Between attending presentations and networking, you should make your way to the SAS Bookstore at PharmaSUG. While there are many reasons to add us to your list, here are the top 5: Save money on our books and documentation. We’re offering a special conference discount to PharmaSUG attendees. Talk to a
A SAS user (who lives in the the US) emailed me a question about SAS functions. He was reading UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) datetime values from server logs, and to make future calculations and comparisons easier, he wanted to transform the value to local datetime. The INTNX() function worked great, but
To a statistician, the DIF function (which was introduced in SAS/IML 9.22) is useful for time series analysis. To a numerical analyst and a statistical programmer, the function has many other uses, including computing finite differences. The DIF function computes the difference between the original vector and a shifted version
Many SAS customers are quickly adopting 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows, and they are pleased-as-punch when they find a 64-bit version of SAS to run on it. They waste no time in deploying the new version, only to find that a few things don't work quite the same as they
Robert Allison's SAS/GRAPH: Beyond the Basics collects examples that demonstrate a variety of techniques you can use to create custom graphs using SAS/GRAPH software. To celebrate the book’s publication, we asked Robert to tell us more about why he loves SAS/GRAPH. Here’s what he had to say: A graph is
Last week I introduced this series. Today I begin to dive deeper into each of the four E's. First up? Enforcement. In 2009, there were 5.5 million police-reported traffic crashes. Law enforcement officers work diligently to prevent crashes by enforcing traffic safety laws pertaining to, among other things, seat belt
During the SAS Global Forum this past week, SAS offered several demos on mobile technology including: Michael Hecht, SAS, JMP iPad App Super Demo Chris Hemedinger hosted a Live Tech Talk on Tuesday that covered the new SAS Visual Analytics Explorer with demos on Microsoft Surface and iPad Apps Remember everyone is using mobile devices
To a statistician, the LAG function (which was introduced in SAS/IML 9.22) is useful for time series analysis. To a numerical analyst and a statistical programmer, the function provides a convenient way to compute quantitites that involve adjacent values in any vector. The LAG function is essentially a "shift operator."
Question: What do John Travolta, Gina Davis, and I all have in common? (I mean, besides the obvious fact that we are all awesome dancers.) Answer: We have all had makeup applied by artist Roxie Stice. I was the host for two SAS Tech Talks, which were broadcast via Livestream
A storyboard is a blueprint of drawings/ideas in a specific sequence to illustrate a story. Let’s take the Pixar film Toy Story as an example (I have a two-year-old and admittedly have watched this movie more than the hairs on my head). Before they ever began animating with the design
Unfortunately, my clone attempt didn't work like Chris Hemedinger's did. With all my papers, presentations, and demo hall duties, I realized yesterday that I certainly missed a lot. Included is my to-do list for items to watch and catch up on this weekend. Not really sure how I missed the
Last week's INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research drew over 700 attendees to Huntington Beach, CA. I had the pleasure of serving on the conference selection committee, and wanted to share this content from one of our invited speakers, Kean Chew of HAVI Global Solutions. The Numbers Behind Burgers
Like Vince said a few days ago, you don’t have to be Goliath to see how the intersection of big data and high performance analytics creates competitive advantage. Let’s also be realistic though: compared to someone like Walmart, pretty much everyone’s David! While Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank may not be the largest companies by global measures, they’re still
Nine Publications colleagues describe their favorite moments of day two at SAS Global Forum. A paper, the SAS authors' dinner, SAS Visual Analytics, eBooks, documentation, attendees, and more made the list. Kathy Council – Vice President, Publications I’ve enjoyed two full days of conference activities and many meet-ups with attendees. Great folks! I
Whether you call it Business Intelligence, Business Analytics, Visual Analytics, etc. - getting information to the users when they need it and make it actionable requires more than just software. BI Content Developers can have a certification but to be successful they really need to have an understanding of human
One of the biggest hits of the demo hall at SAS Global Forum was the cute Koala bear swag from MetaCoda.com. Everyone wanted to stop by the booth and pick one up for their badge. Driving people to your booth is the first step, but then you must have cool
Bill Franks’s new book, Taming the Big Data Tidal Wave: Finding Opportunities in Huge Data Streams with Advanced Analytics, has just released. This book shows how big data is changing the world of analytics; what people, processes, technologies, and mindsets are necessary to succeed in analytics in this new era;
Resourceful Publications colleagues shared highlights of day one at SAS Global Forum. SAS documentation, Kindle Fire surveys, SAS students, preview copies, and high-performance analytics top the list: Sean Gargan – Director, SAS Publishing Monday morning musing from the Bookstore at SAS Global Forum... I had the good fortune to meet three enterprising
How can you go home on time? Take a quick tour with these 5 tips that I was able to summarize for my students in the SAS SQL 1: Essentials class yesterday. Since they found it handy and asked if it could become a blog post, I thought I’d share
My friend and fellow blogger Steve Overton was tasked with presenting not one by two papers in a single one hour block. My original strategy was to take Instagram pictures of him running down the hall to get to the second session on time, but since both were in the
The April 2012 issue of ORMS Today contains a piece on "How analytics enhance the guest experience at Walt Disney World," by Pete Buczkowski and Hai Chu. While many of us are used to forecasting just one or two things (such as unit sales or revenue), Pete and Hai illustrate
Ron Cody is the author of several bestselling SAS books, including his latest SAS Statistics by Example. He's also one of the most highly regarded SAS experts anywhere. One could even make the case that Ron has achieved somewhat of a cult status within the SAS user community. Whether you've gotten a chance to meet Ron
We already miss you and wish you could be here. WAIT! Don't cry in your office! There are so many ways to stay connected to the SAS Global Forum happenings this year. If you are not able to attend in person, here is a list of sites that you can
This past Monday, Tricia and I released our 2nd book this year. "The 50 Keys to Learning SAS Stored Processes" provides a step-by-step approach to transitioning from SAS code into user driven (prompted) stored processes. Trimming down all the things you can do with SAS Stored Processes is next to
I blog about a lot of topics, but the following five categories represent some of my favorite subjects. Judging by the number of readers and comments, these articles have struck a chord with SAS users. If you haven't read them, check them out. (If you HAVE read them, some are
The leading cause of death for Americans between 5 and 34 isn’t what most would expect. It’s not disease or acute illness. It’s traffic crashes. The good news is that the number of highway deaths has steadily decreased the last few years, yet crashes still cause more than 30,000 fatalities and
When I first joined SAS in 1993, we were gliding into the golden age of 32-bit computing on the PC. Microsoft offered a new extension to Microsoft Windows 3.1 called Win32s, and it allowed 32-bit applications to run on the Windows operating system. SAS Version 6.10 for Windows was one
Our newest book in the Wiley and SAS Business Series, Statistical Thinking: Improving Business Performance, Second Edition, has been called “probably the most practical basic statistics textbook that has ever been written within a business context.”* It prepares readers for business leadership by developing their capacity to apply statistical thinking to
SAS Global Forum 2012 at Orlando, Florida is just round the corner and we are excited to see so many presentations offered by users on SG procedures and GTL. We'll add a few more on new SAS 9.3 features of SG procedures and GTL. These include cluster groups for discrete and interval axes, cluster
Bring your questions and your books with you. SAS authors will be everywhere at SAS Global Forum. They’re presenting papers, autographing books in the Bookstore, and attending lots of networking events. Besides being extremely smart, SAS Press authors are a personable lot and enjoy connecting with users, their fellow authors, and
