Author note: I'm "replaying" this post in honor of Computer Science Education Week. It originally appeared here over 3 years ago. Today was "career day" in my daughter's 3rd grade classroom. A few privileged parents were invited to attend and answer questions about their professions, press-conference style. Among those on
Recently I read a blog that advertised a data visualization competition. Under the heading "What Are We Looking For?" is a link to a 2007 Bloomberg Businessweek graph that visualizes how participation in online social media activities vary across age groups. The graph is reproduced below at a smaller scale:
Next week we'll be celebrating Computer Science Education Week. SAS is a partner in this event, which makes complete sense because we have a vested interest in creating more computer scientists. After all, SAS does employ a lot of them. When I was enrolled in a computer science program (sometime
Japan has a superfast train called the Shinkansen. The first I heard of it was when my sister visited Japan on a scholarship. Engine-awestruck, we wanted a ride, but weren’t able to get to Japan. Nor, did we know the language. (With over 5000 kanjis, it took my sister 3
Errors. We all make them. After all, “to err is human.” Or, as programmers often say, “To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer” (Farmer’s Almanac, 1978). This post describes how to interpret error messages from PROC IML that appear in the SAS log. The
Recently, a certification candidate asked me about indexes and how SAS decides whether to use one or not. I don't work with supper-large data sets and therefore haven't been overly concerned with efficient coding techniques and consequently had no idea what an index was. So off to SAS 9.2 online
Update 25Nov2010: I've updated this example to correct the code so that it works correctly for positive UTC offsets. Thanks to Bruno Müller, my colleague at SAS, for finding my mistakes. One of my SAS colleagues was recently working on a project where she had to create reports that include
Contributed by Bruce L. Stegner, Ph.D One of my favorite lines from the old Laurel and Hardy movies was “Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.” This memory came to me as I was thinking about documentation today compared to pre personal computer days. This point of view
Many people mistakenly assume that just because you want to use a SAS program to access a protected resource (such as a database table), you must include the credentials for the resource inside your program. Few things cause a database administrator to lose more sleep than coming across this within
SAS Web Application Infrastructure automatically logs users out of the system after a predesignated amount of time. Unless the user has the URL bookmarked, they have to retype the Web Application URL. There is a much less frustrating way for users to get back in, allow the user login button
I am thankful to be a statistical programmer. When I wake up in the morning, I am eager to start my day. I love statistics, programming, and working at SAS, and I write my blog to share that joy. This a Golden Age for statistical programmers because theoretical ideas and
SAS Web Report Studio 4.2 provides you an excellent interface to schedule reports to refresh, because why would you want the report to generate for every user every time they open the report when the data is only updating weekly/monthly/etc? During your design and development of these scheduled reports, consider
It was over two years ago that I shared the tip of using Process Explorer to look under the covers at which SAS processes were running on your Windows environment. Process Explorer recently received a refresh, and it's worth downloading the new version. (Yes, it's free.) If you want to
I give many presentations and workshops on how to use SAS/IML Studio, and more than once I have been asked about how to launch the program. Sometimes the inquiry hints at mild frustration, such as last week's "How do I RUN the $%#@# THING!!!!" The email I got this week
The recent mail bomb attempt on US-bound cargo and commercial airliners is another reminder of the terrorist threat the United States continues to face. While there may be a lull in the news cycles from time to time, the threat is there every day. A key component in detecting and
I was building a nice little PDF report the other day. I love the way ODS PDF replicates the SAS Results window navigation structure as PDF bookmarks, but... I'd much rather write the text for the bookmarks myself. So, I decided to "use the SAS" and make ODS do my
Many SAS users receive data in the form of CSV (Comma Separated Value) files, and need to convert them to SAS data sets. A typical record in a CSV file might look like this: Jeter,Derek,1995,,234,”22,600,000” Note the following about the record above: There is no data for the fourth field,
In a previous post, I used statistical data analysis to estimate the probability that my grocery bill is a whole-dollar amount such as $86.00 or $103.00. I used three weeks' grocery receipts to show that the last two digits of prices on items that I buy are not uniformly distributed.
With the exception of the occasional James Bond movie that proves the rule, we don’t as a matter of course combine our modes of transportation into one all-purpose vehicle, and we even tend to park our cars, boats and planes in separate facilities. But when it comes to financial management,
I was happy to see several sessions on e-mail marketing at this week’s Internet Summit. The timing couldn’t have been better for me, as I’ve been pondering the very question with which Jenn Markey (@jmarkey), business development director at communications firm Protus kicked off her discussion: Is it really a
Analytics is the hot new buzzword at the TeleManagement Forum (TMForum). Because I am the Communications Industry Marketing Manager for SAS, you would expect me to return from last week’s TMForum Management World conference with tales about the importance of analytics in the telecommunications industry. But I'm not the only
It has been a blast to teach my Statistical Programming class this Fall. I got to use my book, Statistical Programming in SAS! This book evolved over many years in response to the development of a class proposed in response to an external program review that noted a gap in
In a previous post, I discussed computing regression coefficients in different polynomial bases and showed how the coefficients change when you change the basis functions. In particular, I showed how to convert the coefficients computed in one basis to coefficients computed with respect to a different basis. It turns out
Are you afraid of big commitments? Do you like to shop around thoroughly before making a purchase decision? I can't help you with most of Life's Big Choices, but I can help you in one way: I can show you how to learn more about your data set before you
Last month I attended the Predictive Analytics World conference in Washington DC. It attracted more attendees from last year with broad representation from multiple industries. The conference was kicked off by Eric Siegel’s keynote focusing on Five ways predictive analytics cuts enterprise risk. The gist of his presentation was to
Some of you will remember that in the very early versions of SAS Enterprise Guide, we introduced a unique approach to helping you to learn SAS: an animated "agent" who could suggest your next steps within your project. We furloughed the agent (who appeared usually as a wizard, genie, or
I am pleased to announce that the fine folks at SAS Press have made Chapter 2 of my book, Statistical Programming with SAS/IML Software available as a free PDF document. The chapter is titled "Getting Started with the SAS/IML Matrix Programming Language," and it features More than 60 fully functional
Harvard Business Review Analytic Services have recently published an interesting report – The New Conversation: Taking Social Media from Talk to Action. Get it free here. Of the 2,100 organizations surveyed 75% said they didn’t know where their most valuable customers were talking about them. Two thirds of them are
In a recent Social Media Today post, Alexandra Cojocaru asks, How Predictive Can Social Media Analytics Get? She goes on to offer a few areas where she thinks predictive analytics can be applied to forecast the future using data collected from Facebook, Twitter and other sites. Alexandra mentions a project
I was recently asked where to start once you have decided you want to implement a lead nurturing system. I thought it was a worthy question to write an answer to in a quick blog post. Here is what you need to begin: Educate yourself on the topic. Here are
