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.
You've probably seen dramatic pictures in the news lately about the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline - Native Americans versus bulldozers, protesters and tipis in a blizzard, and things like that. But do you really know much about this pipeline? For example, where will it go, and where have the
Are you ready for the supermoon on December 14? This will actually be the 3rd supermoon in 2016! With these big-looking full moons we're having this year, I got to wondering exactly how big is the moon compared to Earth? This seems like a good question to answer with some
Parents are always proud of their kids, and think their kids are better than all the other kids. I guess it might be a little bit that way with mapping software ... but I really do think I've got a pretty compelling example to show that SAS maps are better
When I was a kid, I always looked forward to Casey Kasem's American Top 40 song countdown at the end of the year. Did I listen to check whether my favorite songs had made the list, or to critique how well the people making the list had done in picking the 'right'
Has anyone ever broken up with you, and left you thinking "Wow, I didn't see that coming!" In hindsight, maybe you could have seen it coming. At least from a statistical perspective. Let's dive into this topic with some lighthearted discussion, and plot some Facebook data... When it comes to
If you consider yourself as a visualization expert, you strive to create graphs that set you apart from the data analysts and statisticians. Graphs that merely plot the data in a clear/concise manner aren't enough for you. You want your graphs to also be intuitive, easy to read, and provide
Recently, my fellow SAS blogger Rick Wicklin wrote a post showing how to graph the ages of all the US presidents. And Chris Hemedinger showed how to create a bar chart showing the number of presidents having each of the 12 zodiac signs. Both are interesting graphs, but I wanted to
Are you the lone-wolf SAS programmer in your company - managing the data, performing the analyses, and graphing the output for everyone else? And what's the only format they all know how to work with, and wish they had your output in? Let's face it ... that's probably an Excel
Does it seem like there just aren't enough daylight hours to get things done these days? It might not be that you've got more to do - it might be that we actually have fewer daylight hours in the winter (here in the northern hemisphere). And since "seeing is believing,"
In the US presidential election, each of the 50 states has a certain number of electoral votes, based on the population. Typically, most states cast all their electoral votes for the candidate who wins in their state (all or nothing). But states can split their electoral votes if they want
Elections in the US are a 'target rich environment' for data analysts. There are surveys and forecasts before the election, and the presentation of results during and after the voting. What's your favorite election-related graph of all time? For the current (2016) presidential election, my favorite graphs are on the
Being an Eagle Scout, the data for good movement caught my attention. I wondered if I could apply my computer skills in a way that might help. How about showing people better ways to visualize HIV/AIDS data - that might help doctors better understand the data, and therefore better treat
Halloween appears to be my favorite holiday, because I seem to have more graphs related to it than any of the others. And since Halloween is just a few days away, I thought you might like an easy way to see all those graphs. Here's are links to my previous Halloween-related blog
The State Fair in North Carolina is just a few miles from SAS headquarters, and therefore it's virtually impossible for it to slip by without me noticing it. There are two aspects of the fair that usually get lots of news coverage - what's the latest fair-food, and did we
Living to 100 isn't as simple as just paying a certain amount of money for your healthcare. But that is an interesting aspect of longevity, so let's have a look at the data ... In my previous blog post, we analyzed how much people from various countries spend on healthcare.
With the US Affordable Care Act (ACA) and other health topics in the news lately, I wondered how much people spend on healthcare in various countries. Of course spending varies from person to person, so I decided to take a look at the average per capita spending in each country (it's
A friend and I were recently debating how much caffeine is in various drinks. I felt like my hands were tied behind my back, since I had no graphs to show them. Of course, the first thing I did when I got to work was create some caffeine graphs! They turned out
This past weekend, Hurricane Matthew came through the Carolinas. Some areas had record flooding, while other areas didn't. I was anxious to get back to work today, so I could use SAS software and create a custom map showing who got how much rain. But before we get to the official
When you were growing up, did you ever imagine that the most popular show on TV would be 24-hour coverage of a storm?!? Yes, for better or for worse, the weather has become our new reality TV. And as you watch the weather coverage, you probably see all the weather reporters showing the
Like many words, if you just say "Cat 5" different people might think you're talking about different things. Computer geeks might assume you're talking about category 5 network cabling. But around this time of the year, most people in the southeast US will probably assume you're talking about a category
I recently read a very interesting article describing how analytics is being used to detect cheating/copying/re-use in crossword puzzle creation, in some of the major news publications. This inspired me to try my hand at creating a totally new & unique crossword puzzle ... of course using SAS software! :) My grandmother
Last week, one of the major pipelines supplying gasoline to the eastern US broke. Do you know where the break is, and which states will be having shortages? Me neither! ... So, of course, I created a SAS map to help... First I read up about the spill on various
I've created several hundred SAS graphs over the years. I was just musing to myself this morning how nicely Google lets me peruse through images of my graphs. And I thought some of you might also like to know how to do that... Most of you know how to search for keywords
You've seen the QR codes that you can just scan in with your smartphone's camera, rather than writing down a web URL or other information, right? But do you know how to create your own QR code? Here's an easy way to create them, using SAS... You're probably familiar with
In the past, a large percentage of US workers have been union members, and the unions could exert a big influence on elections. How powerful are the unions these days, an where do they wield the most influence? Let's map it out... In 1954, almost 35% of US workers belonged to
Anybody can come up with a list of simple colors, such as red, green, and blue. If you're a bit more color savvy, you might even throw in indigo, magenta, and fuchsia. But what about more obscure names such as cornsilk, mistyrose, and midnightblue? This blog post will help you
Everyone who knows about monarch butterflies, likes monarch butterflies. This blog post focuses on their food source - milkweed. And to get you in the mood, here's an amazingly beautiful picture my friend Eniko made of a monarch: In recent years, I had heard reports of the dwindling number of
What do people have in common who have used analog clocks, vinyl records, and payphones? They were all probably born before 1980! Now, let's focus on those payphones!... A lot of young kids these days can't imagine a world where everyone doesn't have a wireless phone. My buddy Ed likes
Have you ever wondered how far you live from the closest nuclear power plant? I've crunched the numbers for cities here in the US, and created an interactive SAS map to help answer that question! The average age of US nuclear power plants is 35 years, and there just doesn't
As Zika starts spreading into the US, it will be important to have a way to track it. Therefore I wrote some SAS code to pull the latest data from the CDC website, and plot it on a map... But before we get into the details of my map, I
