Robert has worked at SAS for over a quarter century, and his specialty is customizing graphs and maps - adding those little extra touches that help them answer your questions at a glance. His educational background is in Computer Science, and he holds a BS, MS, and PhD from NC State University.
The SAS Championship golf tournament is happening this week, here in Cary, North Carolina! If you're following along and watching the scores, you might wonder how they're doing compared to past years, and what kind of scores it generally takes to win. Follow along as I plot the data from
We've had record high 90+ degree temperatures here in the southeast US this past week (September / October), and it has made me appreciate having an air conditioner. Indeed, air conditioners were pretty much invented here in North Carolina (see Eric Cramer). They are used in pretty much every building
Lately we've been hearing a lot about "record low unemployment" in the news. Being a data guy, I wanted to see it for myself. Follow along as I create some custom unemployment graphs from the official data for California and New York (two of our most populous states). Or, if
North Carolina is one of those key "swing states" that might possibly decide a national presidential election. And with such an election coming up next year (2020), I thought I would have a look at the voter registration data to see how it has changed since the previous presidential election
Yesterday we had a 'special election' here in NC, to elect new members to the House of Representatives for Congressional Districts 3 and 9. The election got a lot of national news coverage, therefore I thought people might like seeing the results plotted on a map. Before I decided to
As we're in the thick of hurricane season, I'm sure some of my fellow map-makers are wanting to create their own custom hurricane maps. In this blog post, I step you through the process, so you'll know where to find all the pieces, and how to put them together. I
Summer is winding down, and cooler fall weather is just around the corner. You might soon be able to take a pleasant drive with the windows down, while enjoying the scenery. But where should you go? What are the most scenic roads for that drive? Read along to see a
It's that time of year again - the summer is coming to a close, and students are heading to college... And starting the clock ticking on accumulating that student loan debt! Before we get started, here's a little something to set the stage for this topic. This is a picture
I saw an interesting kangaroo map on reddit, and although the data was deemed "not entirely reliable" it seemed like a fun topic. And also a good exercise to try out the map labeling capabilities in the new Proc SGmap choropleth maps in SAS! For those of you not really
Flying drones was a new & exciting hobby, and very cool fad a few years ago. In recent years, the drone manufacturers have added some really nice features to make the drones easier to fly and more capable ... but the government also added some new rules that have curbed
Have you ever had one of those moments when something you had assumed was true all your life, turned out not to be true? I remember that happening in my high school Spanish class (taught by the wonderful Señor Shoaf), when he let us in on a little secret -
The guys over at reservations.com recently posted a really interesting idea, and a map to go along with it! They worked out an itinerary where you could spend one year traveling around the world (staying in a different place each week), and always be in a comfortable temperature around 70-75°
A few years ago Mandelbrot sets and fractals were all the rage! (Am I showing my age? Hahaha!) I thought creating some plots of this type of data would be a good way to sharpen my SAS programming skills, and it would make a nice/interesting example to help teach people
As the 2020 Census approaches, I'm getting my code ready to plot the data! And a question I often hear is "Can you use SAS software to plot data on a Census block map?" Rather than tell you 'yes', let me show you 'yes' :) Preparing the map First I
Earthquakes have been in the news lately - in particular, two very strong earthquakes that recently hit California. Exactly where did they hit? ... Let's plot it on a map! But before we get busy analyzing the California data, here's a picture to get you in the mood for studying
We just had the big July 4th holiday weekend here in the US. And as with many holidays, there was a lot of drinking. Which got me thinking/wondering ... which counties do not allow alcohol to be sold (ie, which counties are 'dry')? And it seemed like a question that
I think it's time to replace my 2008 Prius. It has served me well, been basically maintenance-free, and gotten good gas mileage ... so, why not just get a newer Prius? Well, I've got the itch to get back into an SUV for my daily driver (I had a Bronco
Cases of the measles have certainly been making headlines in the news recently. And with all the data at our disposal these days, it seems like we should be able to predict which areas in the US are most likely to have measles outbreaks, eh? A group of independent researchers
As the sharing economy grows, you can catch a ride on Uber, have meals delivered by Grubhub ... and even stay in someone else's house (rather than a hotel) via sites like Airbnb. And speaking of that last one, I recently read an article listing Airbnb's top 20 'wish-listed' homes
In these modern times, my utility bill has a bar chart so I can see how my current consumption compares to my historical usage. I decided to create my own version of this utility bill bar chart, and make a few improvements along the way. If you're into SGplot bar
In this 'Rosetta Graph' example, I demonstrate how to control bar chart colors in Gchart and SGplot. But first, here's a little diversion... some artwork in my office here at SAS. There's a *lot* of artwork hanging around at SAS, but this particular painting wasn't created by the SAS artists
For my third 'Rosetta Graph' example, I will focus on a simple pie chart. Hopefully this example will show you how to convert your SAS/Graph Proc Gchart pies into almost-identical Proc SGpie pies. And speaking of almost-identical pies, here are two beautiful pies my friend Beth made - which one
You've probably heard of the famous Rosetta Stone. It had the same decree written on it in both ancient Egyptian and Greek, and was an essential key to help modern historians decipher and translate the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. To help the 'old timers' (like me) shift from using SAS/Graph to the
You've probably heard of the famous Rosetta Stone. It had the same decree written on it in both ancient Egyptian and Greek, and was an essential key to help modern historians decipher and translate the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. To help the 'old timers' (like me) shift from using SAS/Graph to
Marathons seem to be popular these days, therefore I decided to dive into some data and find a way to apply analytics. You might find this interesting if you're a fan of marathons - or if you like seeing the details behind cool graphing techniques! Before we get started, here's
We recently had some severe storms come through North Carolina, which even spawned a tornado in Wake county (the county where I live and work). This got me wondering when and where we've had tornadoes in NC in the past ... and, of course, I had to create a map!
You might have seen in the news that US exports of natural gas to Europe are up 300%. And we recently crossed the threshold where we export more natural gas than we import. This seems like a momentous occasion, and worthy of a graph! But first, let me make sure
I always recommend looking at data in several different ways to get a more complete mental picture. And when the data is changing over time, one great way to view it is using an animation. Follow along for some tips & tricks to animate your own data over time. I'll
A few years ago Sanjay showed how to create a polar graph by creating a gtl template, and then plotting it using Proc SGRender. These days, Proc SGPlot has all the functionality you need to create this graph, therefore I've rewritten the example to just use SGPlot. And while I
While we're on the topic of mortgage rates, let's explore another technique for plotting and comparing the rate data over several years. Last time, we plotted each year's data in a separate graph, and paneled them across the page. This time, let's overlay multiple years together in the same graph.
