Update 24Nov2015: The methods in this post no longer work for Twitter, as Twitter has discontinued support for its "share count" API that was used within the Twitter share buttons. But the Facebook method still works, and I've described a method for counting LinkedIn shares on another post. As of
If you're using JMP, please read on. This week's tip is from Professor Robert Carver and his popular book Practical Data Analysis with JMP. To read a free chapter and reviews of the book, visit Robert's author page. The following excerpt is from SAS Press author Robert Carver and his book "Practical Data Analysis with JMP" Copyright ©
I've been working on a new book about Simulating Data with SAS. In researching the chapter on simulation of multivariate data, I've noticed that the probability density function (PDF) of multivariate distributions is often specified in a matrix form. Consequently, the multivariate density can usually be computed by using the
When I need to graph a function of two variables, I often choose to use a contour plot. A surface plot is probably easier for many people to understand, but it has several disadvantages when compared to a contour plot. For example, the following statements in SAS/IML Studio displays a
I received the following query regarding the RAND function in Base SAS: In SAS, is specifying 0 as a random number seed the same as not specifying a seed at all? The question concerns initializing the SAS random number stream by using the internal system clock. You can do this
We've all heard of her. A little blond girl with a penchant for trespassing, and very finicky preferences in mattresses and breakfast food. Unfortunately, Goldilocks isn't just part of a fairy tale, she is alive, well, and causing havoc throughout government. If you haven't made the connection yet, "bear" with
In 2011-2012, North Carolina became one of many states to restructure their educator evaluation system to incorporate student growth. The NC Department of Public Instruction commissioned the external expertise of WestEd to evaluate various growth models and recommend value-added technology that would help them best meet their mission of using meaningful evaluation to
I often use the SAS/IML language for simulating data with certain known properties. In fact, I'm writing a book called Simulating Data with SAS. When I simulate repeated measurements (sometimes called replicated data), I often want to generate an ID variable that identifies which measurement is associated with which subject
We just published Gerhard Svolba’s Data Quality for Analytics Using SAS. When I first heard about it, I thought we’d have a tome covering such topics as standardizing data, cleaning it up, removing duplicates, and so on. However, as Gerhard says in his Introduction, “There are many aspects of data
The Swiss army knife is known for its versatility, with a variety of tools and blades to help you complete the task at hand. When you are creating graphics, you sometimes have a special feature you want to add, but you can't seem to find the right syntax "tool" to
No matter what statistical programming language you use, be careful of testing for an exact value of a floating-point number. This is known in the world of numerical analysis as "10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0" (Kernighan and Plauger, 1974, The Elements of Programming Style). There are many examples
A reader wrote for help with a computational problem. He has a vector of length N and the vector contains integer values in the range [1, 120], which represent months for which events occurred over a 10-year period. The question is: what is the 24-month period for which the most
My first thoughts on hearing that we’d be bringing out a new edition of JMP Start Statistics were, “But how do we improve on an already great book? What could be better?” JMP Start Statistics has been such a big success with JMP users for a long time, so the authors
This is a third post on newspaper stories that I recently read. Today's post deals with science, politics, and rising sea levels. Incidentally, the title is a blatant reference to John Allen Paulos's brilliant book, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. Senate approves law that challenges sea-level science The NC legislature
This is my second post on some newspaper articles that I recently read. Today's post deals with academic fraud. Questions linger in academic fraud case Over the past year, the News and Observer has occasionally reported on a scandal at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in which
This past weekend was Father's Day, so I took some time to relax and read the newspaper. I found several stories that suggested interesting statistical questions. Unfortunately, the data are not available for analysis. Nevertheless, the stories are worth sharing. Over the next few days, I'll post my thoughts on
Wizard Harry Potter makes magic just waving his wand around and shouting out spells. Using SAS Enterprise Guide (and you are welcome to shout out your own commands too) you can create some magic, allowing the Stored Process Wizard to code for you. On Step 2, the "Include code for"
To celebrate special occasions like Father's Day, I like to relax with a cup of coffee and read the newspaper. When I looked at the weather page, I was astonished by the seeming uniformity of temperatures across the contiguous US. The weather map in my newspaper was almost entirely yellow
A colleague was recently working with a web service that supplies some datetime values using the Microsoft Windows internal representation. He called the web service to retrieve those values (along with other data) from SAS, and he needed convert these values to SAS date-time values. The Microsoft definition for a
When I was growing up, summertime always meant a road trip to see my grandparents and great-grandparents in Concord, California, just outside San Francisco. Most of our time in Concord was spent shuffling between relatives but my parents always made time for a day trip into San Francisco. On these
A collegue who works with time series sent me the following code snippet. He said that the calculation was overflowing and wanted to know if this was a bug in SAS: data A(drop=m); call streaminit(12345); m = 2; x = 0; do i = 1 to 5000; x = m*x
Last Friday morning I took a meeting with SAS CEO Jim Goodnight. Despite the hassle, I was happy to rearrange my busy schedule to squeeze him in. Ha! Just a little joke there about my inflated sense of importance! Actually, the meeting was part of a regular series called "Conversations
A common question really and one that I get after posting code like yesterday's All SAS Stored Process Locations Report. The neat trick is just to type METABROWSE in a BASE SAS command window. (There are two other commands: METACON and METAFIND. Has anyone got any tips on when those
Have you ever seen question marks in ODS output, diamonds with question marks in them where a copyright symbol should be, or unexpected symbols in your Web browser? In other words, do you sometimes see garbage instead of text? Manfred Kiefer’s new book, SAS Encoding: Understanding the Details can help.
Stored process code can exist within the metadata itself for version 9.3 (the benefits of which I discussed earlier). But for all other versions (and as a option in version 9.3) the SAS code is stored as a .sas file within the server's file system (or mapped folder/drive structure). When editing
The date prompt from SAS Prompt Framework provides the options of single selection or a range, however what if you need to select multiple individual dates such as Monday (May 28), Wednesday (May 30), and Friday (June 1) of last week? There are a few alternatives to accomplishing this. Option
If you are like many SAS Enterprise Guide users, you've amassed a large collection of project files (EGP files) that contain important content: programs, logs, notes, results, and more. However, to most tools and processes, the EGP file is opaque. That is, you can't see what's inside of it unless
This week's %NLINMIX macro tips come from the esteemed authors of SAS for Mixed Models, Second Edition. Ramon C. Littell, George A. Milliken, Walter W. Stroup, Russell D. Wolfinger, and Oliver Schabenberger combined their expertise to write this indispensable guide. This 800 page book has made a big impact in the user community
Did you change your LinkedIn password yesterday? (If you didn’t, you should!) But did it happen to be the same as your corporate password? First, tisk tisk. Second, change your corporate password NOW! Ok, now that this is done ~ don’t let your saved connection profile for SAS applications lock
What if you would like to make a copy of an existing stored process to test out your changes before making them live? The copy command is available from within SAS Management Console or from the SAS Enterprise Guide Open Stored Process GUI as seen below (note you can only
