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
I love working with the Education industry and with our partners and customers. They are always so eager and willing to help that it really makes my job fun and easy. Plus, they are doing some amazing things to help districts, teachers and students. And everyone knows, teachers and schools
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)
A comment to last week's article on "How to get data values out of ODS graphics" indicated that the technique would be useful for changing the title on an ODS graph "without messing around with GTL." You can certainly use the technique for that purpose, but if you want to
This week's SAS tip comes from Peter Westfall, Randall Tobias, and Russell Wolfinger and their book Multiple Comparisons and Multiple Tests Using SAS, Second Edition. If you're interested in this topic, additional bonus content includes a free chapter from the book. The following excerpt is from SAS Press authors Peter Westfall, Randall Tobias,
Imre Polik, senior operations research specialist in the operations research group, truly qualifies as a math lover. Having studied math his entire life—and having taught it for two years—Imre offers some valuable words of wisdom and experience. He even has a couple of stories and jokes up his sleeves! Read
This is the second in a series of four posts that focus on how marketing solutions can help marketing fulfill lits role in the organization. In the first post, I outlined the three specific functions for the solutions to fulfill, being to drive profitability, to increase productivity, and to be pervasive. This
Writing a book (especially for SAS Press) is an incredible experience. If you are playing with the thought of doing so, I highly recommend that you proceed with this idea. You’ll get a much better structured view of your favorite topic, learn a lot about yourself, and enter a very
I’m beginning to think that 2012 is the year of the customer. We’ve seen a huge increase in customer experience initiatives coming out of the financial services and insurance industry this year. As we’re working with these companies to help them through this journey, you can almost forget that you
Big data. It’s a popular term used to describe the exponential growth, availability and use of information, both structured and unstructured. Of course, the term big data is relative; it applies whenever an organization’s ability to handle, store and analyze data exceeds its current capacity. And the real issue is not
As leaders and managers of human beings with million year-old brain structures, as part of our managerial toolkit we need to keep ourselves knowledgeable about psychology and the cognitive science of how people make decisions. You have undoubtedly read about how innately bad we are at making certain types of
My family recently rescued two lovable Labrador Retrievers: Jake 9 and Tar 7. Neither of them are great retrievers but we recently taught Tar how to pick up tennis balls off of a cupcake pan to find treats below. While this may not seem like a big accomplishment, it is
Many SAS procedures can produce ODS statistical graphics as naturally as they produce tables. Did you know that it is possible to obtain the numbers underlying an ODS statistical graph? This post shows how. Suppose that a SAS procedure creates a graph that displays a curve and that you want
My sleep patterns are erratic (and somewhat torturous) – they range from sleeping solidly for eight hours a clip to me wandering aimlessly about the house at 3am. Unfortunately, the latter was the reality during the wee hours of Friday, July 20; I was up watching ESPN (my typical late
Hopefully you know that a gif animation can be used for more than just showing a cartoon animal doing cute tricks! Being a savvy data-meister, I'm sure you are also aware that you can use gif animations to see how data changes over time. But perhaps you didn't know you could
If you need to calculate the mean, sum, standard deviation, or frequency count for a variable, you'll find it pretty easy to accomplish in SAS Enterprise Guide. The corresponding tasks in the menus have names like "Summary Statistics" or "One-way Frequencies". Obvious, right? Often, researchers or students have a quest
Just over the border between England and Wales lies the small town of Hay-on-Wye, reputed to have more bookshops per head of population than any other town in the world. Each year for ten days in spring the Hay Literary Festival is run, and Hay becomes the only place in
I received the following question: In the DATA step I always use the ** operator to raise a values to a power, like this: x**2. But on your blog I you use the ## operator to raise values to a power in SAS/IML programs. Does SAS/IML not support the **
The opening ceremonies for the 2012 summer Olympic Games in London, England are about to start and I could not be more thrilled. The Olympics are the pinnacle in the world of sports and the opening ceremonies are a phenomenal opportunity for people all over the world to burst with pride as
Uncontrolled product proliferation can have bad consequences, and these are well recognized. There is certainly extra cost and complexity in managing more SKUs (rather than fewer SKUs). And it is unlikely that each new offering adds entirely incremental volume. Instead, the increased product overlap just leads to increased self-cannibalization. We
In honor of the 2012 Olympics, this week’s SAS tip is from award-winning UK author Phil Mason and his book In the Know...SAS Tips and Techniques from Around the Globe, Second Edition. SAS user Ron Fehd proclaimed Phil Mason "one of the SAS user community's famous creative tinkerers--the SAS user version
Fire department operations are very complex, with multi-faceted missions that include not only fire prevention and suppression, but emergency response and fire inspections. These must be coordinated with area growth and development decisions, and water system management decisions. When a fire or an emergency occurs, the right equipment, with the right people,
When working with "big data" you usually have too many points to view in a plot, and end up subsetting or summarizing the data. But now, in SAS 9.3, you have an alternative! For example, the following scatter plot of 10,000+ points is just a visual "blob": But using a new
Tammy Jackson, a senior research statistician developer in the economics technology group, says her job is like taking a math test all day—but she wouldn’t have it any other way. With a background in matrices, linear algebra and math education, Tammy is proud of her work and has a keen eye for
Very soon I will introduce the newest Analytic Hero, joining Illumino in our mission to control data chaos. Here's a sneak peak of our newest league member:
Or... how do you keep the kids from acting like adults? Political discussions at the office are always fraught with danger, doubly so in an election year. But office dynamics can pale compared to those of the classroom. Youthful emotion, combined with bad information and a lack of understanding, can
At the recent SAS Forum Singapore (where we also heard from DBS Bank and their analytical transformation journey), Grace Tang, the Director, Customer Experience Assurance at SingTel talked in depth about the telco’s need to do things differently in the consumer operations space. Operating in a complex environment involving smartphones,
New books, SAS certification guides, and all-time favorites topped the bestseller list during the second quarter of 2012. Are you using any of these titles? The Little SAS Book: A Primer, Fourth Edition SAS Certification Prep Guide: Base Programming for SAS 9, Third Edition Learning SAS by Example: A Programmer's
Last week I wrote an article in which I pointed out that many SAS programmers write a simulation in SAS by writing a macro loop. This approach is extremely inefficient, so I presented a more efficient technique. Not only is the macro loop approach slow, but there are other undesirable
Think that you have a good excuse for not completing that SAS users group conference paper, technical article, or SAS Press book chapter? Well, whatever your excuse is, I’ve got a bigger one. Really! Things at the office are so busy that you need to take work home? I can
