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).
"We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin' rain, and big ol' fat rain, rain that flew in sideways, and sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath." Was that a quote from the Forrest Gump movie, or something said regarding Hurricane Florence? Could be either one! Hurricane Florence recently came through
Here in North Carolina (NC), we're pretty much resigned to the fact that many of the hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean are going to visit us. NC sticks out farther into the ocean than most of our neighboring states, and that just makes a tempting target for the hurricanes. But
I usually create very technical graphs, that just focus on conveying the information in a concise and straightforward manner (no wasted colors, and nothing to distract you from the data). But sometimes, depending on your audience and the purpose of the graph, you might need to create a graph that
Many of the most beautiful areas in the US are owned by the government, to preserve them and allow access for everyone to enjoy them. And most US schools are traditionally closed during the summer, which provides families a great opportunity to go visit state and federal lands (parks, forests,
If you're good at games like Wheel of Fortune, Scrabble, or Words with Friends, you've probably figured out that certain letters appear more often than others. But do you have a cool way to figure out which letters appear most & least frequently? How about using a computer to plot
My buddy Chris recently blogged about accessing the IoT data from an M&M jar being monitored in one of the breakrooms at SAS. Now I'm going to take things a step further and analyze that data with some graphs. Grab a snack, and follow along, as we dig into this
Showing the most popular jobs in each state is interesting (as I showed in my previous two blogs 1, 2) ... but not that interesting. How about something a little more quirky?!? ... Let's determine the most disproportionately popular job in each state! Their Map I got the idea for
Using small multiples is a neat way to display a lot of information in a small amount of space. But depending on how deeply you want to analyze and scrutinize the data, you need to be careful in choosing just how small you make your small multiples. Let's look at
When I'm at a social gathering, someone always asks what type of work I do. I like to keep my social life separate from my work, therefore I usually give a vague answer such as "software" (and quickly change the topic). How vague or specific is your response? How vague
Elections are in the news again, therefore I have been on the lookout for interesting graphs. I recently found some graphs of the Census Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration Supplement data, and tried to improve them. Follow along if you're interested in voter data, or creating better graphs!
I peruse many different websites to get my news, and I always keep an eye out for good (or bad) presentations of data. I recently saw a posting on reddit claiming "U.S. GDP is greater than the total of all others combined." This news seemed too good to be true
There are many quotes with words of wisdom to help you live your life. But sometimes one quote seems to contradict another. For example, "Don't sweat the small stuff." ... and "The devil is in the details." When it comes to creating graphs (and perhaps living my life in general),
In many movies, there is often a scene where the star says "We can do this the easy way, or the hard way" (and the hard way usually involves quite a bit of pain). So it is with interrogations ... and so it is with writing SAS code! Today I'm
I started my computer career as a Unix system administrator, and when I began using SAS almost 30 years ago it was only natural that I used it on Unix computers (they were the most powerful/capable computers I had access to at the time). I've picked up a lot of
I can recognize several languages when I hear people speaking them (mostly because I lived in the Alexander International Dorm at NC State University). Therefore when I found a map of the most common languages spoken in each US state, it caught my attention, and I decided to try creating my
As you might have guessed from some of my previous blog posts, I'm an avid paddler. I like to paddle boats, and I like to try to go fast! And when I'm considering buying a new boat, it's only natural that I would analyze the data to make an informed
When you were a kid, were you intrigued by the 99-cent X-ray glasses advertised in the back of the comic books? If you ordered those glasses, you were probably disappointed. Now that you're an adult, how would you like to use computer techniques to "X-ray" your data and look for
Of course you know how to create graphs ... But do you often find that preparing the data to plot is often the hardest part? Well then, this blog post is for you! I'll be demonstrating how to import Excel data into SAS, transpose the data, use what were formerly column
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
