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.
I think it's time to replace my 2008 Prius. It has served me well, been basically maintenance-free, and gotten good gas mileage ... so, why not just get a newer Prius? Well, I've got the itch to get back into an SUV for my daily driver (I had a Bronco
Cases of the measles have certainly been making headlines in the news recently. And with all the data at our disposal these days, it seems like we should be able to predict which areas in the US are most likely to have measles outbreaks, eh? A group of independent researchers
As the sharing economy grows, you can catch a ride on Uber, have meals delivered by Grubhub ... and even stay in someone else's house (rather than a hotel) via sites like Airbnb. And speaking of that last one, I recently read an article listing Airbnb's top 20 'wish-listed' homes
In these modern times, my utility bill has a bar chart so I can see how my current consumption compares to my historical usage. I decided to create my own version of this utility bill bar chart, and make a few improvements along the way. If you're into SGplot bar
In this 'Rosetta Graph' example, I demonstrate how to control bar chart colors in Gchart and SGplot. But first, here's a little diversion... some artwork in my office here at SAS. There's a *lot* of artwork hanging around at SAS, but this particular painting wasn't created by the SAS artists
For my third 'Rosetta Graph' example, I will focus on a simple pie chart. Hopefully this example will show you how to convert your SAS/Graph Proc Gchart pies into almost-identical Proc SGpie pies. And speaking of almost-identical pies, here are two beautiful pies my friend Beth made - which one
You've probably heard of the famous Rosetta Stone. It had the same decree written on it in both ancient Egyptian and Greek, and was an essential key to help modern historians decipher and translate the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. To help the 'old timers' (like me) shift from using SAS/Graph to the
You've probably heard of the famous Rosetta Stone. It had the same decree written on it in both ancient Egyptian and Greek, and was an essential key to help modern historians decipher and translate the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. To help the 'old timers' (like me) shift from using SAS/Graph to
Marathons seem to be popular these days, therefore I decided to dive into some data and find a way to apply analytics. You might find this interesting if you're a fan of marathons - or if you like seeing the details behind cool graphing techniques! Before we get started, here's
We recently had some severe storms come through North Carolina, which even spawned a tornado in Wake county (the county where I live and work). This got me wondering when and where we've had tornadoes in NC in the past ... and, of course, I had to create a map!
You might have seen in the news that US exports of natural gas to Europe are up 300%. And we recently crossed the threshold where we export more natural gas than we import. This seems like a momentous occasion, and worthy of a graph! But first, let me make sure
I always recommend looking at data in several different ways to get a more complete mental picture. And when the data is changing over time, one great way to view it is using an animation. Follow along for some tips & tricks to animate your own data over time. I'll
A few years ago Sanjay showed how to create a polar graph by creating a gtl template, and then plotting it using Proc SGRender. These days, Proc SGPlot has all the functionality you need to create this graph, therefore I've rewritten the example to just use SGPlot. And while I
While we're on the topic of mortgage rates, let's explore another technique for plotting and comparing the rate data over several years. Last time, we plotted each year's data in a separate graph, and paneled them across the page. This time, let's overlay multiple years together in the same graph.
Did you recently lock in a mortgage rate of 3.5-5%, or perhaps even lower? How do today's rates compare to rates in the past? Let's dig a little deeper into this topic, with some graphs! But before we get started, here's a picture to get you into the mood for
In the past, I created some graphs about our record low unemployment rate (US unemployment, and state-level unemployment), but does low unemployment also mean there are jobs available? Let's have a look at the data!... Existing Graphs I knew I couldn't be the only one interested in this kind of
The past few years, I've created maps showing things you might visit and do during the big SAS Global Forum (SASGF) conference. This year the conference is in Dallas, and ... you guessed it ... I've created a Dallas map! If you're familiar with my previous maps, you know that
SAS Global Forum 2019 (SGF) is rapidly approaching - and which of the hundreds of presentations are you planning to attend? Well, no matter what types of analyses you perform with SAS software, you'll most likely want to present your findings in a really nice/informative graph! Therefore I highly recommend
I recently saw an interesting graph that showed the number of motor vehicle crash deaths has been going down. The graph showed deaths per mile. That's a good statistic, but I wondered whether there were other ways to look at the data? An Interesting Graph Here's the graph, from an
During the year 2020, many countries and areas will be conducting their decennial census, and making projections to estimate what their population will be in the future. Therefore I decided to dust off one of my old SAS/Graph samples based on the 2010 census, and rewrite it using more modern
Flooding has been in the news the past few days, and that makes me want to analyze some data! I hang out at Jordan Lake (here in central North Carolina) a lot, so I decided to download the data for that lake, and do a graphical analysis. If you're interested
Here in the US, there's a lot of talk about the flu each year. First, people discuss whether or not to get the flu shot. Then there are discussions about whether or not you or your friends have the flu (or something else). Then the discussions about what strain of
US farmers grow a lot of food ... but did you know some of them also grow fuel for our vehicles? Follow along and you'll learn how much fuel they grow, and also learn some tips about plotting this type of data! These days most gasoline in the US has
According to the most recent data, the child poverty rate in China is 33.1% - the rate in Denmark is 2.9%. Where do other countries fall in between these two extremes? Let's build a graph and find out! (or, if you're not interested in the code - jump to the
Which words do people have the most trouble spelling? We now have some insight into this question, based on a Google Trends analysis. Let's do a little fun analytics, and plot the results on a map! But before we get started, let's go old-school for a minute. Before the days
If you live in North Carolina, chances are you have to get your vehicle inspected each year, before you can renew your license plate. The inspection consists of a safety portion, and in some counties an emissions portion. In the past, 48 of NC's 100 counties required the emissions portion
I have written several blog posts about longevity, and here is another one related to that topic. Cardiovascular disease (cvd) is one of the more common causes of death, and I was wondering how those numbers have changed over time. Are fewer people dying from cvd, or are more people
With the US census coming in 2020, I've decided to sharpen my skills at graphing census data. And today I'm working on creating a population pyramid chart to analyze the age and gender distribution. Follow along if you'd like to see how to create such a chart ... or jump
Plotting just your data often helps you gain insight into how it has changed over time. But what if you want to know why it changed? Although correlation does not always imply causation, it is often useful to graph multiple things together, that might logically be related. For example, recessions
You might have noticed I've been trying out SAS ODS Graphics lately, whereas in the past I mainly used SAS/Graph for my samples. In this blog post I step you through my latest fancy SGplot graph - hopefully you'll learn some tips & techniques, as you follow along. (I don't
