There are only four more days before the big kickoff! But for many of us (including me), the countdown to SAS Global Forum 2012 began last fall with the submission of paper ideas to the incredibly awesome section chair volunteers. I live for this event, the networking, training opportunities, customer
For me, this will be a SAS Global Forum of many "firsts". My first Closing Session. My first time attending as a staffer outside of SAS R&D (well, except for the chilly SUGI 21 in Chicago). And my first chance to host the SAS Tech Talk sessions, which will be
SAS software provides many run-time functions that you can call from your SAS/IML or DATA step programs. The SAS/IML language has several hundred built-in statistical functions, and Base SAS software contains hundreds more. However, it is common for statistical programmers to extend the run-time library to include special user-defined functions.
We are surrounded by massive quantities of data, and somewhere in there is the information that your organization needs. But being able to perform complex analysis on huge amounts of data isn’t enough – the analysis needs to take place quickly enough for you to be able to act on
Have you ever selected File->Schedule Project or Schedule->Process Flow in SAS Enterprise Guide? Are you curious about what magic these actions will trigger? Here's what happens: SAS Enterprise Guide creates a VBScript program that contains the instructions to start SAS Enterprise Guide, load your project, run your project or flow,
I am in countdown mode, in about a week I will be heading to SAS Global Forum 2012. As a SAS Instructor for over fourteen years, I have been to several conferences but never one in Orlando. I am excited for the busy forum that awaits. Sunday afternoon I will
Let’s assume you own a modeling agency. You’ve just discovered a beautiful new model, who seems to have everything. She’ll be a star, the toast of the fashion show, modeling all the latest gowns and swimsuits. And you will be a star too, because you discovered her. Yet, when the
PROC STP is a new procedure for SAS 9.3 Stored Processes. It's so new and different that I have not had the opportunity to use it yet in a customer engagement. When writing about it for the now released "The 50 Keys to Learning SAS Stored Processes" book, I had
Because the SAS/IML language is a general purpose programming language, it doesn't have a BY statement like most other SAS procedures (such as PROC REG). However, there are several ways to loop over categorical variables and perform an analysis on the observations in each category. One way is to use
ODS Graphics have matured. With SAS 9.2, GTL and SG procedures were a new direction for creating analytical graphs in SAS. The motivation and design of the GTL framework and the SG procedures was driven primarily by the needs of the procedure writers within SAS to enable the automatic creation
I'm a sucker for the sampler platter at restaurants - it gives you a little taste of everything. "The crispy, gooey cheese sticks are delicious, but man, I really want more of the chicken skewers as my meal," is typically how my thought process goes. SAS Training is offering the
I’m a SAS user in the Pharmaceutical industry. I switched to the Pharmaceutical industry (from Marketing Research) four years ago and had a lot to learn! I started my new endeavor by purchasing some excellent SAS books, joining my local SAS user group, attending conferences (Michigan SAS User Group, PharmaSUG,
In about 30 lines of PowerShell script, we can build a SAS data set viewer that: Does not require SAS on the PC Provides very basic filtering capability Also allows for easy export to CSV All you need is the ability to run PowerShell scripts, and the SAS Local Data
Are you a prefectionist when it comes to forecasting, or any kind of data analysis? If so, perhaps my SAS colleague Gary Cokins can cure you. Gary is a prolific writer and contributor in the performance management field, and describes himself as a "ready-fire-aim" kind of guy. By this he means
The 25 boys I teach on Sundays loved these cupcakes I baked for them for Easter… the sugared peeps had them completely satisfied. I love my tea or coffee laced with sugar. I think you‘d all agree that it is always more pleasant to meet a nice customer service person
Last week I discussed how to fit a Poisson distribution to data. The technique, which involves using the GENMOD procedure, produces a table of some goodness-of-fit statistics, but I find it useful to also produce a graph that indicates the goodness of fit. For continuous distributions, the quantile-quantile (Q-Q) plot
I'm sorry to say that there will be no "Dummies around Me" smart phone app for SAS Global Forum this year. That means that if you want to catch up with me, you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way: plan to be in the same place that I am,
Being a Hollywood celebrity means plenty of perks in addition to willing groupies. For example, the 2012 Oscars Nominee Gift Bag (valued at over $62,000) included a 5-day elephant safari in Botswana ($15,580), Eminence organic body scrub (with virgin coconut oil and raw sugar cane, $48), Naughty Bits Brownies ($50), and a
SAS Server Pages were initially described in my SAS Press book Building Web Applications with SAS/IntrNet: A Guide to the Application Dispatcher . The creation of SAS Server Pages was accomplished through the use of a DATA step and the RESOLVE function. SAS Server Pages have been used by a
Last week I blogged about how to construct a smoother for a time series for the temperature in Albany, NY from 1995 to March, 2012. I smoothed the data by "folding" the time series into a single "year" that contains repeated measurements for each day of the year. Experts in
The birthday matching problem is a classic problem in probability theory. The part of it that people tend to remember is that in a room of 23 people, there is greater than 50% chance that two people in the room share a birthday. But the birthday matching problem is also
The first line of this week's SAS tip grabs your attention, "PROC SQL provides a helpful (though potentially dangerous) tool in the form of the DESCRIBE TABLE statement." SAS author, consultant, and member of the SAS-L Hall of Fame Howard Schreier included this intriguing statement in his book PROC SQL by Example: Using
The INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research kicks off April 15 in Huntington Beach, CA. I had a chance to preview a presentation by Glenn Bailey, Sr. Director of Operations Research at Manheim (the $3B wholesaler auto auctioneer). Glenn's talk is on "The Need for Speed: Responsive Predictive Analytics,"
In yesterday's post, I discussed a "quick and dirty" method to smooth periodic data. However, after I smoothed the data I remarked that the smoother itself was not exactly periodic. At the end points of the periodic interval, the smoother did not have equal slopes and the method does not
Over at the SAS and R blog, Ken Kleinman discussed using polar coordinates to plot time series data for multiple years. The time series plot was reproduced in SAS by my colleague Robert Allison. The idea of plotting periodic data on a circle is not new. In fact it goes
Usually I like to write a blog at the end of the year with a top 10 list of most popular classes or most read blogs for that year. Somehow I forgot to do that at the end of 2011, so here I am writing this blog today. I figured
When it refers to the number of new SAS Press books headed your way before SAS Global Forum! SAS Authors and the SAS Press Team have been working day and night to bring you 13 new titles in time for SAS Global Forum at the end of April. Pictured are
Over at the SAS Discussion Forums, someone asked how to use SAS to fit a Poisson distribution to data. The questioner asked how to fit the distribution but also how to overlay the fitted density on the data and to create a quantile-quantile (Q-Q) plot. The questioner mentioned that the
In September 2010, I questioned whether you should care about native 64-bit client applications (or the lack thereof). At the time, SAS did not have a 64-bit version of SAS Enterprise Guide or SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office. A skeptical reader might assume that I was just trying to make
Do you enjoy recalling your first SAS encounter almost as much as a first date? If so, you’re not alone. Before picking up the phone to call me, however, consider eavesdropping on some recent SAS users’ conversations—and then share your own story. Last week, members of our Fans of SAS Books
