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Move beyond spreadsheets to data mining, forecasting, optimization – and more

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Rick WicklinJanuary 14, 2011 15

Two-Letter initials: Which are the most common?

A colleague related the following story: He was taking notes at a meeting that was attended by a fairly large group of people (about 20). As each person made a comment or presented information, he recorded the two-letter initials of the person who spoke. After the meeting was over, he

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Rick WicklinJanuary 12, 2011 22

Sampling from the multivariate normal distribution

SAS/IML software is often used for sampling and simulation studies. For simulating data from univariate distributions, the RANDSEED and RANDGEN subroutines suffice to sample from a wide range of distributions. (I use the terms "sampling from a distribution" and "simulating data from a distribution" interchangeably.) For multivariate simulations, the IMLMLIB

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Rick WicklinJanuary 10, 2011 5

Creating vectors that contain evenly spaced values

It is often useful to create a vector with elements that follow an arithmetic sequence. For example, {1, 2, 3, 4} and {10, 30, 50, 70} are vectors with evenly spaced values. This post describes several ways to create vectors such as these. The SAS/IML language has two ways to

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Rick WicklinJanuary 7, 2011 2

Simulating a Christmas gift exchange

Computing probabilities can be tricky. And if you are a statistician and you get them wrong, you feel pretty foolish. That's why I like to run a quick simulation just to make sure that the numbers that I think are correct are, in fact, correct. My last post of 2010

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Rick WicklinJanuary 6, 2011 3

When sharks attack!

The Junk Chart blog discusses problems with a chart which (poorly) presents statistics on the prevalence of shark attacks by different species. Here is the same data presented by overlaying two bar charts by using the SGPLOT procedure. I think this approach works well because the number of deaths is

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Rick WicklinJanuary 5, 2011 14

Creating a matrix with all combinations of zeros and ones

Over at the SAS/IML Discussion Forum, someone posted an interesting question about how to create a special matrix that contains all combinations of zeros and ones for a given size. Specifically, the problem is as follows. Given an integer n ≥ 1, produce a matrix with 2n rows and n

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Rick WicklinJanuary 3, 2011 8

New Year's resolutions for my blog

It's a New Year and I'm ready to make some resolutions. Last year I launched this blog with my Hello, World post in which I said: In this blog I intend to discuss, describe, and disseminate ideas related to statistical programming with the SAS/IML language.... I will present tips and

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Rick WicklinDecember 29, 2010 12

Automating the Great Christmas Gift Exchange

In many families, siblings draw names so that each family member and spouse gives and receives exactly one present. This year there was a little bit of controversy when a family member noticed that once again she was assigned to give presents to me. This post includes my response to

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Rick WicklinDecember 20, 2010 4

Readers' choice 2010: The DO Loop's most-read posts

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

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Rick WicklinDecember 17, 2010 1

Is the index to my book abnormally long?

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

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