Policing has profoundly changed over the last several decades and its evolution will continue as long as there are crimes to commit and communities to serve. The very nature of policing is dynamic – it always has been and always will be. Those dynamics are driven by many things –
Over at the SAS/IML Discussion Forum, there have been several posts about how to call a Base SAS functions from SAS/IML when the Base SAS function supports a variable number of arguments. It is easy to call a Base SAS function from SAS/IML software when the syntax for the function
Writing efficient SAS/IML programs is very important. One aspect to efficient SAS/IML programming is to avoid unnecessary DO loops. In my book, Statistical Programming with SAS/IML Software, I wrote (p. 80): One way to avoid writing unnecessary loops is to take full advantage of the subscript reduction operators for matrices.
There is nothing the gambler, investor, forecaster, or Match.com dater likes as much as the sure thing. Don't we all? Back in April I stated what I claimed to be a sure thing forecast: In any group of 2 or more people, there is at least one pair of people
“For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye, Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.” In this famous poem by William Wordsworth, many people believe he is
In a previous blog post, I presented a short SAS/IML function module that implements the trapezoidal rule. The trapezoidal rule is a numerical integration scheme that gives the integral of a piecewise linear function that passes through a given set of points. This article demonstrates an application of using the
In a previous article I discussed the situation where you have a sequence of (x,y) points and you want to find the area under the curve that is defined by those points. I pointed out that usually you need to use statistical modeling before it makes sense to compute the
While school is out (for most) for the summer, many will find this week's SAS Author's tip to be a good primer or refresher about the WHERE statement. Our featured author Sandra Schlotzhauer draws on her extensive career teaching basic statistics to non-statisticians in sharing lessons for grown-ups in her
As organizations confront the limits of forecasting, they finally realize the folly in a blind pursuit of unachievable levels of forecast accuracy. The best accuracy we can ever hope to achieve is limited by the nature -- the forecastability -- of what we are trying to forecast. Anything better than
The other day I was asked, "Given a set of points, what is the area under the curve defined by those points?" As stated, the problem is not well defined. The problem is that "the curve defined by those points" doesn't have a precise meaning. However, after gathering more information,
Are you a SAS Enterprise Guide user? If so, you are in luck. SAS Press author Neil Constable provides the inspiration for this week's SAS Author's tip. And this book is more than just a pretty face (the cover photographs very nicely). You'll find rich content from beginning to end.
I promised myself that I would not collect any take home books until Thursday. So much for promises! While walking through the BEA 2011 show floor there were titles that had my name on them. I can barely carry my bag. I visited some local reseller booths such as Duke
During his presentation at Book Expo 2011 (BEA) yesterday, Michael Norris, from Simba Information, declared "the print book will not die - you can write my name by that statement." Forty-eight percent of Americans did not buy a book last year. That is an audience we need to reach. New
SAS Enterprise Guide has about 150 options that you can customize in the Tools->Options window. With each release, the development team adds a few more options that have been asked for by customers, and they rarely decommission any existing options. It's getting quite crowded on some of those options windows!
Recently I had to compute the trace of a product of square matrices. That is, I had two large nxn matrices, A and B, and I needed to compute the quantity trace(A*B). Furthermore, I was going to compute this quantity thousands of times for various A and B as part
I spent my first day at Book Expo (BEA) at the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) conference. There were good presentations but the one that gave me an 'aha' moment was on e-reading devices presented by Gartner. Allen Weiner from Gartner prefaced his predictions by asking what customers need. They
Often-cited reasons for writing a book remind me of what detectives name as two factors necessary for committing a crime: motive and opportunity. I certainly had a strong motive for writing a book. I had been discussing knowledge sharing and running SAS knowledge flow initiatives for over a decade. Opportunity
Did you know that you can display a list of all the SAS/IML variables (matrices) that are defined in the current session? The SHOW statement performs this useful task. For example, the following statements define three matrices: proc iml; fruit = {"apple", "banana", "pear"}; k = 1:3; x = j(1E5,
This week's featured book comes from author A. John Bailer. We published John's book last summer and it continues to be one of our most popular titles. Following the tip below, you may want to visit John's SAS Talks on-demand webinar for some free training! The following excerpt is from
Have you ever wanted to look like George Clooney and get all the money, fame, and dates? I have long aspired to this. But in the great poker hand of life, I wasn't dealt an inside straight or even a nice pair. So I make do with what I've got.
As I write my first blog entry for SAS State and Local Government, I thought it would be prudent to provide a little personal background. I grew up in a family of artists- with 5 musicians, 2 painters, 1 sculptor, 1 dancer, and 1 composer. I studied business, became a
Many people know that the SGPLOT procedure in SAS 9.2 can create a large number of interesting graphs. Some people also know how to create a panel of graphs (all of the same type) by using the SGPANEL procedure. But did you know that you can also create a panel
I’m an avid reader and was not happy when ebook prices went from $3-4 to $9-12. However, being in publishing at SAS, I realize a book is priced based on its value and not the format. Shifting the cost from paper to digital is not as easy as you might
I hope that the following statement is not too controversial...but here it goes: Microsoft Excel is not a database system. That is, I know that people do use it as a database, but it's not an application that supports the rigor and discipline of managing data in the same way
This article shows how to randomly access data in a SAS data set by using the READ POINT statement in SAS/IML software. I have previously discussed how to use the READ NEXT and READ CURRENT statements to sequentially access each observation in a SAS data set from PROC IML. Reading
Andrew Ratcliffe posted a fine article titled "Inadequate Mends" in which he extols the benefits of including the name of a macro on the %MEND statement. That is, if you create a macro function named foo, he recommends that you include the name in two places: %macro foo(x); /** define
Are you one of those enviable people who have pretty much always known what you wanted to do? Or did you meander through a variety of dreams or career changing moves to become the professional that you are now? This may be too heavy for a Monday afternoon blog post,
A fundamental operation in data analysis is finding data that satisfy some criterion. How many people are older than 85? What are the phone numbers of the voters who are registered Democrats? These questions are examples of locating data with certain properties or characteristics. The SAS DATA step has a
For years I've been making presentations about SAS/IML software at conferences. Since 2008, I've always mentioned to SAS customers that they can call R from within SAS/IML software. (This feature was introduced in SAS/IML Studio 3.2 and was added to the IML procedure in SAS/IML 9.22.) I also included a
Dear SAS users and excellent blog readers, this week's sort of randomly selected tip comes from esteemed SAS author Art Carpenter. Many of you are probably familiar with Art's work and may have had the pleasure of hearing him speak at a user group conference. He's a great communicator and
