A big part of "winning" these days (be it sports or a business) is performing analytics better than your competition. This is demonstrated in awe-inspiring fashion in the book (and movie) "Moneyball." And on that topic, I'd like to show you a few ways SAS can be used to analyze sports data
Personally, I love studies. They help put things into context, and when done well, provide an independent and hopefully unbiased view of the forces that shape our lives. They are also a great way to see government funds used in strange ways. For example, the new NIOSH (National Institute for
You can create SAS publication channels based on topics (3rd Quarter Results), organization (Business Unit X), user audience (new product release), or any other category. Once defined, authorized users can subscribe to the channels and automatically receive information whenever it is published.
Someone recently asked a question on the SAS Support Communities about estimating parameters in ridge regression. I answered the question by pointing to a matrix formula in the SAS documentation. One of the advantages of the SAS/IML language is that you can implement matrix formulas in a natural way. The
SG procedures and GTL use a collision avoidance algorithm to position data labels for a scatter or series plot. This is enabled by default. The label is preferably placed at the top right corner of the marker. The label is moved to one of the eight locations around the marker to
Last week I delivered a SAS Talks session: Introduction to Custom Tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide (click to watch it). I promised that I would share a collection of resources where you can learn more information. First, here is a round-up of the custom tasks that I mentioned, with links
One purpose of this International Year of Statistics is to spread the word that the field of statistics benefits society. As part of the International Year, many organizations, including SAS and the American Statistical Association (ASA), are turning to history to illustrate how statistics is vital to the health and
Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen, has excellent ideas on organizing your information so it is effective and interesting. One tip is “Start with the End in Mind” – what is the purpose of your presentation? What do you want the audience to walk away knowing?
I've heard many customers ask "Can SAS do/use/handle census block maps?" My answer was "of course!" ... but I never really had any examples to show/prove that. Well, now I do! :) First, you need to locate & download the shape files for the census blocks you're interested in plotting. For
A common request we have been often hearing is for display of the distribution of data as a box plot, along with some detailed information overlaid. For example, one may have ratings data of all the hospitals in a region by different specialty, and you want to view this distribution
In the past five years, value-added models have been increasingly adopted by states to support various teaching effectiveness policies. As educators make the paradigm shift from looking at only achievement data to incorporating growth data, many misconceptions have developed. Compounding this issue is the fact that not all value-added and
My wife rescued a dog a couple of years ago from a rural North Carolina rest stop . We named her "DOTi" in honor of the Department of Transportation. It took a while for us to get into the swing of being responsible owners; sometimes the first to leave for
One of the roles my team enjoys is working with SAS customers on performance issues along with testing SAS software on selected hardware configurations. We also work closely with other groups within SAS who work with SAS partners to test the latest and greatest features. My team then takes what
March is National Nutrition Month! This year's theme, "Eat Right, Your Way, Every Day," encourages personalized healthy eating choices. All of us are different and, therefore, have unique food preferences that have been influenced by friends and family, lifestyle, culture, health status, and ethnic and religious traditions. None of us
This post is another in my series about creating apps with SAS Integration Technologies, a topic that I'm preparing for SAS Global Forum 2013. In this article, I'll describe how to use Windows PowerShell to connect to a remote SAS Workspace, run a SAS program, and retrieve the results. This
Argh! I've just spilled coffee on output that shows the least squares coefficients for a regression model that I was investigating. Now the parameter estimate for the intercept is completely obscured, although I can still see the parameter estimates for the coefficients of the continuous explanatory variable. What can I
In my previous post, I began a discussion of lists by explaining that big problems can be solved by breaking the problem into smaller pieces. The solutions to those smaller problems can then be used in combination to solve other problems. In this post, I will talk about formatting and
Last week there was an interesting question posted to the "Stat-Math Statistics" group on LinkedIn. The original question was a little confusing, so I'll state it in a more general form: A population is normally distributed with a known mean and standard deviation. A sample of size N is drawn
A parametric bar chart in SG Procedure and GTL parlance is a simplified version of the regular bar chart, where the data is assumed to be summarized prior to its usage inside the SG procedures or GTL. So, multiple occurrences of the same category and / or group combination is
Last year I shared this popular tip for counting how many times a web link has been shared on Twitter or Facebook. I use this technique daily to report on the social media "popularity" of our blog articles at SAS. I wanted to add LinkedIn into the mix. Like Twitter
Last time we discussed the fundamentals of SAS data and how we reference that data in SAS Foundation. Now, we will turn our attention to how you access and protect data when you want to expose data through SAS clients versus the traditional LIBNAME method.
There is something for everyone at SAS Global Forum 2013. I like to attend presentations in the Statistics and Data Analysis track and talk with SAS customers in the SAS Support and Demo Area. But one activity that I enjoy the most is to stroll through the poster area and
SAS announced yesterday that Michigan will use the SAS Fraud Framework for Government to, initially, combat fraud, waste and abuse in the state’s unemployment insurance and food stamp programs. Those two programs are good focus areas and I’m confident they will lead to the state recovering funds, avoiding losses and
I am pleased to announce that the documentation for the IMLPlus language is now available online. Previously, this resource was available only from within the SAS/IML Studio application. This documentation can now be accessed by anyone, regardless of whether they have installed SAS/IML Studio. As I have described previously, IMLPlus
Last week I was out to the 2nd Conference on Statistical Practice in New Orleans. It was a great opportunity to meet many users of SAS, R and other software and hear about their projects in applied statistics. I will write up my feedback on this conference soon. In the
Thanks for reading my previous post about the importance of understanding your performance issues before trying to determine the cause. Compiling all the available information about the problem and finding a repeatable SAS process that can be monitored are the first steps toward fixing the issue. Since we now have
In Part 1 of our February is Heart Month series, I discussed 5 Powerful Foods for Your Heart. It is well known that a healthy diet and regular exercise are very beneficial for keeping our hearts and other organs healthy, reducing our risk of developing heart disease and other illnesses.
A SAS user asked an interesting question on the SAS/GRAPH and ODS Graphics Support Forum. The question is: Does PROC SGPLOT support a way to display the slope of the regression line that is computed by the REG statement? Recall that the REG statement in PROC SGPLOT fits and displays
I’m a huge movie buff. I love all kinds of movies but sports films are at the top of my list. Field of Dreams is one of my favorites not only because it’s a great story but also because, in my opinion, it has one of the best movie lines.
If you're using SAS Enterprise Guide and you're not using custom tasks, you're missing out! Custom tasks are new features you can plug in – features that weren't originally packaged with the software. (And contrary to the Pulp-O-Mizer poster that I created, they do not come FROM OUTER SPACE. Usually.)
