Magic squares are cool. Algorithms that create magic squares are even cooler. You probably remember magic squares from your childhood: they are n x n matrices that contain the numbers 1,2,...,n2 and for which the row sum, column sum, and the sum of both diagonals are the same value. There are many
Have you ever tried to put something on the Web, and then it looks different for other people (or maybe doesn't work at all)? ... And you eventually found that it was because they were using a different browser? That's one of the reasons I like traditional SAS/Graph output -- it's simple
“Ohio links teacher pay to test scores” was the headline of a recent CNN School of Thought blog. Yikes! With a headline like that, teachers might start heading for the hills. I kept reading through the blog hoping that it would better explain Ohio’s policy to use student growth data
Edward Vonesh is a managing member of Vonesh Statistical Consulting, LLC, as well as a part-time employee of Northwestern University, where he supports research in his capacity as professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine. Needless to say, he knows a thing or two about generalized linear and nonlinear models.
The Perils Revisited A few posts ago I warned of the perils of forecasting benchmarks, and why they should not be used to set your forecasting performance objectives: Can you trust the data? Is measurement consistent across the respondents? Is the comparison relevant? In addition to a general suspicion about
When I studied math in school, I learned that the expression a (mod n) is always an integer between 0 and q – 1 for integer values of a and q. It's a nice convention, but SAS and many other computer languages allow the result to be negative if a (or q) is
This week's SAS tip is from A. John Bailer and his book Statistical Programming in SAS. A Fellow of the American Statistical Association, John has been using SAS for 30 years. He's also Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Statistics at Miami University. To read a free chapter and user reviews
Leaving Las Vegas Prince Harry, who recently gambled away a handful of the royal family jewels during a high-stakes billiards game, doesn't have to be the only person to leave Las Vegas with some important lessons learned. You can, too, by attending the Analytics2012 conference at Caesar's Palace, October 8-9. Learnings
At the end of 2011, we ranked the most viewed SAS Documentation titles of the year. Now, as the second quarter has closed, we’ve analyzed traffic to SAS Documentation pages again. While the results are very similar to the previously featured 10 most popular SAS Documentation titles of 2011, there
Regular expressions provide a powerful method to find patterns in a string of text. However, the syntax for regular expressions is somewhat cryptic and difficult to devise. This is why, by my reckoning, approximately 97% of the regular expressions used in code today were copied and pasted from somewhere else.
The other day I was using PROC SGPLOT to create a box plot and I ran a program that was similar to the following: proc sgplot data=sashelp.cars; title "Box Plot: Category = Origin"; vbox Horsepower / category=origin; run; An hour or so later I had a need for another box
Facebook has millions of users, and therefore when people share an interesting graph on Facebook it can "go viral" and millions of people might see it. Some of the graphs are obviously a bit biased - especially ones that are trying to sway your opinion one way or another on a topic
The SAS/IML language supports user-defined functions (also called modules). Many SAS/IML programmers know that you can use the RETURN function to return a value from a user-defined function. For example, the following function returns the sum of each column of matrix: proc iml; start ColSum(M); return( M[+, ] ); /*
This week's SAS tip is from master user Phil Holland and his popular book Saving Time and Money Using SAS. If you're not yet familiar with Phil and his extensive work in the user community, start out by visiting his author page. If you're on LinkedIn, look for him on SAS Professional Forum
Do you sometimes come across words and phrases in SAS software interfaces or messages that leave you wondering? New terms, and new meanings for old terms, are inevitable in the fast-paced world of analytics software. However, we would like to help our customers understand new or nuanced concepts quickly and
It is common to want to extract the lower or upper triangular elements of a matrix. For example, if you have a correlation matrix, the lower triangular elements are the nontrivial correlations between variables in your data. As I've written before, you can use the VECH function to extract the
The recent JSM conference was a huge success. This was my fourth JSM, and I have to say I think this was the best one I’ve attended. More than 5,500 statisticians, consultants, students and the like descended upon San Diego. Despite the perfect, sunny weather, the SAS Books booth stayed
The project that I'm currently working on requires several input data tables, and those tables must have a specific schema. That is, each input table must contain columns of a specific name, type, and length in order for the rest of the system to function correctly. The schema requirements aren't
Recently, there has been lot of uproar and confusion about the Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Many were surprised by the ruling, and others, while happy it was upheld, are concerned about the constitutional questions that arose due to the way the ruling was
I'm working on a SAS programming project with a large team. Each team member is responsible for a piece of the overall system, and the "contract" for how it all fits together is The Data. For example, I've got a piece that performs some data manipulation and produces several output
In the course of my job, I get to have a lot of conversations with authors about their books. One of the aspects of those conversations I enjoy most is learning about their areas of expertise and knowledge—that could be certain SAS software or programming techniques, particular fields of analytics,
Sometimes a small option can make a big difference. Last week I thought to myself, "I wish there were an option that prevents variable labels from appearing in a table or graph." Well, it turns out that there is! I was using PROC MEANS to display some summary statistics, and
This week's SAS tip is from Frederick Pratter and his book Web Development with SAS by Example, Third Edition. Frederick is extremely knowledgeable and a popular speaker in the user community. His latest book is filled with a multitude of SAS Web programming tools. I hope that you'll find this week's
Do you use SAS for analytics and Microsoft Excel for graphs? Why not use SAS for your graphs too?!? Then you could completely automate the entire process in one SAS program, with no manual steps! A lot of people use Excel to create their graphs because "it's what they know." What if somebody
I've seen analyses of Fisher's iris data so often that sometimes I feel like I can smell the flowers' scent. However, yesterday I stumbled upon an analysis that I hadn't seen before. The typical analysis is shown in the documentation for the CANDISC procedure in the SAS/STAT documentation. A (canonical)
With limited time and budget, you can still thoroughly test SAS reports built in SAS BI Dashboard and SAS Web Report Studio by considering how all the tools were used to build the end report. An understanding of the functionality within each part of the chain from raw data to
As summer comes to an end, I find myself getting excited about some of the regional user group conferences that take place every fall. This year, I’ll be presenting a paper at WUSS (Western Users of SAS Software) in Long Beach, CA, in early September. About one week later, I’m
When the Western Users of SAS Software gather in Long Beach, CA this September, I'll be proud to be counted among the WUSSers. (You can learn more about WUSS here; don't look here.) The WUSS organizers must have some serious clout, because the line-up of presenters reads like a "Who's
The SAS System provides users with the ability to create, store and access custom functions using the Function Compiler (FCMP) procedure. Once defined with PROC FCMP, a user-defined function can be used, or called, just like any other SAS function in the SAS System. This powerful capability gives users the
Everyone in the world has their attention turned towards the Olympics this week, so what better topic to tie in to a SAS/GRAPH blog than that?!?! I had seen a graph on the guardian website that I thought was interesting, so I decided to try to create my own (slightly different)
