In my spare time, I enjoy browsing the StackOverflow discussion forum to see what questions people are asking about SAS, SAS/IML, and statistics. Last week, a statistics student asked for help with the following homework problem: I need to generate a one-dimensional random walk in which the step length and
Contributed by Gert Laursen--author, head of customer intelligence at Maersk Line, and business intelligence thought leader in Denmark Dear reader, In my new book, Business Analytics for Sales and Marketing Managers: How to Compete in the Information Age, you can learn how you can use analytics to reach your sales
My colleague I-Kong Fu introduced me and several of other SAS colleagues to Nathan Gilliat, co-founder of AnalyticsCamp, which is an unconference for analytics. Whatever flavor of analytics you work with—web, email, social media, marketing, big enterprise BI, you name it—this is the place to meet and learn from interesting
Several times a year, I am contacted by a SAS account manager who tells me that a customer has asked whether it is possible to convert a MATLAB program to the SAS/IML language. Often the customer has an existing MATLAB program and wants to include the computation as part of
When I began my job at SAS in 1999 (I was only 14 years old at the time), one of my responsibilities was taking over the production of a listserv called NEWDOCNEWS. The listserv consisted of all the new titles from Books By Users (now SAS Press) and SAS Documentation
String comparisons in SAS software are case-sensitive. For example, the uppercase letter "F" and lowercase letter "f" are treated as unique characters. When these two letters represent the same condition (for example, a female patient), the strings need to be handled in a case-insensitive manner, and a SAS programmer might
Gerhard Svolba, author of Data Preparation for Analytics Using SAS, is working on his second book for SAS Press and this time around he’s also writing about his experience—writing the book. I’m really enjoying his weekly blog The Creation of the Book: Data Quality for Analytics. Gerhard, who resides in
Do you have many points in your scatter plots that overlap each other? If so, your graph exhibits overplotting. Overplotting occurs when many points have similar coordinates. For example, the following scatter plot (which is produced by using the ODS statistical graphics procedure, SGPLOT) displays 12,000 points, many of which
Contributed by SAS Publishing’s Shelly Goodin I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that I just learned yesterday that World Book Day is TODAY, March 3. So I visited the World Book Day Website to find out more. Our book loving friends in Ireland and the United Kingdom apparently launched this
I read the new book Enterprise Social Media Strategy last weekend and came away from it feeling like I had just attended a useful two-day social media conference. You know the feeling, right? Your head is swimming with ideas from lots of great people who are smarter or braver or
SAS Global Forum creates a big buzz in the SAS user community, so in order to find out what the fuss is about, I decided to chat with a couple of our instructors who would be going to Las Vegas. In addition to teaching pre-conference training, these two instructors will
The ODS Graphics Designer allows you to design and build your own statistical graphs in SAS, without having to learn how to program in the new graph template language (GTL). The ODS Graphics Designer is a rich user interface that allows you to design these graphs based upon your own
I don't use the SAS macro language very often. Because the SAS/IML language has statements for looping and evaluating expressions, I rarely write a macro function as part of a SAS/IML programs. Oh, sure, I use the %LET statement to define global constants, but I seldom use the %DO and
I have read maybe thousands of books over the past few decades. From classics to business books to young adult novels to some genres that shall indefinitely remain unnamed... And while I loathed some of these books, I can't really call any of them "bad." There is an audience for
A few months ago I wrote a blog entry titled "SAS/GRAPH "SG" Procedures--Not Just for Statisticians!" It was so well received that I was invited to open for Celine Dion at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas! Well, not really, but I was invited (along with co-blogger Cynthia Zender) to give
One of the most popular blogs for SAS users is the Do Loop blog, where Rick Wicklin presents tips and techniques for statistical programming in SAS, with an emphasis on SAS/IML programs. Even if you're not a programmer, you have to appreciate the way Rick brings statistics to bear on
Tapan Patel and I recently caught up with Dean Abbott, President, Abbott Analytics for a Q&A session on Predictive Analytics World that takes place during Data Driven Busines Week March 14-15 in San Francisco. Question: Any thoughts you would like to share for upcoming Predictive Analytics World 2011 Conference? What
Late last year I had the pleasure of kicking off a conference in Raleigh, called the Internet Summit. SAS was a title sponsor, and I was tagged with keynote introduction. It was my veritable 2 minutes of fame. I did all of my homework and knew a few interesting facts
If you haven't signed up for SAS Global Forum 2011 in Las Vegas, you'd better get moving: February 28 is the last day for early registration and the discounted hotel prices. You should also sign up for the pre-conference statistical tutorials, which are filling up fast! I was tempted to
eMetrics is always a great event for us. Internally, we often fight over who manages and attends the event, because it’s such a good time. Thankfully, because I’m based closer to the West Coast than my counterpart, I’ve won the right two years running. Last year, in San Jose, we
Contributed by Rick Wicklin, author of Statistical Programming with SAS/IML Software This year at SAS Global Forum 2011, I am presenting a statistical tutorial, "Data Simulation for Evaluating Statistical Methods in SAS". In this course, I show how to create data with known properties (such as skewed or heavy-tailed) and
As we discussed last week, the forecasting process is often contaminated by individuals whose input makes the forecast worse. Sometimes this is intentional. For example, if I'm tired of hearing customers complain about out-of-stocks on retail shelves, I'll try to drive up the forecast so that more inventory will be
Before you take off for SAS Global Forum in Las Vegas, take a trip to our training page to hear Aubrey Barfield interview SAS instructor Andy Ravenna about the event. He’ll talk about his session, Becoming a Better Programmer with SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3, which he will be presenting at
In 9.2, OLAP Cubes can be updated incrementally. This is awesome, as you then don't have to worry about users locking your cube by closing the Web Report Studio window or leaving their EG session running. However, at the same time, this can cause the size of space an OLAP
I was inspired by Chris Hemedinger's blog posts about his daughter's science fair project. Explaining statistics to a pre-teenager can be a humbling experience. My 11-year-old son likes science. He recently set about trying to measure which of three projectile launchers is the most accurate. I think he wanted to
Live tweeting offers a great way to stay plugged in to the key happenings around an event both for attendees and for those unable to attend the event physically. Typically, when it comes to large events it’s nearly impossible to hit all the places when there are concurrent presentations or
Last year I had the pleasure of working with SAS Executive Advisor for Retail Lori Schafer and retail veteran and former Montgomery Ward CEO Bernie Brennan on their new book, Branded! How Retailers Engage Consumers with Social Media and Mobility. The book presents eight case studies of retailers that are
I’m sure you will all agree that a programmer’s favorite task is to maximize efficiency thus enhancing performance. Dear reader, in this blog post I’ll share my best programming practices so that you can benefit from what I typically show my students in class. At the end I’d like to
In DI Studio 4.3, SAS offers a code importer utility that can assist with moving legacy SAS code into an enterprise DI environment. The importer uses PROC SCAPROC to analyze and translate the code into DI Studio components. There is also a neat utility to bring in code comments and
I don't know much about the SQL procedure, but I know that it is powerful. According to the SAS documentation for the SQL procedure, "PROC SQL can perform some of the operations that are provided by the DATA step and the PRINT, SORT, and SUMMARY procedures." Recently, a fellow blogger,
