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.
Plastic pollution in the oceans is becoming a huge problem. And, as with any problem, finding the solution starts with identifying the source of the problem. A recent study estimated that 95% of the plastic pollution in our oceans comes from 10 rivers - let's put some visual analytics to
There were 97 e-posters in The Quad demo room at SAS Global Forum this year. And the one that caught my eye was Ted Conway's "Periodic Table of Introductory SAS ODS Graphics Examples." Here's a picture of Ted fielding some questions from an interested user... He created a nice/fun graphic,
During the past few days, several news outlets told us that the number of illegal border crossings 'surged' in March 2018. This is a topic that interests me, therefore I wanted to see if the data supported what the news was claiming... Trump's desire to secure the US borders is
Being the Graph Guy, I wanted to know about all the "data visualization" presentations at the upcoming SAS Global Forum 2018 conference. I tried going through the official interface to search for such sessions, but it was difficult (impossible?) to know that I had found them all. Therefore I created
If you grew up as a space-junkie kid like me, then you've probably been watching the news for the past few days, wondering when and where China's Tiangong 1 space station was going to fall out of orbit, and crash to Earth. According to Popular Mechanics (PM), that happened at 8:16pm
These days, it's all about music streaming ... You sign up for a service, you let them know your music preferences, and they create a virtual "radio station" that plays the songs you probably want to hear. But that just doesn't compare with going to a physical record store, buying
As the Research Triangle Park becomes more popular, we're getting a lot more traffic on the roads. And with flexible work hours, of course I try to pick a time to drive to work when there's less traffic. I recently saw a cool infographic showing the most popular times when
My buddy Rick Wicklin recently pointed me towards an animation of some opioid prescription rate data for Illinois. And, of course, I decided we needed a similar animation for North Carolina (with a few improvements...) Here's the original, and here are the problems that jump out at me: Counties with
Are you going to Denver, Colorado, and wondering what fun/interesting/eclectic things you can do there? Then this is the map for you! For the past couple of years, I've made maps of the city SAS Global Forum is in, pointing out some of the attractions that conference attendees might want
Do you procrastinate and find excuses to delay doing certain things, even when you know they really ought to be done? And you probably realize that starting those projects is usually the hardest part, eh? Well, I finally started converting hundreds of my SAS examples to use the new GfK maps,
Unless you live under a rock, you've probably seen news reports that Russian trolls have been posting on social media to allegedly conduct "what they called information warfare against the United States, with the stated goal of spreading distrust toward the candidates and the political system in general," according to
You might have seen a SAS Global Forum infographic floating around the web. And maybe you wondered how you might create something similar using SAS software? If so, then this blog's for you - I have created my own version of the infographic using SAS/Graph, and I'll show you how
Can felons vote? This seemed like a simple question, but I realized that I wasn't 100% sure of the answer. Therefore I looked into the data ... and apparently "it depends". Follow along and see how I created a map to help answer this question. But before we take the
For the past few years, I've been hearing from many news sources that Detroit is the most violent large city in the US. If the news is saying this, then the data should corroborate it, eh? Well, of course I decided to check for myself... When comparing crime data across
The flu seems to be especially potent this year. "How potent is it," you might ask? ... Well, let's plot some data on a map to help find out! Here in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) compiles data about diseases, and provides reports and graphs
Have you, or someone you know, gotten the flu this year? Word on the street is that this year's flu might be particularly bad, and the data seem to be corroborating that so far. You don't want to take my word for it? -- well then, let's have a look
Data doesn't always have to be 'big data' to be interesting. For example, I recently ran across a small, but very interesting, database containing all of North Korea's missile tests. The data was a bit difficult to digest in the formats provided, therefore I decided to try my hand at
Amazon recently announced the 20 finalists in their search for a location to house their new 2nd headquarters (nicknamed 'hq2'). They showed a map on their web page, but I wanted to create my own map, with a few improvements ... Here's their official map. It's not terrible, but it
With all the talk about Bitcoin in the news lately, I decided it was time I created a Bitcoin graph! Follow along as I track down the data, create a graph, and then polish up that graph to make it shine. But before we get started, here's a little example
Have you ever played the lottery? Have you ever heard people bragging about all the money they've won? Does it make you want to play? ... We've had an Education Lottery here in North Carolina for over 10 years, but I still didn't really know much about it - therefore I
As marijuana has become legal in several states, it's been a frequent topic of interest in the news. And as with any interesting topic, I like to find useful ways to visually analyze the data. In this case, let's have a look at the price of marijuana, and how it
The first time I voted (back in the 1980s), I was very surprised that I didn't have to show any kind of identification. I assumed it was because I lived in a small North Carolina town of 300 people where "everybody knew everybody" ... but they told me that nobody
Over the New Year's weekend, I was listening to the re-broadcast of Dick Clark's Top 100 music countdown from the 1980s ... it was the music from my high school and college years, when synthesizers and fun-rap music popped onto the scene. Another thing that started in the 1980s was
When I was growing up, our family had a bookcase containing a set of encyclopedias - it was where I went to obtain information and facts about various things, to satisfy my curiosity and impress my friends. Now that we have the Internet, Wikipedia has taken the place of encyclopedias
Most of us put on a few pounds over the holidays. It's difficult not to, with the holiday dinners, and then all the special desserts, snacks, and candies. But there might also be another source of extra calories that you hadn't thought about - fast-food! Let's have a look at
With the Christmas holiday approaching, I got to wondering what they call Santa in other countries. Of course, some countries don't celebrate Christmas - but most countries at least have some sort of "winter holiday," and most also have some tradition of gift-giving. So, I guess the better question might
I was recently reading the Wikipedia page about the U.S. presidents. There was a table with a lot of interesting data, but I thought it would be much easier to get a handle on the information if there was also a timeline graph. So, of course, I set out to
Donald Trump is pretty spry and energetic for an old guy - he's currently 71 years old, and seems to have more energy than I do (and I'm about 20 years his junior). But is he the oldest US president? Well, as with many questions ... it depends. Follow along
Some people might think it's an urban legend that SAS gives its employees free M&M's. Well, I'm here to tell you it's true! Every Wednesday at the Cary headquarters, a bucket of M&M's shows up in each of the break rooms. I'm only half-kidding in my suspicion that this is
I recently read an interesting article about petroleum coke (petcoke). A lot of it is produced in the US, and lately a lot of it is consumed (burned) in India ... contributing to air pollution there. The article mentioned some numbers in the text, but the data was really begging to
