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Learn SAS
Shelly Goodin 0
SAS author's tip: macro functions %EVAL and %SYSEVALF

One of of my favorite reviewer quotes about Michele Burlew's book SAS Macro Programming Made Easy, Second Edition is" [ It ] helps eliminate the 'fear factor' often associated with using macros, while offering valuable insight to programmers with a broad range of experience." --Suson vonLehmden, RTI International I've worked with Michele Burlew

Rick Wicklin 0
Modeling Finite Mixtures with the FMM Procedure

In my previous post, I blogged about how to sample from a finite mixture distribution. I showed how to simulate variables from populations that are composed of two or more subpopulations. Modeling a response variable as a mixture distribution is an active area of statistics, as judged by many talks

Angela Hall 0
Tip on creating graphic files in specific locations

When trying to write out graphics to a specific filename location, the gsfname option is only honored when ODS LISTING is turned on and ODS HTML is turned off. This is especially important in 9.3 Base SAS as the ODS HTML option is the default output destination. Enterprise Guide users

Rick Wicklin 0
The effect of holidays on US births

Last week I showed a graph of the number of US births for each day in 2002, which shows a strong day-of-the-week effect. The graph also shows that the number of births on a given day is affected by US holidays. This blog post looks closer at the holiday effect.

Rick Wicklin 0
Evaluate polynomials efficiently by using Horner's scheme

Polynomials are used often in data analysis. Low-order polynomials are used in regression to model the relationship between variables. Polynomials are used in numerical analysis for numerical integration and Taylor series approximations. It is therefore important to be able to evaluate polynomials in an efficient manner. My favorite evaluation technique

Chris Hemedinger 0
What's our sign?

Rick Wicklin and I are engaged in an arms race of birthday-related blog posts.  To recap: Rick analyzed national data about births in the USA and what time of year they are most likely to occur. I responded by analyzing the birthdays of my Facebook friends. Rick responded by analyzing

Chris Hemedinger 0
Running Windows PowerShell Scripts

Windows PowerShell is one of my favorite tools to use for gathering information from my PC and network, and also for automating processes.  If you are familiar with UNIX shells (such as Korn shell or its variants), you will probably be very comfortable with Windows PowerShell.  Just like its UNIX

Rick Wicklin 0
Storing and loading modules

You can extend the capability of the SAS/IML language by writing modules. A module is a user-defined function. You can define a module by using the START and FINISH statements. Many people, including myself, define modules at the top of the SAS/IML program in which they are used. You can

Chris Hemedinger 0
Birthdays among friends

Earlier today, Rick posted interesting information about which time of year the most babies are born, at least in the USA. I don't have data nearly as extensive as what's available at the NCHS, but I do have a sample of birthday records to compare against Rick's findings.  My sample

Rick Wicklin 0
The most likely birthday in the US

Do you know someone who has a birthday in mid-September? Odds are that you do: the middle of September is when most US babies are born, according to data obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Web site (see Table 1-16). There's an easy way to remember this

Sandy Varner 0
What's behind door #1? goats, cars or SAS Doc

For years mathematicians have been pondering the Monty Hall Problem – you know, the old TV show where you have 3 doors and behind one door is a car (or some nice prize) and behind the other two doors are goats (or some undesirable prize). You pick door #1.  But

Programming Tips
Rick Wicklin 0
Loops in SAS

Looping is essential to statistical programming. Whether you need to iterate over parameters in an algorithm or indices in an array, a loop is often one of the first programming constructs that a beginning programmer learns. Today is the first anniversary of this blog, which is named The DO Loop,

Advanced Analytics
Mike Gilliland 0
Guest Blogger: Udo Sglavo on Cross-validation using SAS Forecast Server (Part 2 of 2)

In Part 1, Udo provided SAS code to replicate the example in Hyndman's blog.  Below, he shows the results of out-of-sample testing, and draws some conclusions on the computational efficiency of this approach. Out-of-sample Testing In addition to the example shared by Hyndman, out-of-sample data was used to illustrate the final performance

Chris Hemedinger 0
The unlikely pedigree of sample data in SAS

We ship many sample data sets with SAS products. By using well-understood sample data sets, we can teach concepts or show off product features without distracting the audience/students with data collection or prep. At least, that's the way it's supposed to work. But occasionally the sample data can cause a

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