Wow did the summer fly by! Now that grad school is over, it’s about time to resume the “it’s all about the data” series. In the last several posts, I tried to lay a foundation for understanding how SAS stores and manages data for use in business intelligence and analytic
While sorting through an old pile of papers, I discovered notes from a 2012 SAS conference that I had attended. Next to the abstract for one presentation, I had scrawled a note to myself that read "BLOG about the incomplete beta function!" Okay, Rick, whatever you say! In statistics, the
I decided this year to get serious about my running. I started recording my distance for every run. I made a SAS data set and generated simple reports. After a few weeks, I set a goal of averaging one marathon a week (3.8 miles per day, 26.2 miles per week,
Blockbuster recently announced it‘s throwing in the towel and closing its remaining 300 stores in early 2014. My how times change! Blockbuster, bought by Dish Network in 2011, was an integral and intimate part of our lives for years. Teens gathered at the neighborhood Blockbuster to rent movies and hang
My daughter's middle school math class recently reviewed how to compute the greatest common factor (GCF) and the least common multiple (LCM) of a set of integers. (The GCF is sometimes called the greatest common divisor, or GCD.) Both algorithms require factoring integers into a product of primes. While helping
Working at SAS, I consider myself fortunate to have the best employee benefits in the industry. That is one of the factors placing SAS as one of the best companies to work for worldwide, and often THE best company to work for in USA. Given that, I was curious to know the kind
Data. Google uses ours every day, and most people aren't concerned. When our government is looking over our shoulders, however, tensions rise quickly. On the one end lies the recent scandals with the National Security Agency (NSA), which is apparently spying on you, me, and Angela Merkel. On the other lies case after case
This week's SAS tip is from Implementing CDISC Using SAS: An End-to-End Guide by Chris Holland and Jack Shostak. If you'd like to learn more about what CDISC offers, look no further. As SAS user Greg Nelson said, "Combined with useful advice and working examples, this treatise on CDISC implementation
The Analytics Conference series wrapped its last event of the year in Orlando and, as promised, there was plenty to take in during the two-day event. Now what? You can watch all the highlights, including full keynotes, on demand! Among the keynote presenters this year, SAS CEO Dr. Jim Goodnight
I enjoyed SESUG 2013 this year and not just because I love hanging out in St. Pete Beach soaking in the sun but also because I was able to “geek out’ with some of my favorite SAS folks. Andrea Zimmerman and Mira Shapiro did an awesome job with the conference.
Microsoft Windows 8 has been with us for a year, and its first major update -- Windows 8.1 -- has just arrived. So how does SAS support these Windows 8 platforms? The answer can be found on support.sas.com in SAS Note 46876. I'll summarize it here: SAS 9.3 and SAS
SAS 9.4 allows you to create html5 output with your graph inline (as part of the html), providing a great way to email your SAS/Graph output! Previously, if you used ods html and dev=png to create graphs, you had to deal with two files -- a png file (containing the graph)
In the days before the Internet, I’d pull a promotional flyer or catalog from one of my favorite retailers out of my mailbox or newspaper like an excited kid hoping it contained something I coveted. And at price so amazingly low that I’d feel no guilt in buying it. More
SAS 9.4 has been out for some time now, and all SAS grid computing enthusiasts know that one of the new features is that SAS Workspace Server processes can be directly launched on the grid. (See The Top Four User-Requested Grid Features Delivered with SAS® Grid Manager 9.4.) What does
The mosaic plot is a graphical visualization of a frequency table. In a previous post, I showed how to use the FREQ procedure to create a mosaic plot. This article shows how to create a mosaic plot by using the MOSAICPARM statement in the graph template language (GTL). (The MOSAICPARM
Before that headline really scares you, let me clarify - there hasn't been a single fraud scheme that managed to pull off a $2 trillion haul (yet). However, the fact remains that as rising scams, schemes, the gray market, work under the table and good old tax evasion escalate, as
Mosaic plots (Hartigan and Kleiner, 1981; Friendly, 1994, JASA) are used for exploratory data analysis of categorical data. Mosaic plots have been available for decades in SAS products such as JMP, SAS/INSIGHT, and SAS/IML Studio. However, not all SAS customers have access to these specialized products, so I am pleased
Don Wedding played a baseball simulation game called Sports Illustrated/Avalon Hill Superstar Baseball back when he was in grade school in Toledo, Ohio. The game involved rolling specialized dice, and then referring to cards representing the performance of the greatest baseball players of all time. The problem was Wedding knew
I had the chance to interview Natalie Kortum and Jack Chen of Dell at the Analytics 2013 conference in Orlando about how analytics is taking over business today and in the future. They both think we’ll see some big changes in the next five years. One of the most interesting
A couple of weeks back I described q way to create a Schedule Chart using the SGPLOT procedure. In that case, I used the HIGHLOW plot to draw bar segments, both for a single and grouped case. A natural extension is to create one with links between each segment. So,
SAS has been used to track the spread of many things, such as wild animals, tornadoes, and money launderers -- but this time I'm using it to track the spread of Walmart stores across the U.S. over time! Since its start in the 1960s, Walmart has grown to be the largest
I was looking at someone else's SAS/IML program when I saw this line of code: y = sqrt(x<>0); The statement uses the element maximum operator (<>) in the SAS/IML language to make sure that negative value are never passed to the square root function. This little trick is a real
Okay, given the title of this article, I might be overselling the content a bit. Read on to see if your life will be transformed. I've just returned from SESUG, and this question came up during one of the presentations. While this tip might seem basic, it was news to
Many people today just use their computer to play Angry Birds or post pictures of their most recent meal on Facebook ... but what would some of the great minds of the past have done with a computer?... For example, Charles Minard was creating impressive information graphics without a computer over 100 years ago,
SAS conferences are amazing events, with great presentations, keynote talks, classes and workshop, experts from the SAS Institute, networking opportunities and so much more! With so many things to do and so much happening at once, SAS conferences can be overwhelming. Plan to get the most out of your conference
If you've ever tried to use PROC FREQ to create a frequency table of two character variables, you know that by default the categories for each variable are displayed in alphabetical order. A different order is sometimes more useful. For example, consider the following two-way table for the smoking status
I am happy to report that my new book "Getting Started with the Graph Template Language in SAS" is now shipping. A colleague suggest it would be useful to post some articles with the same theme of "Getting started". I thought that was a great idea, and decided to start a new
Reacting to the demand in the rapidly changing environment of an emergency department can be a major challenge. Frequent mismatches between patient need and the health care professionals available to provide that care can result in significant human and financial costs. Analytics 2013 Orlando presenters, Kevin Armstrong of Vanderbilt University
Anne Hawley’s "Introduction to Statistics” professor asked the class what percentage of students at St. Lawrence University in New York state were smokers. Although the answer (according to a survey of students) was closer to 10 percent, most of the class guessed a much higher number, possibly due to the fact
Stick to the basics. Did you ever get that advice? Two of the papers at MidWest SAS Users Group 2013 used that most fundamental of SAS processing concepts—the Program Data Vector—to show why users might encounter unexpected errors in their DATA step programs. In The Secret Life of DATA STEP,
