For those of you who are classic rock fans, you may remember Alice Cooper’s title track “School’s Out for Summer” on the album “School’s Out.” That song captures students’ excitement of a taking a hiatus from the classroom. But for professors, summer is a time to continue their own education
With Discovery Channel's Shark Week starting on August 10, I decided to sink my teeth into some shark-attack data - I even found there were some shark attacks in the Midwestern US! Read on to learn the details... To get you into the shark mindset, here is a photo of an
We often hear from retail bank customers that they aren't satisfied with the revenue captured through digital channels. It was therefore with great interest that I embarked on the mission to understand Chris Skinner’s book Digital Bank. Why we need digital banks The book starts by painting the landscape of
I spend a lot of time on support.sas.com looking for resources to share. The SAS Programmer’s Bookshelf is a handy reference that’s been around for a while, so I asked “Why not a SAS Administrator’s Bookshelf?” What would you include? It’s complicated, of course, because the SAS administrator’s role covers
Unless you diligently read the "What's New" chapter for each release of SAS software, it is easy to miss new features that appear in the language. People who have been writing SAS/IML programs for decades are sometimes surprised when I tell them about a useful new function or programming feature.
Perhaps you're a big data expert who is fluent in Pig, Hive, MapR and all the technologies associated with the open source big data framework. Or maybe your role hasn't yet been touched by the increasingly popular Hadoop system. It's certainly worth a few minutes of your time (or perhaps
Sun, surf and SAS await you at this year’s South East SAS Users Group (SESUG) conference. Located at the beautiful Myrtle Beach, South Carolina from October 19-21, the conference offers two full days of learning, networking and problem-solving. “Every year I’ve attended, I’ve found something that I could immediately use
We’re not sure about you, but we just had the most thrilling, suspenseful, and fun month we’ve had in a while. The 2014 FIFA World Cup may be over, but we’re still amazed by not only the game outcomes and level of athleticism, but also by the wealth of interesting
In a previous blog post, I described how to generate combinations in SAS by using the ALLCOMB function in SAS/IML software. The ALLCOMB function in Base SAS is the equivalent function for DATA step programmers. Recall that a combination is a unique arrangement of k elements chosen from a set
A couple of days back, Rick Wicklin forwarded me a link to an article on the BadHessian Blog on creating a Bar Chart using six different freeware packages in R, Python and Julia. The target bar chart was one produced by the Jetpack stat module with WordPress. The graph is shown below. The unique feature of
SAS In-Memory Statistics for Hadoop is a single interactive programming environment for analytics on Hadoop that integrates analytical data preparation, exploration, modeling and deployment. It’s principle components are the IMSTAT procedure (PROC IMSTAT) and the SAS LASR Analytic Engine (or SASIOLA engine for input-output with LASR). Within the SAS In-Memory Statistics
How you flavor your foods can have huge impact on your health. Many of the spices we use to enhance our foods have powerful medicinal benefits like turmeric and ginger. Cinnamon also has amazing benefits and a lot of research behind it.
In this blog post, I put some classic rock song data under the SAS Analytics microscope, to see if I could get a better picture of exactly what is considered 'classic rock' these days... Michael Raithel recently pointed me to an interesting article/study about 'classic rock' music, and invited (or is
➤ DISCLOSURE! In June 2018 Google introduced changes to the way it handles its Maps platform. They now require API key in order to embed a map, plus Google Maps "projects" must now be associated with a billing account. Unless these new Google rules are met, Google maps described in
Do you know something about SAS® software that other SAS users would love to learn? Of course you do! Whether you’re a student or a member of the Circle of Excellence, every SAS programming project, every analysis or forecasting model is an opportunity to gain new insights into SAS processing
IT folks love SQL (Standard Query Language). Once you know how to program in SQL, you can work with almost any database because it is a standard. However, SQL is NOT a standard for doing analytics. The SAS programming language pre-dates SQL and even though SAS does SQL, SQL does not
In a previous blog post, I showed how to overlay a prediction ellipse on a scatter plot in SAS by using the ELLIPSE statement in PROC SGPLOT. The ELLIPSE statement draws the ellipse by using a standard technique that assumes the sample is bivariate normal. Today's article describes the technique
The sun has gone eerily quiet, in the middle of what should be the height of the 11-year sunspot cycle... Here's a superb photo of some sunspots that Stephen A. Carr posted to the Telescope Addicts Facebook group - a group which I follow with great interest. (Thanks for allowing
This post could be titled something like "Everything you wanted to know about Group Order in GTL - and more." The group ordering shows up in three different ways in your graph. Assignment of attributes (color, marker symbol) to group values. Position of group values in the graph. Display of the group
Although I’m not particularly excited about football (I admit, I don’t completely understand what offside means), I did follow the last World Cup with more than average attention. Not only for the handsome players, but especially for all the fascinating statistics that appeared. It struck me that heat maps popped
I’ve been told I have rocks for brains before, but right now I have rocks on the brain – the kind that are millions of years old and contain precious stores of oil and gas. One reason I have petroleum on my mind is that I’ve just returned from Brazil, where
Do you know the way to San Jose? By now, SAS users are getting to know the way to the Western Users of SAS Software’s (WUSS) annual event on September 3-5, 2014. Although this is the third time WUSS has been held in San Jose at The Fairmont Hotel, this
It is common in statistical graphics to overlay a prediction ellipse on a scatter plot. This article describes two easy ways to overlay prediction ellipses on a scatter plot by using SAS software. It also describes how to overlay multiple prediction ellipses for subpopulations. What is a prediction ellipse? A
In the summer heat, when The BFD alone isn't quite quenching your thirst for forecasting know-how, here are several other sources: CatchBlog -- by Steve Morlidge of CatchBull From his 2010 book Future Ready (co-authored with Steve Player), to his recent 4-part series in Foresight dealing with the "avoidability" of forecast
SAS is great at helping make important business decisions - how about helping decide where to take your next vacation?... Here's a picture from one of my favorite vacations with my buddy Joe. As you can see, I like "nature vacations." Can you guess where this one was? (leave a comment with
An empty matrix is a matrix that has zero rows and zero columns. At first "empty matrix" sounds like an oxymoron, but when programming in a matrix language such as SAS/IML, empty matrices arise surprisingly often. Sometimes empty matrices occur because of a typographical error in your program. If you
When it comes to e-mail-based newsletters, I'm of two minds. On one hand, I feel like I receive enough (or maybe too much) e-mail and I'm reluctant to clog up my inbox with more stuff -- especially if it's information that's located elsewhere (such as on that big backup drive
Most organizations enjoy a plethora of SAS user types—batch programmers and interactive users, power users and casual—and all variations in between. Each type of SAS user has its own needs and expectations, and it’s important that your SAS Grid Manager environment meets all their needs. One common solution to this
I love summer. I love the sunny days, the sound of the happy birds in the morning, growing tomatoes in my back yard, and playing outside with my family. Beach or mountains – I’m 100% beach. Sunshine or snow? 100% sunshine, palm trees, sand, and the beautiful sound of waves
While managing quality within the four walls of your own operation is all well and good and totally necessary, both the market and your bottom line are demanding a more holistic, quality lifecycle approach, and in support of that aim there is a treasure trove of downstream data waiting to be
