Traditionally, SAS users like their processes to behave like Ron Popeil's famous rotisserie: they want to set it and forget it. That's the definition of a batch process. You work like heck to get it ready to run, then you push the button (or schedule it) and walk away. But
Following SAS' Sanjay Matange's lead, I have recently set up a graphical (thumbnail-driven) index to my SAS/GRAPH blogs. Hopefully this will provide an easy way for you to quickly peruse my past blogs, and find the ones you might be interested in. So far, I've got 44 of my blogs
What is the best way to share SAS/IML functions with your colleagues? Give them the source code? Create a function library that they can use? This article describes three techniques that make your SAS/IML functions accessible to others. As background, remember that you can define new functions and subroutines in
Forecast Value Added (FVA) is a metric for comparing the performance of your organization’s forecasting process to “doing nothing” and using a naïve model to generate your forecasts. The idea is, if all the resources and effort we put into forecasting are not providing forecasts that are better than using
Leading up to the Analytics 2013 conference, we’re going to dive into some of the big topics in the industry. Up first, the hurdles to using analytics and big data effectively in your organization. We reached out to some of our conference speakers and sponsors to get their take on
"It slices, it dices ... it helps test laboratory mices!" In a joking way, this is a perfect description of SAS software, don't you think!?! :) And to prove it, this blog contains a collection of 32 examples, showing a variety of ways SAS can be used to graph data
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are all the rage today. Some people see free online courses as a convenient way to introduce statistical concepts to tens of thousands of students who would not otherwise have an opportunity to learn about data analysis. Whereas 2013 is the International Year of Statistics,
Some of you may have already noticed the small graphical icon on the lower right side of the blog article labeled "Graphically Speaking Index". Yes, it is a link to a visual index for all articles published in this blog. Well, eventually it will have all the articles. So far, I
Has this ever happened to you? You have a SAS program with statements that you wrote, then you make use of a macro function or %include file supplied by a helpful colleague, and when your SAS code resumes, you find that all of your SAS titles have been changed out
The second part of my data governance primer series addresses ways to "mind your metadata." I can just hear the collective groans, and perhaps a stifled yawn. Sorry, but metadata collection is one of those necessary evils that may not be fun, but having it available as a resource to
Last week I described how to generate permutations in SAS. A related concept is the "combination." In probability and statistics, a combination is a subset of k items chosen from a set that contains N items. Order does not matter, so although the ordered triplets (B, A, C) and (C,
This week's SAS tip is from Barry de Ville and Padraic Neville's new book Decision Trees for Analytics Using SAS Enterprise Miner. Filled with a multitude of examples and figures, this comprehensive book has received strong early user reviews. I hope that you'll also find this week's excerpt helpful in your
Some recent press articles question the value of big data while a book takes the opposite approach; I’ll choose the middle way. The New York Times article ‘Is Big Data an Economic Big Dud?’ questions the value of digital data and the resulting increase in the amount of data. This
"It's a floor wax, and a dessert topping" - this pretty much describes SAS/Graph! (bonus points if you know where this quote came from!) Some people think of SAS as just a quality control tool. Others think of it as just a sales & marketing tool. And yet others think
Businesses need to know who their customers are, and how much money they should invest in marketing to them. It’s an obvious idea, but it also served as pretty much the sum of my knowledge of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). That is, until Edward Malthouse came into my life. Ed’s
This is the last post in my recent series of articles on computing contours in SAS. Last month a SAS customer asked how to compute the contours of the bivariate normal cumulative distribution function (CDF). Answering that question in a single blog post would have resulted in a long article,
Have you seen Lego sets for young children? Not the ones with elaborate schematics and tiny complex pieces which require two engineers to put together. I am talking about sets that come with windows and doors for houses; wheels and seats for cars; flowers, plants, and trees for gardens; animals
I've written several articles that show how to generate permutations in SAS. In the SAS DATA step, you can use the ALLPEM subroutine to generate all permutations of a DATA step array that contain a small number (18 or fewer) elements. In addition, the PLAN procedure enables you to generate
Your biggest problem with maps used to be learning how to fold a paper road map. Today, with the advent of GPS, Google Maps, and location-specific data, the bar has been raised! ... you now need to know how to plot your data on a map! Below are several examples of different kinds
I'm spoiled by the internet. I've grown so accustomed to being able to instantly find an answer to any query—no matter how obscure—that I am surprised when I don't find what I am looking for. The other day I was trying to find a mathematical result: a formula for the
Sometimes, your first impulse may not be correct, like trading in your practical sedan for a hot 2-seater. Other times, your first impulse is perfect, as in the examples below. Suppose the automobile data you wish to analyze resides in a CSV file. Naturally, your first impulse is to import
Like many other computer packages, SAS can produce a contour plot that shows the level sets of a function of two variables. For example, I've previously written blogs that use contour plots to visualize the bivariate normal density function and to visualize the cumulative normal distribution function. However, sometimes you
Recently, SAS released SAS Solutions OnDemand for academics. An academic user who is signed up for this can use the SAS Web Editor application to do all their data analysis over the web using a hosted server at SAS. This frees up the user from having to install the software on their own computers,
A couple of years ago I shared a method for copying any file within a SAS program. It was a simple approach, copying the file byte-by-byte from one fileref (SAS file reference) to another. My colleague Bruno Müller, a SAS trainer in Switzerland, has since provided a much more robust
It’s that time of year again. The weather is cooling down and the buzz about the Analytics Conference is heating up. This year’s conference, taking place Oct. 21-22 in Orlando, will bring together more than 1,000 analytics professionals to learn the latest trends, technology and research in the field of
Vor der Wahl hat der Bundeswahlleiter eine interessante Aufgabe, er muss die Wahlkreise so einrichten, dass die Zahl der Wahlkreise in den einzelnen Ländern deren Bevölkerungsanteil soweit wie möglich entspricht. Die Bevölkerungszahl eines Wahlkreises soll nicht mehr als 15 % nach oben oder unten von der durchschnittlichen Bevölkerungszahl der Wahlkreise
There's an old expression "easy as pie." Have you ever tried to bake a pie??? ... It's not so easy, LOL! And neither is using pie charts correctly! :) Below are several examples of different kinds of pie charts you can create with SAS/GRAPH. And at the bottom of this
John Taylor has been using SAS for about 12 years and admits, he loves SAS! He was first introduced to SAS while working on his BA/MA in Statistics at Boston University. “It became immediately obvious to me that knowing SAS would be invaluable to me as a statistician, so I
SAS 9 has supported calling R from the SAS/IML language since 2009. The interface to R is part of the SAS/IML language. However, there have been so many versions of SAS and R since 2009, that it is hard to remember which SAS release supports which versions of R. The
This week's SAS tip is from Frederick Pratter and his oft-referenced book Web Development with SAS by Example, Third Edition. In case you're counting, I've featured 5 previous excerpts from Frederick's fine book on this blog. There's so much good content to choose from in this big book. After taking a look at this week's
