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I recently blogged about how to eliminate a macro loop in favor of using SAS/IML language statements. The purpose of the program was to extract N 3x3 matrices from a big 3Nx3 matrix. The main portion of my PROC IML program looked something like this: proc iml; ... do i=0
Recently, I was waiting at a stoplight listening to an author interview on NPR. They were talking with Joshua Foer, a journalist who, as part of a feature he was writing, decided to take on the challenge of the United States Memory Championship event and ended up winning. He’s written
Growing up in Michigan, I, like all state residents, learned early on that the lower peninsula of Michigan is shaped like a mitten. This piece of information has served me well all my life; whenever I meet a stranger who wants to know where in Michigan I grew up, I
SAS procedure SUMMARY is a quick method of converting your detail table to a fully summarized one. Included is a sample. The key option to set is the NWAY - this generates the lowest level of summary for use in the OLAP cube. Essentially - the class statement contains all
In the computer software industry, 35 years is like an eon. I mean, 35 years ago, the computing power that I carry around within my mobile phone didn't even exist all in one place; but if it did, it would have filled an entire building. That's why the recent posting
Statistical programmers can be creative and innovative. But when it comes to choosing names of variables, often x1, x2, x3,... works as well as any other choice. In this blog post, I have two tips that are related to constructing variable names of the form x1, x2,..., xn. Both tips
In the past couple months, this scenario has occurred twice. So thought I'd share a quick remedy ~ and save for my future reference when this occurs again :). In Star Schemas, there are sometimes occasions where the data quality isn't exactly perfect. And sometimes, for some users/companies, this is
We're having an early spring in North Carolina. Trees are budding, flowers are blooming, and the warmer temperatures make even a pistol whipping more enjoyable. What better way to take advantage of the new season than filling your spring with educational opportunities in forecasting. Plan in Perfect Sync with Customer
Loony. Zany. Brilliant. Hysterical. Those are some of the adjectives I use to describe The Far Side® cartoons by Gary Larson from the 1980s and early '90s. I recently rediscovered an old book, The Far Side Gallery 2, which collects some of the best of Larson's wonderfully wacky cartoons. Every
I recently asked chair Debbie Buck some questions to help us learn more about the upcoming conference. Here’s what she had to share – good reading ahead! 1) How is this year’s conference different from SAS Global Forum 2010? What’s New? SAS Global Forum 2011 includes a number of changes
This week I made a quick trip to Predictive Analytics World in San Francisco. It was my first appearance at that event, and some great things are going on at it and related conferences. It was held in conjunction with the eMetrics and Conversion conferences—all put on by Rising Media.
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
I’m amazed that so many financial institutions seem to hold fraud at a seemingly low priority. Fraud is often viewed as “the cost of doing business.” What if your view of fraud could be altered so that it became “the profit of doing business”? With the growth in new payment
Last week, SAS held its annual analyst conference in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where SAS leaders and SAS customers spoke to a room full of industry analysts about the direction of SAS products and business strategy for 2011 and beyond. It's a pretty exclusive event, so not many attend. But -