In my first episode of "Adventures in SAS Administration", I want to share how I discovered that "software not licensed for this platform" may actually mean "this software is only licensed to be installed according to a plan".
I used "Dropbox" in the title for this post, but these techniques can be used for other cloud-based file sharing services, such as GitHub and Google Drive. Using PROC HTTP (added in SAS 9.2), you can easily access any "cloud-based" file as long as you have a public link to
Watching our nation approach the "fiscal cliff", and the dire predictions if we truly drive off it like the last scene in Thelma and Louise, has sharpened my view of the potential risks that huge gaps of fraud and abuse present to all of us. One of the key lessons
'Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the world ... dot-matrix printers were humming as Santa's naughty/nice list was unfurled... Can you imagine what it must have been like years ago when Santa had to maintain his naughty/nice list by hand, with a feather quill pen?!? Or even these
The first step toward a successful conference is selection of high quality papers. In the past, you have helped us with this important task and I now ask for your help to make the Analytics 2013 London conference a great success. The 4th International SAS Analytics Conference (Analytics 2013) in Europe
The SGPANEL procedure is used to create panelled graphics based on classification variables. The panelled cells are generated starting from either the top left (the default) or the bottom left of the panel, controllable by the START option. Currently, the ordering of the cells is determined by two criteria: 1.
Yao Huang says that you can use the %mock_table SAS macro to build mock tables needed for Phase I clinical trials. "Instead of spending a lot time to create or modify each table using a word processor, statisticians or programmers can quickly run this macro using a pre-specified excel template
In my previous post, I described how to implement an iterated function system (IFS) in the SAS/IML language to draw fractals. I used the famous Barnsley fern example to illustrate the technique. At the end of the article I issued a challenge: can you construct an IFS whose fractal attractor
Once you have submitted your abstract for SAS Global Forum, the wait is on! It can be very grueling, especially for first time presenters who don’t know the ropes yet. The key is not to second guess yourself or your idea. The wait can be long, weeks or even months,
Police Departments across the country are under constant scrutiny by elected officials, the media and the public to reduce crime, control costs, engage the public, always be accessible and, most important, always be courteous and professional. Police departments that demonstrate excellence in these areas can achieve accreditation by The Commission
All users must first enter a user name and password to view portal pages and other content. In prior releases of SAS Information Delivery Portal, the Public Kiosk owned by internal SAS user SASGUEST was available to present users with a single screen that could include any content the organization
I recently heard morning radio DJs talking about things people would never want to receive as holiday gifts. One of the categories they mentioned was kitchen appliances. Giving kitchen tools and appliances as gifts may be frowned upon by some but for the foodies in your family, culinary utensils can stir squeals
Fractals. If you grew up in the 1980s or '90s and were interested in math and computers, chances are you played with computer generation of fractals. Who knows how many hours of computer time was spent computing Mandelbrot sets and Julia sets to ever-increasing resolutions? When I was a kid,
Naomi Robbins has posted a contest, part 1 of which is to submit alternative representations for the following graph: Clearly, usage of two pie charts to represent the share of the B2B and B2C referrals will invite many responses. To create the graph, I took the data shown in the Pie Charts themselves, so we are using percent
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SAS has long believed that demand for people with analytics skills will continue to grow - especially given the big data challenges ahead. In fact, we love the way that Google's Chief Economist Hal Varian talks about this explosion in growth: statisticians will be sexiest job of the next decade. This
Several years ago my mom, bless her heart, bought a cell phone. Now, my mom is not what one would call “tech-savvy”. She has had the same car forever, same furniture for 25 years (well, she did get it reupholstered), even the same pots and pans that came as wedding
With an exponential growth in transactions, it may be hard to get a clear, single view of customer interactions. ICICI Bank , India's second largest bank, needed a single system that could replace multiple (complex to maintain) reporting systems - enterprise wide. The challenge - finding a solution to handle its growing
As rain settles in over the green fields of England, I’ve been reading the Times Higher Education (THE) periodical. It’s always a lively read, as it invariably takes the part of untenured junior lecturers in any dispute. It is also very well researched and informed. This week’s THE edition has
When I started using SAS back in 1995, every SAS user was a SAS programmer. We wrote code, and we were proud of it! We accessed our data via the DATA step, PROC IMPORT and SAS access engine code. If you had asked me back then what metadata is, I’m
While I'm waiting for the next "data intense" event to show up in the news (so I can blog some SAS graphs about it), I thought I'd share a few fun SAS graphs in the spirit of the holiday season! Please don't hold me to too high of graphical "best practices"
In a recent article on efficient simulation from a truncated distribution, I wrote some SAS/IML code that used the LOC function to find and exclude observations that satisfy some criterion. Some readers came up with an alternative algorithm that uses the REMOVE function instead of subscripts. I remarked in a
In addition to the Forest Plot with Subgroups, another popular graph in the clinical research space is the Most Frequent Adverse Events Sorted by Relative Risk graph. Recently, I worked with folks from some pharmaceutical companies to contribute SAS code for this graph to the CTSPEDIA resource for statistical graphics. The data for number
I live in the South, but was raised by Midwestern Catholics from rural Minnesota. Think Jeff Foxworthy meets Fargo. A few of the great things that I have learned about folks in the South is their incredible politeness even when they are really saying, "Wow, what in the world are
Independent contractor. Two very simple words that have a dramatic impact on businesses, workers, and government programs. While most people have a basic understanding of the term, they often have very little understanding of the laws governing it, which vary significantly program by program and state by state. This has
It seemed like an easy task. A SAS user asked me how to use the SGPLOT procedure to create a bar chart where the vertical axis shows percentages instead of counts. I assumed that there was some simple option that would change the scale of the vertical axis from counts
There are two activities which, when taken in combination, have occupied the vast majority of my working hours for the past 20 years: writing computer programs and writing...well, just writing. During my college years I completed my degree with a double-major: Computer Science and English. (My English degree has a
Collaboration can be difficult, but what if you could provide a template that helps everyone work together more efficiently? The Post-It note author below has developed such a tool and suggests using it as a guide for accepted coding standards. You can also use templates to control the look of
Apply now for the SAS Global Forum Junior Professional Award. Only 20 professionals will be selected. Congratulations to the SCSUG awardees!
If you haven’t heard of an APCD, it’s one of those acronyms you need to know. All-Payer Claims Databases are simply databases that consist of claims data from all health care payers in a given state. This includes private payers such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, and public payers such
