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Chris Hemedinger
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Director, SAS User Engagement

+Chris Hemedinger is the Director of SAS User Engagement, which includes our SAS Communities and SAS User Groups. Since 1993, Chris has worked for SAS as an author, a software developer, an R&D manager and a consultant. Inexplicably, Chris is still coasting on the limited fame he earned as an author of SAS For Dummies

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Nutty uses for SAS

Almost daily, I hear reports of scientific studies in which the researchers have used SAS for the data analysis. Typically I don't dig into the details because, frankly, the studies are usually way over my head. But this one about the effect of nut storage, nut size, and nut soaking

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Lookin' professional

Thanks to the folks who support our web presence, this blog page has just received a facelift (but alas, the blogger has not). New colors, easier navigation with the breadcrumbs up top, and a new banner image that shows the SAS for Dummies cover (as if to say, "really, he's

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PROC CERTIFY underway

Read how Stacey and Christine are working to join the ranks of the certified (and not the certifiable, we hope). I'm sure that PROC CERTIFY (as they've dubbed it) is an example of one proc that won't end with a QUIT; but with a RUN;

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Let's just call it 5 out of 5, shall we?

I was recently reviewing our most popular samples that we publish on support.sas.com, and I came across this one showing unusual uses for the ROUND function. As well as gathering lots of visits, this sample has also earned a very respectable rating by you, the readers. I note that we

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SAS takes you to school

This is one of the coolest uses of SAS I've seen: optimizing school reassignments. I spoke with paper coauthor Rob Pratt before SAS Global Forum this year about this topic. I found the project's origin interesting: CEO Jim Goodnight was chatting with the Wake County Schools superintendant at a cocktail

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SAS product pages from A to Z

From SAS/ACCESS (for working with databases) to SAS/ZODIAC* (for cranking out horoscopes), you'll be able to learn all you need to know about SAS products with the new product pages on support.sas.com. As of today, we're featuring just a handful of popular products within these pages. The product pages serve

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Wisdom of Crowds

Can a crowd of thousands produce better answers than a few experts? That's the question that Sir Francis Galton asked in the 19th century and sought to statistically prove, one way or another. I recently watched an entertaining and informative segment about Galton and the so-called "wisdom of crowds" on

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Yeah, I've got that problem too.

I just read about how Bill Gates has too many friends to keep up with on Facebook. Social networking is tough for social butterflies like Bill and myself. If only there was some sort of tool to help me sift through my friend data and help me categorize it.

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What's your style?

When you create SAS Enterprise Guide projects, what's your approach? Do you cram the process flow with thousands of nodes? Do you create different projects for each work task? Do you like one big SAS program? Or a bunch of little programs all linked together? That's the question that Michael

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Twitter and SAS, together again

Last year I posted a method to "mine" Twitter tweets for public sentiment after the vice-presidential debate. Patrick McLeod (University of Texas) recently posted an article showing how he adapted the method to analyze a category of tweets with the #iranelection tag. You can do fancier tricks with SAS and

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Yeah! What he said!

SAS programmers can often be (um...let's see...how best to put this...) set in their ways -- at least when it comes to their SAS work. This is due in part to the nature of SAS. The SAS program that you wrote 20 years ago in Version 5 probably still works

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"Manly yes, but I like it too..."

AnnMaria's blog describing her acceptance of SAS Enterprise Guide, despite the shortcomings she's found, reminded me of this Irish Spring commercial. I'd like to take the time to craft a more thoughtful response to her post, but that will have to wait for a less-hectic day. In the meantime, I

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Hear me now and believe me later

SAS-sponsored podcasts, including a few from yours truly, are available on www.sas.com. Interested in hearing from a variety of SAS authors? There are dozens of interviews available on the SAS Press site. For example, listen to the authors of the "Little SAS Book" series, Susan and Lora, as they reveal

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SAS Web Parts for Microsoft Sharepoint

The content for this post comes from David Henderson, lead software developer for the SAS Web Parts for Microsoft Sharepoint. David talks about these and other ideas for SAS-Sharepoint integration in his SAS Global Forum paper. We are pleased to announce the availability of SAS Web Parts 1.1 for Microsoft

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Too cool for skew

"…the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians…" That's a quote from Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist. It surfaced in an online interview months ago, but it's been getting a lot of play lately. Mr. Varian goes on to say: The ability to take data—to be able

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Is it getting crowded in here?

Just last week I posted about Jim Davis joining the blogging fray, and now here comes SAS Exceutive VP Mikael Hagström with his own blog, ominously titled "In the Final Analysis". If this keeps up, my entire SAS Dummy blog will be spent announcing other SAS blogs. Well, you don't

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Welcome to the newbie

Jim Davis, Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer at SAS: welcome to the SAS blogosphere. Jim is a great communicator and has a tremendous rapport with SAS customers; I'm sure that his blog will prove that out. I remember first meeting Jim way back shortly after he joined SAS. This

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Lovely is as lovely does

AnnMaria artfully qualifies her use of the word "lovely" as she describes her experience with one of our SAS customer representatives. The whole reason for the encounter: AnnMaria needed to get the correct sort of software order so that she and her colleagues can run SAS 9.2 and SAS Enterprise

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Applied playground math

The mainstream press never misses an opportunity to point out how our children are falling behind in math skills and won't be able to compete in the global marketplace. But I don't believe it, and I'll tell you why. For centuries, children have used counting rhymes to select a person

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Happy April Fools!

Thanks for reading this far. I'm sure that you've realized it by now, but the "SAS on the Wii" announcement is my idea of a joke, as warped as that might seem. Happy April Fools' Day! As far as I know, SAS is not currently planning a new release for

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