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.
Having spent many years in graduate school, and living in the Research Triangle Park (RTP) in North Carolina, I have a lot of friends from other countries. Therefore when I recently saw some stories & graphs about EB-5 visas (where you invest a cool half-million US $ to bypass the
Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory - hopefully you'll enjoy mine about the number of US E1 visas! I was perusing some of the US government charts, and found one on US immigration visas that caught my attention. It was a 3D bar chart, and since I always mistrust 3D
The best graphs are both beautiful and informative - a smooth blend of art and analytics. But more often than not, the two collide rather than blending smoothly... Here is a link to a artistic infographic I recently saw posted by Vendavo on twitter. Their message (80% of your profit is generated
I recently read a Washington Post article about the euro versus the dollar, and I wanted to analyze the data myself to see whether the article was simply stating the facts, or "sensationalizing" things. The washingtonpost.com article started with the headline, "This is historic: The dollar will soon be worth
Is daylight saving time the ultimate in efficiency, or is it living a lie? Here are some graphs that might help facilitate a discussion on this topic ... With daylight saving time (DST), a whole geo/political area (such as a country) decides to set their clocks forward an hour during
Which is more important - having beautiful graphs, or accurate graphs? Let's explore this question using the locations of the world's richest billionaires... I recently saw a beautiful map on dadaviz.com that purported to show the cities with the most billionaires. Here's a screen-capture of that map: I decided to
With Pi Day coming up on 3/14, I wanted to make sure all you SAS programmers know how to use the pi constant in your SAS code... All you have to do is use constant("pi") in a data step, and you've got the value of pi out to a good many decimal places
I just found out that Girl Scout cookies haven't changed from when I was a kid. I just moved to a different area, serviced by a different cookie maker! That's what I found out from the cool map in an article on latimes.com! The article explains that there are two different
When I saw Robert Kosoro's cool ZIPScribble map, I knew I had to create a SAS version - and of course I had to add a few enhancements along the way.... I was perusing some of the examples on dadaviz.com, and Kosoro's ZIPScribble map caught my attention. It wasn't a particularly useful
You might be surprised at how many movies and TV shows are made in North Carolina - especially within the last few years. This blog provides a SAS graph that will make the list of films even easier to read! A recent story by the Tar Heel Traveler, and an exhibit
After the legalization of recreational marijuana use in Colorado in 2012, it has been a much more frequent news topic than before - even from a data analysis perspective... I was recently looking for 'interesting' data to analyze with SAS, and I noticed some articles about the increasing potency of marijuana in
Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1979, after an extensive vaccination campaign in the 19th and 20th centuries. This blog post contains a visual analysis of the final years of this disease in the US ... In my previous blog post, I imitated and improved infectious disease graphs from a recent Wall
The Wall Street Journal recently published some graphs about seven infectious diseases, and I tried using SAS to improve the graphs ... it's a veritable infectious disease (graph) bake-off! Let's start with Measles ... here's a screen-capture of WSJ's measles graph: In general, their graph is eye-catching, and I learned a lot
Nobody puts an arrow through a heart any better than Sam Cooke & Cupid ... but SAS/Graph comes close! If you've been following my blog, you know that my favorite of all the SAS Procedures are the traditional SAS/Graph Procs, such as GPlot and GMap. They're rock-solid reliable, and flexible
I'm ramping up my visualization skills in preparation for the next big election, and I invite you to do the same! Let's start by plotting some county-level election data on a map... To get you into the spirit of elections, here's a picture of my friend Sara's dad, when he was
North Carolina is one of those lucky states that has a huge variety of scenic destinations, such as mountains, piedmont, coastal plains, beaches, and 'outer banks' islands. We have state parks in all of these areas, but can you guess which state park has been trending the most during the past
Google recently announced that they will be adding Google Fiber high speed network and TV to my area. This was great news, because it will give us more choices ... and a little competition among providers tends to make them all 'try harder' to please the customer. :-) I was curious what other
This week, I finally ate some liver, for the first time in over 20 years - and I realized it's a lot like prepping data (which I'll explain in this blog post). Here are a few of the similarities: They're both good for you. Thinking about them makes you go
Have you ever thought about retiring in another country, where your money might go further? Well here's some quantitative data to help you make an informed decision! ... First, to get you in the mood, here's a picture of my friend Erik checking out the prices at a pedal-powered food
Have you ever wondered whether the area where you live is a good location for producing solar power? Let's create a SAS map to help find out! To get you in the right frame of mind, here is an awesome picture of some Arizona sunshine, that my good friend Eva
To get into the mood for this blog post, you should first listen to the music video of The Who singing My Generation... I guess everybody has 'their generation' and here in the U.S. the most famous generation has been the Baby Boomers. Many companies have tried to design products they
As a blogger, I often wonder whether my blog posts are 'successful' - and being a graph guy, I like to visually analyze the data, to try to answer that question. The most common measure of a blog post is probably the number of times it was viewed, so I guess
Is this blog post about techniques to use on difficult graph legends, or is it about goats? The answer is both! But first, to get you into the proper mood, here is a picture my friend, Mark, took of some cute goats. And some links to YouTube videos about goats
I recently read an article that listed the 100 best restaurants in the US - but the article didn't have a map. I decided to use my SAS skills to change that! When it comes to restaurants, I eat out a lot (and by 'a lot' I mean I never
Can you guess the 5 most common New Year's resolutions? Compare your guesses to the survey results!... Being a data meister, I'm always on the lookout for seasonal data. I recently did a Web search for "new year's resolutions" and found an interesting article on the You Gov UK website.
How does Santa keep track of everything on his big night? I can't confirm or deny that he uses SAS software -- but if he does, it would look a lot like this! ... A couple of years ago, I blogged about a prototype dashboard that I wrote for Santa. This
There's recently been a "States I've Visited" application going around on Facebook, where users create a map showing all the US states they've visited, and then post it on their page for their friends to see. I wondered if SAS could do a better job?... Here's a screen-capture of one
Are you a legitimate hard-working company that has been threatened with a lawsuit, by a patent troll? If so, the graphs in this blog should make you happy! Speaking of 'happy' and 'troll' - here's a picture of a happy Troll Doll from my friend Hannah. Don't you just hate
In sports these days, there's a lot more data to keep track of than just the score! How can you make sense of it all? Being the Graph Guy, of course I recommend graphing it! Here's an example that's up close and personal for me - dragon boat racing... Below
SAS software has long been used to help analyze 'risk' - what about using it to help determine your risk of being attacked by a vampire?!? On a previous Halloween, I was the victim of a Vampire attack. Here's the photographic proof... Being the most common O+ blood type, I
