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SAS Global Forum 2011 just over two weeks away. The R&D and product management teams are preparing the demos to show on stage during the highly-visible opening sessions. A tremendous amount of work goes into planning the program. It's great to see what they come up with. When it comes
In a previous blog post, I showed how to use the SAS/IML SORT and SORTNDX subroutines to sort rows of a matrix according to the values of one or more columns. There is another common situation in which you might need to sort a matrix: you compute a statistic for
Sorting is a fundamental operation in statistical programming, and most SAS programmers are familiar with PROC SORT for sorting data sets. But did you know that you can also sort rows of a SAS/IML matrix according to the value of one or more columns? This post shows how. Sorting a
In my spare time, I enjoy browsing the StackOverflow discussion forum to see what questions people are asking about SAS, SAS/IML, and statistics. Last week, a statistics student asked for help with the following homework problem: I need to generate a one-dimensional random walk in which the step length and
Several times a year, I am contacted by a SAS account manager who tells me that a customer has asked whether it is possible to convert a MATLAB program to the SAS/IML language. Often the customer has an existing MATLAB program and wants to include the computation as part of
When I began my job at SAS in 1999 (I was only 14 years old at the time), one of my responsibilities was taking over the production of a listserv called NEWDOCNEWS. The listserv consisted of all the new titles from Books By Users (now SAS Press) and SAS Documentation
String comparisons in SAS software are case-sensitive. For example, the uppercase letter "F" and lowercase letter "f" are treated as unique characters. When these two letters represent the same condition (for example, a female patient), the strings need to be handled in a case-insensitive manner, and a SAS programmer might
Do you have many points in your scatter plots that overlap each other? If so, your graph exhibits overplotting. Overplotting occurs when many points have similar coordinates. For example, the following scatter plot (which is produced by using the ODS statistical graphics procedure, SGPLOT) displays 12,000 points, many of which
The ODS Graphics Designer allows you to design and build your own statistical graphs in SAS, without having to learn how to program in the new graph template language (GTL). The ODS Graphics Designer is a rich user interface that allows you to design these graphs based upon your own
I don't use the SAS macro language very often. Because the SAS/IML language has statements for looping and evaluating expressions, I rarely write a macro function as part of a SAS/IML programs. Oh, sure, I use the %LET statement to define global constants, but I seldom use the %DO and
I feel the experience of participating at SAS Global Forum year after year is like relishing a warm brownie! It’s the same treat but a unique experience every time. Subtle changes in the ingredients can lead to a unique and enhanced flavor. The team behind the scenes works hard to
If you haven't signed up for SAS Global Forum 2011 in Las Vegas, you'd better get moving: February 28 is the last day for early registration and the discounted hotel prices. You should also sign up for the pre-conference statistical tutorials, which are filling up fast! I was tempted to
As we discussed last week, the forecasting process is often contaminated by individuals whose input makes the forecast worse. Sometimes this is intentional. For example, if I'm tired of hearing customers complain about out-of-stocks on retail shelves, I'll try to drive up the forecast so that more inventory will be
I was inspired by Chris Hemedinger's blog posts about his daughter's science fair project. Explaining statistics to a pre-teenager can be a humbling experience. My 11-year-old son likes science. He recently set about trying to measure which of three projectile launchers is the most accurate. I think he wanted to
I’m sure you will all agree that a programmer’s favorite task is to maximize efficiency thus enhancing performance. Dear reader, in this blog post I’ll share my best programming practices so that you can benefit from what I typically show my students in class. At the end I’d like to
