This question has been asked repeatedly for decades by anyone facing a new system. That system might be a new product, a new piece of equipment, a new process, or anything really that is new and not well understood. Ultimately, you might need to change this system but first you
How to “Mind your Mind” and Improve your Well-being This morning you woke up, started your day and, whether you realized it or not, you said some things to yourself. You may have said, Today is going to be great… I am going to succeed… I look good! or perhaps
I frequently get asked about my favorite book on a particular topic, how to find free SAS learning materials online, how to get help with SAS issues, etc. So I thought I'd share it with you here! Last updated 2/25/2020 Getting Started Resources New to SAS? Here's your SAS Starter
Visualizing the correlations between variables often provides insight into the relationships between variables. I've previously written about how to use a heat map to visualize a correlation matrix in SAS/IML, and Chris Hemedinger showed how to use Base SAS to visualize correlations between variables. Recently a SAS programmer asked how
A few days ago, I posted an article on displaying first N bars from a data set. This is useful when the data is sorted by descending response, and only the first few values are significant. There were a few interesting comments, including one that was regarding the treatment of
If you know me, you probably know that I spend a lot of time on the water. I like speed paddling (dragon boat, outrigger canoe, surfski, and racing SUP), and I also have a big pontoon boat at Jordan Lake where I try to go fishing at least once a
Veterans transitioning back to civilian life face a number of challenges, many of which involve working in a non-military environment. The Honor Foundation helps Navy SEALs and other current and transitioning members of the U.S. Special Operations community enter civilian life. Last week, a group of former special operators visited several
The Cloud Analytic Server (CAS for short) is SAS’ latest high-performance, scalable, in-memory analytic data server. In this post, I’d like to discuss the CAS physical data model, i.e.what features CAS offers for data storage, and how to use them to maximize performance in CAS (and consequently SAS Visual Analytics
PROC SGPLOT displays titles inside the graph. If you want to display a title inside the graph and a different title outside the graph, you can use the ODS LAYOUT or the GTL. The ODS LAYOUT gives you precise control over your output and enables you to display multiple graphs and tables in each page.
In an increasingly complicated operating environment, the global oil and gas industry struggles to optimize their asset portfolio. Producers combat severe challenges inherent to aging facilities in the context of pricing volatility. Change is the new constant, as the cyclical nature of the oil and gas industry means that producers
Phil Simon shares his thoughts on this simple yet often-overlooked question.
With North Korea's growing missile capabilities in the news lately, I thought it would be interesting to create a map showing how far (or close) they are from other parts of the world. I first did a few searches on the Web, to see what maps are already out there.
When someone refers to the correlation between two variables, they are probably referring to the Pearson correlation, which is the standard statistic that is taught in elementary statistics courses. Elementary courses do not usually mention that there are other measures of correlation. Why would anyone want a different estimate of
Recently, I interviewed three SAS customers to understand firsthand how each is using data visualization and analytics in education. In this education analytics series of blog posts, I’ll take you on a journey to learn how each of these customers are turning their data into insights to be a more
Often we have a graph with many bars (or categories) on the x or y axis. These categories may be sorted by descending response such as frequency of a % value. An example with simulated data is shown below. title 'Actual Values by Name'; proc sgplot data=bars2 noborder; vbar name /
The State of Illinois faces an unprecedented budget crisis, with more than $15 billion in unpaid bills. While experts will argue over the exact causes of states' financial struggles, many are pointing to the problem of state leaders avoiding long-term budgetary problems for short-term fixes. Illinois is not alone in
With all the recent talk about some people wanting to move from the US to Canada, I got to wondering how cold, and how far north Canada is. And after a few Google searches, I was surprised to learn that 27 US states are actually farther north than the southernmost point
In this post I describe the important tasks of data preparation, exploration and binning.These three steps enable you to know your data well and build accurate predictive models. First you need to clean your data. Cleaning includes eliminating variables which have uneven spread across the target variable. I give an
This is the fifth post in my series of machine learning best practices. Hyperparameters are the algorithm options one "turns and tunes" when building a learning model. Hyperparameters cannot be learned using that algorithm. So, these parameters need to be assigned before training of the model. A lot of manual
SG annotation is a powerful technique for adding text, lines, arrows, shapes, and images to graphs. This post provides a macro that can help you when you make a mistake in writing the annotations.
In spite of years of research and recommendations on bone health, we still have considerably high rates of osteopenia and osteoporosis in the US. That leads us to believe we haven’t yet uncovered all we need to know about protecting our bones. But, thanks to new research we’re learning new
Recently, I was asked whether SAS can perform a principal component analysis (PCA) that is robust to the presence of outliers in the data. A PCA requires a data matrix, an estimate for the center of the data, and an estimate for the variance/covariance of the variables. Classically, these estimates
Take a minute to think of all the television programs you have watched throughout your lifetime. For me? Arthur, The Rugrats, Doug, Full House, Family Matters, Clarissa Explains It All, The Jeffersons, The Golden Girls, Pete and Pete, The OC, Laguna Beach, The Office, Scrubs, Scandal, The Real Housewives of fill in
One key aspect of graphs used in the statistical or clinical research domains is the need to display numerical or textual information aligned with the data in the plot. Examples of such graphs are the Survival Plot or the Forest Plot. These graphs use the AXISTABLE statements available with SAS
If I’m having a tough week, I might feel sorry for myself for a minute or two. But to snap myself out of it, all I have to do is think of the data managers. Those folks have to contend with duplicate records, bad information, data proliferation, accountability, permissions, privacy,
Joyce Norris-Montanari says focus on data quality and governance, privacy and security when providing data on demand.
A SAS customer asked, "I computed the eigenvectors of a matrix in SAS and in another software package. I got different answers? How do I know which answer is correct?" I've been asked variations of this question dozens of times. The answer is usually "both answers are correct." The mathematical
It's a common mantra many parents use to encourage their children to expand their food choices and try something new. Even as adults we’re often more comfortable easing into the unfamiliar, taking small bites, tiny samples, even dipping a toe in the water before diving in headfirst. Software is no
Many years ago I shared a custom task that allows you to view and manage SAS catalogs within SAS Enterprise Guide. As a reminder, a SAS catalog is a special type of SAS file that acts as a container, like a folder, for a variety of content items called catalog
Yesterday I recommended Steve Morlidge’s The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting, for helping to illuminate the troubling usage of business forecasts in the traditional management / budgeting process. Steve reached out to me overnight with some additional points that he shares in this guest blogger post. Steve Morlidge on Forecasts
