Chris Hemedinger, author of the SAS Dummy blog, read last week's Innovation Inspiration post and was reminded of a couple of cool things he'd seen SAS users do. He also told me of one of his most recent rock star moments. (In all fairness to Hemedinger, he didn't call his work innovative or himself a rock star.) Hemedinger tried to act as though his bright idea was no big deal. He even went so far as to suggest that the software was the real genius. "I used the world's leading business analytics software to analyze my Netflix history," he said.
In that respect, Hemedinger is no different from any of the other contributors in this series - everyone is using SAS in an interesting, innovative way to make his or her life easier. One way that he may differ, is that Hemedinger always seems to be thinking of ways to use SAS for slightly out-of-the-box problems. After reading about his Netflix success, I decided to look for other problems he'd solved and written about. Check these out:
- Here, Hemedinger charted the weather conditions so that he could decide what to wear for the SAS winter bash.
- You can't expect a Hemedinger child to have an ordinary name. Here is how Hemedinger and his wife ensured that the list of names they had to pick from were "optimized" for their baby.
- And, leave it to Hemedinger to find a group of high schoolers who are adept at both SAS and Twitter! He showed them how to analyze a Tweet stream.
- He even co-wrote a SAS Global Forum paper with Susan Slaughter called, Social Networking and SAS: Running PROCs on Your Facebook Friends. The paper describes how to access and analyze social media data.
- And finally, here is a really important one here in NC in the fall: Guess your Wait at the state fair.
I'm sure his ideas have you itching to get back to work (and play). Do you have ideas of your own, now? I'd love to hear about your cool ideas and the innovative ways you've used SAS to solve a problem - big or small.
Don't miss any of Hemedinger's great ideas. Sign up to have every SAS Dummy post delivered to your inbox. (You'll find directions at the bottom of this page.) Have a happy Friday!
