The global marketplace has been volatile, fragmented, and dynamic and is predicted to continue. Subsequently, supply processes have become more mature than demand as industries focused on operational excellence over the past two decades. As a result, there is a larger gap to fill in the redefinition of demand processes
The SAS/IML language secretly creates temporary variables. Most of the time programmers aren't even aware that the language does this. However, there is one situation where if you don't think carefully about temporary variables, your program will silently produce an error. And as every programmer knows, silent wrong numbers are
SAS has several kinds of special data sets whose contents are organized according to certain conventions. These special data sets are marked with the TYPE= data set attribute. For example, the CORR procedure can create a data set with the TYPE=CORR attribute. You can decipher the structure of the data
Last year I published an example application for searching your SAS Enterprise Guide project files (EGP files). The example shows off some of the cool features of the automation API, and it's a useful tool. As neat of an example as that was, it had some limitations. It worked only
This week's SAS tip is from Kirk Lafler and his book PROC SQL: Beyond the Basics Using SAS. A SAS user since 1979, Kirk often takes his expertise on the road and is a frequent speaker at SAS conferences. He's also currently working on a second edition of the book. If
Analytics is a key piece in nearly all 31 recommendations outlined in The Innovative DOT: A Handbook of Policy and Practice. Crafted by the State Smart Transportation Initiative, in partnership with Smart Growth America, the handbook provides 31 recommendations for state transportation officials looking for ways to increase efficiencies and
"Correlation does not equal causation"; this is true across all data analytics, including human capital analytics, and it's a concept that coauthors Gene Pease, Boyce Byerly, and Jac Fitz-enz discuss in their new book, Human Capital Analytics: How to Harness the Potential of Your Organization's Greatest Asset. "How can we
I like to be efficient in my SAS/IML programs, but sometimes I get into bad habits. Recently I realized that I was reshaping a bunch of SAS/IML row vectors because I wanted to write them to a SAS data set. This is completely unnecessary! The SAS/IML language will create a
It was a moonless night in April 1912 when the pinnacle of ocean travel technology and luxury, the RMS Titanic, collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,500 passengers and crew. A primary cause of the tragedy was that the captain and
Welcome to my new blog series, The Book Writing Business. Throughout the year, I will introduce topics and questions related to writing a book. Oftentimes, I'll give you my take on them. But more importantly, you'll hear directly from our authors. They'll tell you why they write for SAS Press
Sometimes I need to "disassemble" a SAS data set into a DATA step program. It's kind of like creating a "freeze-dried" version of the data that you can carry around and use anywhere, re-hydrating it in the SAS session where you next need it. Some example uses for this: Build
SAS Technical Support has a wonderful how-to guide for using one set of prompt values across multiple sections of a Web Report Studio report. This works great in 4.2, however there is one additional item that I discovered in a 4.3/9.3 install. With the addition of PROC STP and SAS
A SAS/IML user on a discussion forum was trying to read data into a SAS/IML matrix, but the data was so large that it would not fit into memory. (Recall that SAS/IML matrices are kept in RAM.) After a few questions, it turned out that the user was trying to
Der 21.12.2012 liegt einen Monat zurück und Sie können diesen Beitrag lesen. Das bedeutet: Wahrscheinlich ist die Welt auch in Ihrer Region nicht untergegangen. Und wie so oft, haben wir auch das souverän vorhergesehen. Mit der Vorhersage von Ereignissen ist das so eine Sache: Wir glauben, dass wir uns besser
For several years now I've wanted to do something great with the empty flower beds around our house. Starting a garden is no small task, however. What kinds of plants do I want? Will they grow here? I'm a gardening novice at best, so whose expertise should I draw on?
SAS macro variables are a great way to store a calculated value, so you can use it later in your code. They are not just limited to the data step -- you can also use macro variables in title statements, axis statements, etc. By default, the macro variable will be padded with
Popularized rankings of "best places to work" (such as in 2012, SAS ranked #1 in the world in Great Places to Work®'s list of Multinational Workplaces) tend to focus on why it is so great to be an employee. As a potential customer of one of these best places to work, why
I'm now into my 20th year of working for SAS. This year in November I'll have my 20th "SAS-iversary" and thus mark the beginning of my third decade here. I've worked here since the Clinton administration. I've met SAS employees who were actually not yet born when I attended my
A while ago I saw a blog post on how to simulate Bernoulli outcomes when the probability of generating a 1 (success) varies from observation to observation. I've done this often in SAS, both in the DATA step and in the SAS/IML language. For example, when simulating data that satisfied
The guys of Stat Wars are battling it out again. This time they’re helping a viewer who needs to determine which stunt doubles to hire by predicting their performance using SAS. Watch and then vote on whether Danny Modlin or Marc Huber has the best solution for finding the right
It’s that time of year when we all reflect on our accomplishments and consider what our next great moves will be. Maybe you’ve been wondering how you could have a greater impact on the SAS user community, develop your SAS skills further, impress your boss, maybe even become famous in
I'm always looking for ways to make my job sound more relevant to people who ask me, "so what does SAS do?" SAS does so much that I can't possibly list it all, so I need some umbrella terms that can capture the essence of it (and still keep the
Most people try to hide the evidence of their bad decisions. But this weekend I decided to share mine to social media. I hope that it's not a career-limiting move. Actually, I made quite a few good decisions as well, outnumbering the bad ones. Still, I had many missed opportunities,
When a categorical variable has dozens or hundreds of categories, it is often impractical and undesirable to create a bar chart that shows the counts for all categories. Two alternatives are popular: Display only the Top 10 or Top 20 categories. As I showed last week, to do this in
This week's SAS tip is from Michele Burlew and her new book SAS Hash Object Programming Made Easy. Michele is the author of several revered user-friendly books. Be sure to take a look at the free chapter from her latest after reading this week's tip. The following excerpt is from SAS
The increasing use of predictive analytics in mission-critical business decisions and operations brings new challenges to the forefront for many of our customers. Throughout the last year I spoke to many customers about their use of predictive analytics and where they see areas of improvement to achieve even more success
Being that 2013 is the International Year of Statistics, I wanted to make sure everyone knows how to handle my favorite statistic - percent (%) - in SAS! I often see data in spreadsheets/csv/etc that purport to represent "percents"... but you have to be a bit careful when working with
If you're using SAS Enterprise Guide and you're not using any custom tasks, then you're missing out. Custom tasks -- plug-in extensions for SAS Enterprise Guide -- have been around for years, and a few ambitious programmers have managed to build them without the benefit of much guidance or documentation.
The Institute of Business Forecasting has named Larry Lapide, Research Affiliate at MIT, as recipient of its "Lifetime Achievement in Business Forecasting & Planning" award -- a much deserved honor! Larry has written a quarterly column for Journal of Business Forecasting for 15 years, and I've been a longtime follower.
Sometimes a categorical variable has many levels, but you are only interested in displaying the levels that occur most frequently. For example, if you are interested in the number of times that a song was purchased on iTunes during the past week, you probably don't want a bar chart with
