite a while since my face has graced the SAS Training Post, so some of you may have been wondering: Did Mike retire?  Was he traded to another company for a blogger to be named later?   Did he leave to pursue his lifelong dream of playing first base [...]

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SAS analysis of the #1 most popular baby names

Robert Allison
Robert Allison|February 22, 2013

I’m sure that most of you have seen the really cool interactive Baby Name Voyager, right?  If not, go have a look and try it out (be sure to plug in your name, and the names in your family, and so on). That’s a pretty cool application!  … But it made [...]

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A SAS graph for the Chinese New Year

Robert Allison
Robert Allison|February 6, 2013

I like to think that I have a graph for all occasions – Chinese New Year is no exception! … This year, the Chinese New Year is on Feb 10, 2013. The date varies from year to year, because it’s based on the lunar (moon) cycles.  I thought it would [...]

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Tracking tornadoes with SAS

Robert Allison
Robert Allison|January 31, 2013

We had some fierce wind storms all across the United States yesterday, which even spawned some tornadoes! It looks like we weathered the storm OK here in Cary (but I still need to run out to the lake and make sure my pontoon/houseboat is still there, agh!). Anyway … as with other [...]

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