This week's SAS tip is from Kevin D. Smith and his new book PROC TEMPLATE Made Easy: A Guide for SAS Users. Kevin is a software developer at SAS with extensive experience supporting PROC TEMPLATE and underlying ODS technologies. We're excited that Kevin decided to write his book and hope
SAS 9.4, our newest platform release offers product enhancements galore, more deployment choices than ever, simplified administration and more. In this post, we take a look at SAS 9.4 deployment options. Now you can choose the best way to provide the world’s most powerful analytics to your users. Is a
Fall is rolling around, which means time to plan and attend at least SAS regional conferences. I’m heading to the Southeastern SAS User’s Group (SESUG) conference in beautiful St. Petersburg, Florida. While I do love the conference, they had me at St. Pete Beach!
Do you know (right off the top of your head) the simple SAS/GRAPH code you would use to create line graphs? ... If not, then this tutorial is for you! A line plot is basically a scatter plot where the markers are connected. A line plot should only be used
As professional golfers tune up for the SAS Championship, I had the unique opportunity to sit down for a chat with Big Data. Maybe you've seen him on TV or in your corporate board room. He’s the guy with answers to many of the most complex issues faced by business
With the popularity of SAS Grid Manager, this question often comes up: which clustered or shared file system should we use with the multiple nodes of the SAS Grid? This is a question that needs to be thought through very carefully because the amount of time and effort to fix
Ways We Excrete Toxins You learned in the previous Chews Strategically post, Foods for Natural Detox, that certain foods provide important nutrients that assist the liver in transforming toxins so they can be excreted from the body. After the toxins are transformed into water soluble substances they are excreted through
Finding the maximum value of a function is an important task in statistics. There are three approaches to finding a maxima: When the function is available as an analytic expression, you can use an optimization algorithm to find the maxima. For example, in the SAS/IML language, you can use any
Scatter plots are probably the simplest kind of graph, and provide a great way to visually look for relationships between two variables. But, do you know (right off the top of your head) the simple SAS/GRAPH code you would use to create them? ... This tutorial leads you step-by-step through the
With registration for the Midwest SAS Users Group well underway, I reached out to conference chair George Hurley to get the scoop on what makes MWSUG a can’t-miss event for SAS users. As a veteran MWSUG attendee, he’s an absolute expert in what makes it such a rewarding opportunity for
Recently I wrote about how to determine the age of your SAS release. Experienced SAS programmers know that you can programatically determine information about your SAS release by using certain automatic macro variables that SAS provides: SYSVER: contains the major and minor version of the SAS release SYSVLONG: contains the
Recently my boss came across a graph where a time series plot was modified to include a "thickness" response. We wondered if this would be a good addition to the GTL / SG Series plot statement. What would the result look like, and what are the pros and cons? So, I took up
Are you uncomfortable with analytics? Do you know someone who is? One reason might be that they think of predictive analytics as magic rather than science or fact based. Good magic amazes people and so do good analytic based reports and decisions. Being able to predict what product or service
Fasten your seat belts - it's time to put the pedal to the metal. In this segment, we're going to burn rubber and unleash the full fury of the advanced RPM model on the unsuspecting burglary data! We will pop the hood and take a sneak peek at the drive
Over the past few releases, SAS has offered high availability for servers through various failover techniques. So I’ve been wondering how metadata clustering differs and why does SAS 9.4 provide it. The “why” is an easy question to answer. Today’s SAS software is used in a wide array of business-critical applications
A common visualization is to compare characteristics of two groups. This article emphasizes two tips that will help make the comparison clear. First, consider graphing the differences between the groups. Second, in any plot that has a categorical axis, sort the categories by a meaningful quantity. This article is motivated
SAS 9.4 was released a month ago, and we are excited about all the new features in SG Procedures, GTL and Designer. I wrote an article on SAS 9.4 graph features last month, and promised more to come. What then could be better than this Tech Talk video hosted by our
Remember being young and bursting with anticipation of the next show and tell? You knew you had something really amazing to share, and you wanted your classmates to see or hear it. Get ready for that same feeling of excitement and anticipation. Because it’s back. On a much bigger, global
Even the best programmers make mistakes. For most errors, SAS software displays the nature and location of the error, returns control to the programmer, and awaits further instructions. However, there are a handful of insidious errors that cause SAS to think that a statement or program is not finished. For
This week's SAS tip is from Lora Delwiche and Susan Slaughter's bestselling The Little SAS Book: A Primer, Fifth Edition. With over 50 years of combined SAS experience, this powerhouse duo has helped thousands of programmers. You, too, can benefit from their instruction. The following excerpt is from SAS Press authors Lora
I'm happy to announce the SAS Data Management support community has a new look and feel! And there’s lots of additional content and resources now too. The SAS Data Management community on support.sas.com is a central hub for anyone interested in SAS data access, integration, quality and governance. Community Manager
Occasionally, people ask me what is the best thing about writing a book. Is it the notoriety you get from being a SAS Press author? Fame is always pleasant. Is it the money you make from the advance and the royalties? Money is always useful. Is it displaying technical expertise
In SAS 9.4, the SAS programming language continues add new features by the truckload. I've already discussed PROC DELETE (which is actually an old feature, but like an 80s hit song it's now back with a better version). In this SAS Tech Talk video from SAS Global Forum 2013, I
What do you do all day long? I spend my time speaking with customers about what’s new in SAS 9.4, answering technical questions, and showing new users what they can do in SAS. You might spend your time on SAS data management tasks such as bringing in data and joining
The words "Detox" or "Detoxification" get thrown around a lot these days but few people know what these words really mean. Detoxification in reference to human health refers to your body’s ability to convert, or biotransform, waste products and toxins into non-toxic substances that can be excreted from the body.
Earlier this week I posted a "guest blog" in which my 8th grade son described a visualization of data for the 2013 ASA Poster Competition. The purpose of today's blog post is to present a higher-level statistical analysis of the same data. I will use a t test and a
As the NorthEast SAS Users Group (NESUG) approaches, I sat down with NESUG volunteer and Executive Committee member Sue Douglass to discuss all the features of this year’s conference and why SAS users can’t wait to register. This year, they’re offering over 125 papers, expanded preconference training sessions and perennial
Do you have “dead data”? Data that is not relevant or trustworthy? Data that muddles reports and makes data-driven decision making difficult, or even impossible, to manage? If you do, you are in good company as this is an enormous problem throughout higher education. Not to mention, as with all
As student growth or value-added measures become more prevalent in educator evaluation systems, many question how those ratings actually help teachers improve their practice. i.e. “How does a level 3 teacher become a level 4 or 5?” Robust and reliable value-added data serve as a great starting point for teachers
Editor's Note: My 8th grade son, David, created a poster that he submitted to the 2013 ASA Poster Competition. The competition encourages students to display "two or more related graphics that summarize a set of data, look at the data from different points of view, and answer specific questions about
