The holidays are sometimes chaotic, especially for those tasked with analyzing consumer shopping data! I would like to share a few tips on adding order to your chaotic data. SAS recently published an interesting article, sharing the results from a consumer survey. The infographics in the article showed high-level summary information, such as:
Author
I'm not really into traveling and eating with family at Thanksgiving, but what are the local restaurant alternatives? The list was a bit overwhelming, so I used SAS to help analyze my options... My holiday meal fall-back has always been the Waffle House - they're open 24/7, 365 days a
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
Back in the 90s, there was a song by the C&C Music Factory about things that just didn't quite make sense - the song was called Things That Make You Go Hmm.... And in that same spirit, this blog post is about Graphs That Make You Go Hmm... I'm not
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
In a previous blog post, I showed how to layer colored areas on a SAS map to show both countries, and the areas within countries that had cases of Ebola. But as the Ebola epidemic has spread, more data has become available, and in this blog I show how to
Have you noticed lower gasoline prices lately? How low will they go, and how long will they stay down? Let's use SAS to analyze some of the data!... First, let's look at just the price of gasoline over time. Here's a plot of the US average gasoline price, each week
I always recommend looking at data in several different ways, to get a more complete picture of what's really going on - such is the case with the member 'ratings' on dating websites. Let's take a look at some data from a different angle... In a recent blog post, I
With Amazon Prime's 2-day shipping, I seldom go to physical stores any more. How do they deliver items so quickly? Let's analyze some data to find out... There are very few services/memberships that I truly feel like I'm getting "a good deal" for my money - and Amazon Prime is
What age women do men prefer on dating websites? - Let's have a look at the data... When I first started using computers in the early 80s, I thought it would be great to have everyone take a survey, and then let computers show you who your best matches were.
Do you order things online, to avoid paying sales tax? Those "good old days" might be coming to an end soon... Here's a snapshot of my latest purchase from Amazon.com (a little something for the Talk Like a Pirate party I had on Sept 19): In the US, each of
Is the type of car you drive more likely, or less likely, to get a speeding ticket? Let's analyze some data to find out! Do red cars attract more attention from the police, and get more tickets? How about cars with a 'racing stripe'? Or cars with a big chromed motor,
Have you heard the old saying that "Banks only loan money to people who don't need it"? Let's analyze the data and see if that is true!... I'm very much a car-guy, and I love learning about all the new vehicles, and love the new-car feel ... and even the smell. It's hard to not like a
If you're a SAS user, chances are you're a bit of a science/technology/engineering/math nerd -- and also a fan of The Big Bang Theory. Therefore this SAS analysis on The Big Bang Theory should be right up your alley! Yesterday (September 22) was the start of the 8th season for the TV series,
Did you know that different states charge different $$ rates for electricity? The graphs in this blog will let you easily compare your rate to the rates in other states ... Did you have a portable radio (aka "boombox") back in the 1980s? Do you remember how much it cost
There's been a lot of debate lately about whether it's good or bad for the local law enforcement agencies to receive military surplus items. The data has recently become available, but it is just a big long text list of almost a quarter million items (see below). Therefore I thought
Admit it - you were fascinated by the 3D pipes screensaver! How many CPU cycles did we let our machines burn up, drawing and re-drawing those silly pipes!?! What was your personal favorite CPU-hungry screensaver? (let us know in a comment!) Well, speaking of pipes, the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Being that today is a Throwback Thursday, I decided to re-create one of my favorite events from elementary school -- show-and-tell! And of course I'll be showing and telling you about a graph ... using school data! OK - that SAS graph (above) is definitely "Throwback" but it's not the one
When the recent earthquake hit California, one of my friends commented that "California is so dry right now, I'm surprised it didn't just break off and fall into the ocean!" It got me wondering, just how bad and widespread is California's drought? I did a few Web searches and found lots
It's easy to plot events that happened at a certain time, but what about events that extended over a range of dates, such as recessions? ... This blog post teaches you a nice trick to use for that! Let's say you have a plot of the labor force participation rate
If you're a really big company, with many locations around the country, how do you keep track of all that? ... With a great map, of course! I recently read a CNN article about the Community Health Systems network being hacked - exposing the names, Social Security numbers, physical addresses, birthdays
"Trending" is one of those words that's trending these days, as we verbify everything. And if you understood that, then you'll probably love this blog! :-) For those of you not hip to the lingo ('hip' meaning 'knowing about and following the newest styles, fashions, etc.'), dictionary.com defines trending as "to emerge
Find out which state you'll live in, if the US state borders are redrawn so we have 50 states with equal population! (Don't worry! - This is just a fun/hypothetical "what if" blog!) To get you in the mood for this topic, here's a picture of one of the many
There are many ways to use SAS in Health & Life Sciences, and one of my favorite is using it to track the spread of diseases. This post demonstrates how to layer several customized maps to track the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa. In this blog post, I describe how I
With Discovery Channel's Shark Week starting on August 10, I decided to sink my teeth into some shark-attack data - I even found there were some shark attacks in the Midwestern US! Read on to learn the details... To get you into the shark mindset, here is a photo of an
In this blog post, I put some classic rock song data under the SAS Analytics microscope, to see if I could get a better picture of exactly what is considered 'classic rock' these days... Michael Raithel recently pointed me to an interesting article/study about 'classic rock' music, and invited (or is
The sun has gone eerily quiet, in the middle of what should be the height of the 11-year sunspot cycle... Here's a superb photo of some sunspots that Stephen A. Carr posted to the Telescope Addicts Facebook group - a group which I follow with great interest. (Thanks for allowing
SAS is great at helping make important business decisions - how about helping decide where to take your next vacation?... Here's a picture from one of my favorite vacations with my buddy Joe. As you can see, I like "nature vacations." Can you guess where this one was? (leave a comment with