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Analytics

Bill ColemanJanuary 17, 2012 0

Using analytics to manage capital projects funding & costs

Cities and counties are responsible for building and maintaining the infrastructure to support a broad range of services. Local governments must develop and implement multiyear capital projects plans that provide infrastructure for things such as jails, courts, public office buildings, streets, bridges, parks, athletic complexes and community centers, water treatment

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Rick WicklinJanuary 17, 2012 0

Computing the diagonal elements of a product of matrices

Once again I rediscovered something that I once knew, but had forgotten. Fortunately, this blog is a good place to share little code snippets that I don't want to forget. I needed to compute the diagonal elements of a product of two matrices. In symbols, I have an nxp matrix,

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Analytics | SAS Events

January 16, 2012 0

Our conference lineup for 2012

Here at SAS Publishing, we’ve started the new year off with a bang, particularly when it comes to conferences. We’re attending a number of new shows in addition to the usual lineup this year. Visit our booth, meet our authors, check out our new and forthcoming titles, and talk with

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Rick WicklinJanuary 16, 2012 0

Reading ALL variables INTO a matrix

The SAS/IML READ statement has a few convenient features for reading data from SAS data sets. One is that you can read all variables into vectors of the same names by using the _ALL_ keyword. The following DATA steps create a data set called Mixed that contains three numeric and

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Programming Tips

Data table with garbage punctuation in Names, various formats for phone numbers and height and weight data entered in mixed metric and imperial units.

SAS JediJanuary 13, 2012 0

Jedi SAS Tricks: These aren't the droids... Episode 1

In the Star Wars movie, Obi-wan could just wave his hand, mutter a few words, and the stormtroopers would "move along". How the power of the Force makes ridding yourself of problematic characters so much easier! I recently was invited to become an alternate instructor for Ron Cody’s SAS Business

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Rick WicklinJanuary 13, 2012 0

Overlay density estimates on a plot

A recent question on a SAS Discussion Forum was "how can you overlay multiple kernel density estimates on a single plot?" There are three ways to do this, depending on your goals and objectives. Overlay different estimates of the same variable Sometimes you have a single variable and want to

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Rick WicklinJanuary 13, 2012 0

Missing values and pairwise correlations: A cautionary example

It is "well known" that the pairwise deletion of missing values and the resulting computation of correlations can lead to problems in statistical computing. I have previously written about this phenomenon in my article "When is a correlation matrix not a correlation matrix." Specifically, consider the symmetric array whose elements

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Analytics | Students & Educators

Nadja YoungJanuary 12, 2012 0

The art and science of seating charts

A’s in the front, Z’s in the back. How many of us grew up sitting in alphabetical order next to the same few classmates throughout school? While this is a quick and efficient way to learn student names, which is no easy task, it is not the most effective way

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Education | Government

Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerJanuary 11, 2012 0

Uncovering the hidden parts of the SAS log

Before there was CNN or FOX News, people used to get their news from SAS. At least, that's how I imagine that people kept themselves informed. What else can explain the existence of the NEWS= system option, which helps SAS admins to surface the must-know information to the SAS community?

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Rick WicklinJanuary 11, 2012 0

How to lie with a simulation

In my article on Buffon's needle experiment, I showed a graph that converges fairly nicely and regularly to the value π, which is the value that the simulation is trying to estimate. This graph is, indeed, a typical graph, as you can verify by running the simulation yourself. However, notice

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Programming Tips

Miss SAS AnswersJanuary 9, 2012 0

Calculated values in PROC REPORT Compute Blocks

Dear Miss SAS Answers, In PROC REPORT can I use one calculated (computed) variable in the calculation of another computed variable? In the example below, I’m trying to use the value of the Bonus column to calculate the Total column: compute Bonus; Bonus =sal.sum*0.05; endcomp; compute Total; total=sum(sal.sum, Bonus.sum); endcomp;

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Mike GillilandJanuary 9, 2012 0

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator for forecasters

Have you taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment? It is a psychological test wherefrom you are classified on Extraversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perceiving. I, along with roughly 15% of the population, come out an ISTJ or "Guardian Inspector" (the single largest

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Analytics

Melissa SavageJanuary 9, 2012 0

Phone distraction just one part of traffic crash picture

During one week in December, two separate transportation agencies within the federal government made two major announcements. First, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) – the government agency responsible for guiding traffic safety initiatives on the nation’s highways announced that crash fatalities had declined to record low rates. Just

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeJanuary 9, 2012 0

In good company

A recent post on the SAS website shows the SAS Annual Revenue History. It would be interesting to see how we could create such a graph using SG procedures, and how we could add more information and interest in the presentation. So, I started with the basic informaiton on the annual revenues provided,

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Rick WicklinJanuary 9, 2012 0

"Negative indexing" in SAS/IML: Excluding elements from an array

In the R programming language, you can use a negative index in order to exclude an element from a list or a row from a matrix. For example, the syntax x[-1] means "all elements of x except for the first." In general, if v is a vector of indices to

