Robert has worked at SAS for over 25 years, and is perhaps the foremost expert in creating custom graphs using SAS/GRAPH. His educational background is in Computer Science, and he holds a BS, MS, and PhD from NC State University. He is the author of several conference papers, has won a few graphic competitions, and has written a book (SAS/GRAPH: Beyond the Basics).
The United States declared independence in 1776, and we celebrate it on July 4th every year. But the land areas that make up the United States today weren't necessarily the same as they were back then. So I thought it would be interesting to create a map showing when each
In FiveThirtyEight's Significant Digits section, they recently mentioned that nine states could potentially have 50% or more females in their legislature after the upcoming election. My first thought - I need to see some graphs! They linked to a New York Times article that had some interesting graphs. There was
During these hot summers in the southern US, many people regard Willis Carrier (the man who invented modern air conditioning) as a saint. But along with the comfortable indoor temperatures comes the high electricity bill at the end of the month. And how much does the electricity cost? That's a difficult
One of my favorite Eddie Murphy movies when I was growing up was Coming to America. And speaking of coming to America, there's been a lot in the news recently about people doing just that. So I thought I'd use my SAS skills to help people wanting to come to
A question recently popped up in a discussion forum about creating table plots using SAS. So I thought I'd dabble in this topic, and see what I could come up with. If you're interested in tableplots, or American Community Survey (ACS) data, or data visualization, I invite you to follow
Ever since the Moneyball book & movie came out, athletes have been scrambling to use data and analytics to gain a competitive advantage. One of my favorite sports is boat racing - the ones you paddle. Follow along as I lead you through some maps and graphs I created for
I recently read an interesting article that claims "a single cremation emits as much carbon dioxide as a 1,000-mile car trip." This got me wondering about cremation data, and I ended up on the Wikipedia page about cremation rates. They had a map of the US cremation rates by state ... but the more
You've probably seen in the news that a volcano erupted in Guatemala recently. But do you really know much about this volcano, or even where it's located? Hopefully this blog post will get you up to speed on your volcanology! Pictures of a recent volcano erupting in Hawaii show slow-moving
Everything's big in Texas - at least that's what they say! Therefore let's have a bit of graphical fun, and use Texas as a unit of measure (let's call it a 'tex'). More on that later - but first, here's a picture of my friend Jennifer posing beside a rather
With talk of tariffs in the news lately, I'm sure everyone is curious about possible ways to bypass them. One possible loophole is using the foreign-trade zones (FTZs) in the US. What are FTZs, and where are they located? Read along and find out!... The Foreign-Trade Zone act was passed in
Why do people donate money to politicians and political parties? Sometimes it's because they agree with the platform, but sometimes it might be for potential financial benefits. When it comes to large donations from Fortune 500 companies, I suspect the latter! And since politics has been in the news a
According to a recent Bloomberg article, this year the United States passed Hong Kong and Singapore to become the country with the world's most competitive economy! They say, "The U.S. dethroned Hong Kong to retake first place among the world's most competitive economies, thanks to faster economic growth and a
Have you ever tried to plot data on a map of Antarctica ... and been thoroughly frustrated or confused? If you're that person, or even a seasoned map maker wanting to hone your skills, then this blog post is for you! But first, here is a picture to get you
Poverty. It's a bit difficult to define who lives in poverty - I guess it's a relative thing, and depends on the standard of living of the people around you. Today we're going to take a look at the child poverty rates in several 'rich' countries (such as the United
It looks like we've finally recovered from the Great Recession, and there are even claims of record-low unemployment in several U.S. states. Of course claims like that make my data-radar go off, and I wanted to see the numbers for myself. And it's a great excuse for me to create
Have you ever lied about your age? When you were younger, perhaps you exaggerated your age to watch an R-rated movie, buy cigarettes, get into a night club, or drink alcohol? And when people reach their 30s or 40s, they might subtract a few years when people ask their age.
How old was the oldest person in your family, or the oldest person you personally know? And how do they compare to the oldest people in the world? ... Perhaps you can easily make the comparison, with this cool graph! But before we get started, here's a picture of my
How many planets are there in our solar system? The answer hasn't always been 9 ... er, I mean 8 (sorry Pluto!). The count has changed throughout history as we got a better understanding of astronomy, discovered new planets, and redefined what a 'planet' is. Wouldn't it be helpful to
Plastic pollution in the oceans is becoming a huge problem. And, as with any problem, finding the solution starts with identifying the source of the problem. A recent study estimated that 95% of the plastic pollution in our oceans comes from 10 rivers - let's put some visual analytics to
There were 97 e-posters in The Quad demo room at SAS Global Forum this year. And the one that caught my eye was Ted Conway's "Periodic Table of Introductory SAS ODS Graphics Examples." Here's a picture of Ted fielding some questions from an interested user... He created a nice/fun graphic,
During the past few days, several news outlets told us that the number of illegal border crossings 'surged' in March 2018. This is a topic that interests me, therefore I wanted to see if the data supported what the news was claiming... Trump's desire to secure the US borders is
Being the Graph Guy, I wanted to know about all the "data visualization" presentations at the upcoming SAS Global Forum 2018 conference. I tried going through the official interface to search for such sessions, but it was difficult (impossible?) to know that I had found them all. Therefore I created
If you grew up as a space-junkie kid like me, then you've probably been watching the news for the past few days, wondering when and where China's Tiangong 1 space station was going to fall out of orbit, and crash to Earth. According to Popular Mechanics (PM), that happened at 8:16pm
These days, it's all about music streaming ... You sign up for a service, you let them know your music preferences, and they create a virtual "radio station" that plays the songs you probably want to hear. But that just doesn't compare with going to a physical record store, buying
As the Research Triangle Park becomes more popular, we're getting a lot more traffic on the roads. And with flexible work hours, of course I try to pick a time to drive to work when there's less traffic. I recently saw a cool infographic showing the most popular times when
My buddy Rick Wicklin recently pointed me towards an animation of some opioid prescription rate data for Illinois. And, of course, I decided we needed a similar animation for North Carolina (with a few improvements...) Here's the original, and here are the problems that jump out at me: Counties with
Are you going to Denver, Colorado, and wondering what fun/interesting/eclectic things you can do there? Then this is the map for you! For the past couple of years, I've made maps of the city SAS Global Forum is in, pointing out some of the attractions that conference attendees might want
Do you procrastinate and find excuses to delay doing certain things, even when you know they really ought to be done? And you probably realize that starting those projects is usually the hardest part, eh? Well, I finally started converting hundreds of my SAS examples to use the new GfK maps,
Unless you live under a rock, you've probably seen news reports that Russian trolls have been posting on social media to allegedly conduct "what they called information warfare against the United States, with the stated goal of spreading distrust toward the candidates and the political system in general," according to
You might have seen a SAS Global Forum infographic floating around the web. And maybe you wondered how you might create something similar using SAS software? If so, then this blog's for you - I have created my own version of the infographic using SAS/Graph, and I'll show you how
