As Chris Hemedinger has written in several of his blog posts, SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3 has many more formatting options. I particularily enjoyed the 'CTRL-i' option to reformat SAS code with indents and carriage returns to make my programs even more readable. The 'CTRL-e' and 'CTRL-SHIFT-e' keyboard shortcuts are also
When I wake up early to write my blog, I often wonder, "Is anyone going to read this?" Apparently so. I started writing The DO Loop in September, 2010. Since then, I've posted about 60 entries about statistical programming with SAS/IML software. Since this is a statistical blog, it is
You might be too young to remember Clara Peller. She was the star of a series of fast-food burger commercials in the 1980s, in which she demanded meatier meals by shouting "Where's the beef?" at the pickup counter or drive-through window. Alas, the competitor restaurant meals were afflicted with "Fluffy
When I joined SAS Institute I had no knowledge of SAS. I studied, researched and practiced. The questions I asked would make even the most seasoned programmer blush a beetroot red! Those were an intense nine months—I’ll tell you more in a later post about the learning system at SAS
When I finished writing my book, Statistical Programming with SAS/IML Software, I was elated. However, one small task still remained. I had to write the index. How Long Should an Index Be? My editor told me that SAS Press would send the manuscript to a professional editor who would index
Dear SAS Users - As I write this last post for 2010, I have one ear listening to the weather forecast for signs that we should pull out the sleds and snow boots. MAYBE we’ll get a little snow in the next few days to make it really seem like
Paula Joshi wrote last month about how what we learn from the commercial world can be applied in government. She also promised to post a few examples. I’ll get that ball rolling. This week SAS announced the availability of SAS Enterprise Case Management. While the announcement focuses more on the
Recently, I needed to detect whether a matrix consists entirely of missing values. I wrote the following module: proc iml; /** Module to detect whether all elements of a matrix are missing values. Works for both numeric and character matrices. Version 1 (not optimal) **/ start isMissing(x); if type(x)='C' then
Integrating Stored Processes into Information Maps can improve process performance as well as provide extra flexibility and complete query generation control. In order to showcase how powerful this combination is, I am presenting this topic during a SAS Talks webinar session this Thursday, December 16th. The scope of the example will
NOTE: SAS stopped shipping the SAS/IML Studio interface in 2018. The references in this article to IMLPlus and SAS/IML Studio are no longer relevant. There are three kinds of programming errors: parse-time errors, run-time errors, and logical errors. It doesn't matter what language you are using (SAS/IML, MATLAB, R, C/C++,
Here is my published Google Reader bundle that contains all of the SAS- or analytics-related blogs that are maintained by customers or others in the SAS community (excepting those by SAS employees, for which I have a different bundle). Blogs by SAS Customers AFHood Analytics Group - Blogs AnnMaria's Blog
These are the blogs that I follow that happen to be written by SAS employees. I've assembled them into a Google Reader bundle, which I have shared. I have another bundle for SAS-related blogs written by others in the community. Blogs by SAS Employees A Shot in the Arm Blog-Normal
I helped to write a quiz for the Computer Science Education Week promotions that were featured on our company intranet. Do you fancy yourself as a Comp-Sci aficionado? Let's see how you do with these. 1. Which achievement is Charles Babbage most famous for? A. Establishing software retail shops in
While insufficiently endowed to be called a "get rich quick" scheme, here is a good way to pocket an extra $5,000 for your holiday shopping budget, and contribute to the body of forecasting knowledge. For the ninth straight year, SAS announces funding of two $5,000 research grants to be awarded
Imagine you are attending the BCS National Championship game next month. You have invested top dollar in your seats and you have been anticipating the game for weeks. You settle in to your seat with your hot dog, soft pretzel, and your favorite beverage a few minutes before kick-off because
Both covariance matrices and correlation matrices are used frequently in multivariate statistics. You can easily compute covariance and correlation matrices from data by using SAS software. However, sometimes you are given a covariance matrix, but your numerical technique requires a correlation matrix. Other times you are given a correlation matrix,
Have you found the SAS Software Product pages yet? These pages centralize several different resources for products or solutions on the SAS support site. You get to them by selecting Knowledge Base -> SAS Software -> Product A-Z Listing. These Product pages have everything—the latest product news, a product definition,
I connect to more SAS server environments than your average SAS user. In a given week, I probably run SAS Enterprise Guide connecting to at least five different Windows-based servers, a few Unix-based servers, and maybe even a z/OS machine as well. With that many SAS environments, I'm bound to
Another Guest Post from Tricia Aanderud, SAS Programmer Extraordinaire! Here's a hint from the SAS Support site that shows you how to see all the installed templates. If you don't have SAS EG, this code allows you to quickly see the different styles. Also - it can serve as a
Sample covariance matrices and correlation matrices are used frequently in multivariate statistics. This post shows how to compute these matrices in SAS and use them in a SAS/IML program. There are two ways to compute these matrices: Compute the covariance and correlation with PROC CORR and read the results into
I enjoy reading about the Le Monde puzzles (and other topics!) at Christian Robert's blog. Recently he asked how to convert a number with s digits into a numerical vector where each element of the vector contains the corresponding digit (by place value). For example, if the number is 4321,
Computer science is more than the pursuit of "let's see what we can make this computer do." If that's your only goal, then you might make a fine computer geek, but a lousy computer scientist. In her blog post for Computer Science Education Week, Caroline McCullen reminds us that computer
During your installation, you can utilize a separate location to store the installation temporary files. The -datalocation option must be defined in the command line with setup.exe. The resulting files include: as well as: Local SettingsApplication DataSASSASDeploymentWizard9.2Bootstrap.log
The SAS/IML language enables you to perform matrix-vector computations. However, it also provides a convenient "shorthand notation" that enables you to perform elementwise operation on rows or columns in a natural way. You might know that the SAS/IML language supports subscript reduction operators to compute basic rowwise or columnwise quantities.
I'm back in the office after two enjoyable days at the Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC. (I hadn't seen that many nerds since the family reunion on my dad's side.) Among the many good sessions was one about building your blog audience by making the blog more search friendly. The
My last post was a criticism of a statistical graph that appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek. Criticism is easy. Analysis is harder. In this post I re-analyze the data to present two graphics that I think should have replaced the one graphic in Businessweek. You can download the SAS program that
Have you used multivariate procedures in SAS and wanted to save out scores? Some procedures, such as FACTOR, CANDISC, CANCORR, PRINCOMP, and others have an OUT= option to save scores to the input data set. However, to score a new data set, or to perform scoring with multivariate procedures that
It seems like each week brings news announcing yet another software vendor acquisition by one of the giant software conglomerates. This approach of purchasing a specific capability to fit into the ever growing portfolio of technology does not show signs of stopping in the near future. Matter of fact, several
Contributed by Bernie Brennan and Lori Schafer Can you name a retailer that opens up its offices to the public for daily tours—and makes them entertaining, energizing, and just plain fun? We can. This same retailer prides itself on its ten core values, including creating “fun and a little weirdness.”
Guest Post from Tricia Aanderud, SAS Programmer Extraordinaire (meaning she's BASE SAS Certified and an awesome programmer!) When I send ODS HTML email to Outlook 2007, it is ugly. After a lot of research, I finally found the answer on the SAS Support site. If you use ODS HTML -
