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.
If you've been stuck at home a lot lately, and think you have run out of movies to watch -- think again! Here is a list of big-budget movies you might not have seen, because they flopped (lost lots of money). Follow along as I show you how I created
Have you been stuck at home, dreaming up the next big trip you'll take after this pandemic is over? How will you pick a really cool location to visit? Perhaps you can ask your friends for suggestions. My co-worker (and lunch buddy) John recommended the Grand Prismatic Spring. Here's a
If you have plotted data on a map, you have probably tried to estimate the geographical (or visual) 'center' of map areas, to place labels there. But have you ever given any thought to the "center of population"? This is one of the myriad of statistics the US Census Bureau
A user commented on one of my previous maps ... "How can there be 820 cases of Coronavirus per 100,000 people? - There aren't even 100,000 people in my county!" Well, when you want to compare something like the number of COVID-19 cases between two areas that have differing populations,
When it comes to plotting mortgage rate data, I often look to Len Kiefer for inspiration. He recently posted a retro-looking graph on twitter that caught my eye ... and of course I had to see if I could create something similar using SAS. For lack of a better term,
Here in the United States, we have our general election (where we elect the president) every four years - and 2020 happens to be one of those election years. This time we seem to have a lot more people voting early. I can't tell you the reason they're voting early
Now that we are many months into the COVID-19 pandemic, we can start to reexamine the data and look for trends. This time, I want to explore how COVID-19 has been spreading around the US. I do this by animating a county map over time. What is animation? Are you
When an election is on the horizon, I always feel compelled to plot some data! And this time I'm plotting North Carolina's voter registration data! State Data For this graph, I downloaded several of the data snapshots from the NC State Board of Elections' website, and plotted a line showing
Now that we are many months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I've started going back and reexamining the data for lessons or trends (you might say hindsight is 20/20). This time, I want to explore how COVID-19 has been spreading around the US. I do this by using a graphical idea
When you get something new, the hope is that it will be better than the old thing it's replacing. As I often do, I asked my Facebook friends to provide a random picture for my blog - in this case, a picture of one of their new/recent purchases. My friend
During the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, you've probably formed a great appreciation for good, informative graphics. Good graphics can help you get a handle on thousands of individual data values, see the geographical distribution, or look for trends. In February, I wrote a blog post about creating a coronavirus dashboard with
If you're close to my age, you probably remember Joe Walsh's song Ordinary Average Guy. That song popped into my head when I was writing this example about moving averages, so I encourage you to listen to it while reading the blog post. Many people are looking at graphs lately
Now that COVID-19 is spreading in the US, I thought it might be helpful to view the data at a more granular level. Follow along as I plot the county data on a map and discuss how the color-binning can influence people's perception of the data. Maps like this can
Everyone's thinking about the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), and wondering if there are any cases near where they live. I recently used SAS Software to create a dashboard with a world map showing which countries had reported cases. And now that the virus has spread around the world, a world/country-level
I'm a bit of a boat paddling enthusiast, as you might have guessed from some of my previous paddling blog posts. The amount of exertion in race-paddling is similar to running - the longest race I've paddled in a race so far was 13 miles (half-marathon distance). But in the
There are many ways to add more "visual impact" to your maps. Some techniques grab the users' attention, but often don't add anything useful to the message the map is trying to convey (such as 3D tricks, or flashy/gratuitous images and infographics). I encourage you to design maps that have
The COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak has been in the news a lot lately, and everyone is probably looking for a quick/easy way to see the data. The best visualization I've seen so far is this dashboard by Johns Hopkins. Here's a screen-capture: But before we dive into the data analysis, let's
I've read several articles that mentioned the north magnetic pole has been moving more in the past few decades, than in the previous few hundred years. And as a Map Guy, I knew I just had to plot this data on a map, and see it for myself! I provide
The coronavirus has been a big item in the news lately - it's a pneumonia-like illness that has killed several people. It's thought to have started in China, and has spread to several other countries (including at least one case in the U.S.). The World Health Organization says the coronavirus
The flu season has started here in the U.S., and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data it has caused 214 deaths in the first week of 2020. Is this number higher, or lower, than usual? When does the flu season start, and how long does
As I get older, a few of my buddies are starting to retire. And this makes me think about my own retirement (not that I'm anywhere near old enough to retire, mind you!) Therefore when I saw a list of the "Best & Worst Cities for Retiring" it caught my
If someone proposes a bet to you, then you should be suspicious that they already know they're going to win. And one frequent topic of such bets is the weather... What if I bet you there's a city in Canada with a warmer average January temperature than Raleigh, NC? You
Do you find yourself on the road during the holidays, and looking for a place to eat that's still open? Or perhaps you're like me - I don't cook at home, and I'm not really into visiting family for the holidays and eating with them. Well then, you probably know
The Rise of Skywalker, the final movie in the third set of the three Star Wars trilogies, will finally be released tomorrow (December 20, 2019). That's 9 movies, in about 42 years. And, if the first movies aren't still fresh in your mind (or perhaps you weren't even born when
I saw an article that claimed Donald Trump recently tweeted 123 times in one day. This got me wondering how many times he typically tweets during a day, and whether this number has changed over the years. This seems like it might be a good topic to analyze with a
I can tell that my area (Wake county, NC) has a growing population, because the traffic keeps getting worse and worse. But it's a little difficult to quantitatively gauge growth by looking at traffic congestion. Therefore let's have a look at a more direct measurement - the actual population data!
As we're getting into December, and the weather is getting colder, I thought it would be cool to plot some Antarctica data. You might remember I did this about 1.5 years ago, using good-old Proc Gmap, a special projection, and lots of tricky annotation. Well, this time let's use the
If you don't have a SAS/Graph license, then you're probably using the ODS Graphics 'sg' procedures that come with Base SAS to create your graphs and maps. And if you've tried plotting data on a map, you probably noticed that SGmap lets you overlay point-data on an OpenStreetmap, but you
North Carolina recently re-drew the congressional district boundaries for the upcoming 2020 election. Here's a copy of the new map, from the ncleg.gov website: A couple of years ago, I created an enhanced version of the 2016/18 map, and I thought I'd do the same for the new 2020 map...
The English language can be a bit tough to learn. One reason is that sometimes words can have more than one meaning. For example, the word shady can mean "of doubtful honesty or legality," or it can mean "giving shade from sunlight." Which of those meanings am I thinking about,
