Recently, SAS Global Forum announced the call for papers for the 2011 conference to be held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Since the conference is in Las Vegas, I’ve been thinking a lot about games of chance: blackjack, craps, roulette, and the like. You can analyze these games by
My colleague at SAS, @WaynetteTubbs, is editor of our technical e-newsletter and the Risk Management Knowledge Exchange. Waynette made a great point in this week’s SAS Tech Report that helps us move away from the echo chamber that is social media. We spend a lot of time talking to social
In this next installment of our video series, SAS Authors Answer, I asked our authors what tips they could offer to new SAS users. If you're new to SAS, be sure to also check out our new user page that is a great introduction to our books, documentation and newsletters.
My mother taught me to put things away when I'm finished using them. She doesn't use a computer, but if she did, I know that she'd approve of this tip from my book: Tip: Always close your files and data sets when you are finished reading or writing them. In
Today is the birthday of Bernhard Riemann, a German mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the fields of geometry, analysis, and number theory. Riemann is definitely on my list of the greatest mathematicians of all time, and his conjecture about the distribution of prime numbers is one of the great
Okay, I admit it, I'm old school. In my office, every good plan begins at the white-board. And the more complex the plan, the more colors are used. Today's whiteboard session was about the integration of Social Media in to one of our largest events, the Premier Business Leadership Series which
A friend recently asked me why I am writing a book. My answer? Some people are born to write a book and some have books thrust upon them. Mine was thrust upon me, although it is more accurate to say that I thrust it upon myself. My book, Statistical Programming
In my post yesterday about the 64-bit hype and how client apps like SAS Enterprise Guide would see only a limited boost from a 64-bit version, I forgot to point out another offering from SAS that has embraced the 64-bit architecture: JMP. JMP offers a 64-bit version, and it makes
Question: Is there a 64-bit version of SAS Enterprise Guide? Answer: SAS Enterprise Guide is a 32-bit application, even with its most recent release. As such, it is still completely supported on any 64-bit Windows machine, but it runs in the 32-bit subsystem (also known as WoW64 – short for
Missing values are a fact of life. Many statistical analyses, such as regression, exclude observations that contain missing values prior to forming matrix equations that are used in the analysis. This post shows how to find rows of a data matrix that contain missing values and how to remove those
Have you ever visited a city for the first time and, instead of relying maps to plan your journey, you simply plug your destinations into a GPS device and mindlessly follow the navigation directions? You've just cheated yourself out of a learning opportunity, because planning the journey and using your
How do marketers help to fight terrorism? Today I experienced one way...run a top-notch conference that allows private sector banks, law enforcement and regulatory agencies to come together and collaborate with an objective to stop Terrorism Financing. Just two days before the anniversary of the largest terrorist attack on US
I believe that we've "done" social media at SAS the right way. I know that because I can read this Dilbert cartoon (embedded here from dilbert.com) and actually laugh, and not cringe with shameful recognition.
Peter Flom reminded readers of his blog that you should always end a SAS procedure with a RUN statement. This is good rule. However, PROC IML is an exception to the rule. In PROC IML, the RUN statement is used to execute a built-in subroutine or a user-defined module. You
For the first time in a decade, I have a new official role and title at SAS. But what's remarkable about my new role isn't how much of my job will change, but how much of it will remain the same. I'm giving up my role as a software manager,
Look out, SAS and software nerds: there are more techy blogs headed your way via blogs.sas.com. Beginning this week, I've been joined by two of my fellow SAS R&D staffers: Rick Wicklin presents The DO Loop, which focuses on SAS/IML and other subjects of interest to statistical programmers, and SAS
The shortfall in 2010 state and local government budgets is not news. But it remains the biggest issue facing state and local governments today – and will continue well into tomorrow. Existing gaps are projected to widen further in 2011, throwing departments and agencies already on the edge further into
No matter how much we want it, and no matter how hard we try, we can’t always achieve the forecast accuracy desired. Forecasting Heads or Tails in the toss of a fair coin gives the perfect illustration (being right 50% of the time is all we can achieve over a
A frequently performed task in data analysis is identifying all the observations in a data set that satisfy certain conditions. For example, you might want to identify all of the female patients in your study or to identify all patients whose systolic blood pressure is greater than 140 mm Hg.
I am a big sports fan—sort of. I like to watch the last quarter of the football game, the final inning of the baseball game, the last day of the golf tournament. You get the idea. So you would think that the fact that we are less than two months
"How do I apply a format to a vector of values in IML? In the DATA step, I can just call the PUTN function.” This question came from a SAS customer that I met recently at a conference. My reply? Use the PUTN function, but send it a vector of
Unemployment Insurance, mandated by federal statute and administered by states, is designed to provide a temporary safety net for workers who lose their jobs. Due to the recent economic downtown and increase in unemployment, unemployment benefits paid have doubled nationally from $38B in 2008 to $75B in 2009. However, is
I came across this blog by Jim Sheppard (@seosheppard) last week; The Evolution of SAS and Search Engine Marketing, featuring a video by Dr. Pat Stroh - VP, Analysis & Decision Support at IMPAQT. IMPAQT 'specialize in the data-rich, Search-specific area of online marketing' and in the video they
The R You Ready blog posed an interesting problem. Essentially, you have a vector that contains n(n+1)/2 elements, and you want to pack those elements into the upper left triangular portion of a matrix. For example, if your data are proc iml; /** vector v is given: ncol(v) = n(n+1)/2 for
This week, SAS introduced SAS Rapid Predictive Modeler, a component of SAS Enterprise Miner that allows a business user to drive the modeling from Microsoft Excel (via the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office) or SAS Enterprise Guide. It was made possible thanks to the close collaboration of R&D staff on
There are numerous strategic risk issues that might keep a chief risk officer or chief executive officer awake at night. Particularly since the financial meltdown, many are asking themselves (and anyone who will listen), “Do we need to do more in risk management?” Evaluating your program is an intense process,
When Marilyn Manson sang of “The Beautiful People,” I think it was about how symmetry of facial features makes a person more visually attractive. At least that was the message I got out of the song. But unfortunately, even facial symmetry cannot compensate for an insufferable personality, as both Marilyn
When programmers begin learning a new computer language, the first program they write is often one that prints the text “Hello, World!” Successfully writing a Hello World program assures the programmer that the software is successfully installed and that all necessary features are working: parsers, compilers, linkers, and so on.
Okay, so I bought a Kindle. Now, officially, I don’t like such electronic gizmos. My oft-stated position has long been that the traditional hard-copy book is good enough for me. For one thing, the batteries don’t go dead. Be that as it may, when Amazon lowered the price a couple
It is Labor Day weekend. The kids are all back in school and soon the leaves will turn. For many of us, these changes trigger business planning for the coming year. Our marketing teams are examining “what worked and lessons learned” and as a leadership team, we are updating our