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeJanuary 5, 2012 0

Panel graph with axis-aligned statistics

Following up on the theme of graphs commonly used in many applications, here is another one that displays a horizontal bar chart with multiple data columns aligned with the bars. Recently at WUSS, a user stopped by asking how to create just such a graph. While this user wanted something more complex

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Rick WicklinJanuary 4, 2012 0

Simulation of Buffon's needle in SAS

Buffon's needle experiment for estimating π is a classical example of using an experiment (or a simulation) to estimate a probability. This example is presented in many books on statistical simulation and is famous enough that Brian Ripley in his book Stochastic Simulation states that the problem is "well known

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerJanuary 3, 2012 0

Pitfalls of the LAG function

In the immortal words of Britney Spears: Oops! I did it again. At least, I'm afraid that I did. I think I might have helped a SAS student with a homework assignment, or perhaps provided an answer in preparation for a SAS certification exam. Or maybe it was a legitimate

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Analytics

Bill ColemanJanuary 2, 2012 0

Moving local government to analytics-based enterprise performance management

Local governments are not immune to the rising demand for more accountability in government run services and programs, and the expenditure of public funds. Elected officials and citizens alike want to know what these programs accomplish for the public investment made. To date, the response to these questions and demands has been

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeJanuary 2, 2012 0

Simply useful

Let us ring in the new year with something simple and useful. A recent question by a user over the holidays motivated this article on what is likely a commonly used graph. We want to compare the preformance of two categories along with a third measure. This could be something like "How

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Rick WicklinJanuary 2, 2012 0

New 2012 resolutions for my blog

Hello, 2012! It's a New Year and I'm flushed with ideas for new blog articles. (You can also read about The DO Loop's most popular posts of 2011.) The fundamental purpose of my blog is to present tips and techniques for writing efficient statistical programs in SAS. I pledge to

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Rick WicklinDecember 30, 2011 0

A look back at my 2011 resolutions: How did I do?

At the beginning of 2011, I made four New Year's resolutions for my blog. As the year draws to a close, it's time to see how I did: Resolution: 100 blog posts in 2011: Completed. I blew by this goal by posting 165 articles. I recently compiled a list of

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Mike GillilandDecember 23, 2011 0

Institute of Business Forecasting: Workshop and book signing

Is there anything you'd like to tell your management? Of course, in the spirit of the holiday season, I mean is there anything you'd like to tell your management that isn't anatomically impossible? If so, please join me and Ryan Rickard, Sr. Supply Chain Manager at Newell Rubbermaid, for our

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Learn SAS

Shelly GoodinDecember 23, 2011 0

SAS author's tip: computing a new variable with PROC REPORT

Ron Cody and his supremely helpful book Learning SAS by Example close out our weekly SAS Author's Tip of 2011. Ron Cody is a household name in the SAS user community. And he deserves the moniker on his license plate of "SASMAN". Just mentioning Ron's name at user conferences incites awe. Sometimes

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Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerDecember 22, 2011 0

Traffic report: the most visited posts of 2011

Lots of the visitors to this blog arrive here by way of Google search (welcome!). Thanks to search engines and a few well placed keywords, the same older posts (let's call them "timeless topics") seem to attract the most traffic from year to year. I hope that the searchers find

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Fraud & Security Intelligence | Students & Educators

Paula Henderson

Paula HendersonDecember 21, 2011 0

2011: The more things change...

2011 saw incredible change in the states as more than half of the governorships changed hands. As expected, that caused significant turnover at the State CIO level, as well. So while executive and technology policies changed in many ways, the dismal budget situation reinforced the need to allocate tax pay

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Education | Government

Shelly GoodinDecember 20, 2011 0

An unforgettable customer interaction

Bad customer service experiences burn into our brains, creating permanent recall. And although we rightfully expect good customer service across the board, truly exceptional customer care is also unforgettable. This month, I featured an interview with SAS Publishing sales representative Sharon Brandon in the new issue of SAS Publishing News.

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December 19, 2011 0

The graphs you could create: if only you knew how

You’ve got your raw data visualized, you need a graph that shows the results of a custom analysis, you have a mental image of the graph you want to create, but…you don’t know the procedure needed to create what you want. Sanjay Matange and Dan Heath have written a book

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeDecember 19, 2011 0

Map overlays

In Simple maps can go a long way, we discussed some techniques to create simple outline maps from map datasets in the MAPS library using GTL. Now, let us take this a step further to do something more useful with this feature. For some graphs, the map information is an essential part of the

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerDecember 16, 2011 0

A SAS options viewer for SAS Enterprise Guide

On the heels of the release of the popular SAS macro variable viewer from last month, I'm providing another custom task that I hope will prove just as useful. This one is a SAS options viewer, similar in concept to the OPTIONS window in SAS display manager. You can download

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