Many of my blogging colleagues are taking this week to reflect on their top posts in 2012. Some are using the visitor statistics to rank the posts, but as Andy Ratcliffe points out, that gives short-shrift to the late-season articles. This year, I'm going to use this space to recap
In the spirit of the new year – the International Year of Statistics – I thought I’d share some different ways to use statistics. Can statistics help you in your everyday life? Certainly! And here's an example to prove it... Let's say you have a dresser drawer full of white socks.
It's the start of a new year. Have you made a resolution to be a better data analyst? A better SAS statistical programmer? To learn more about multivariate statistics? What better way to start the New Year than to read (or re-read!) the top 12 articles for statistical programmers from
Look at what arrived in the mail room this morning! Of course, I was expecting it sometime in January...but not first thing! Here's to early deliveries...perhaps this will set the tone for all of my projects in the new year.
In part 1 of my thoughts about analytics maturity, I deferred talking about issues related to the actual assessment of your organization’s level. Today I intend to detail some of the ways my peers and I are thinking about analytical maturity, comment on scales in use today, and address some
Happy New Year! If you have “adopting SAS metadata” as one of your New Year’s resolutions, I’m here to help you! In my last post in the metadata series, I shared with you all of the reasons why I love SAS metadata. I’d like to kick off 2013 with helping
In this final post for 2012, I would like to finish up the panel sorting topic with a discussion on sorting the panel cells by statistic. With this sort, the response or dependent data in each cell is calculated down to a single statistic value (mean or median, for example). These values are
I recently published a post based on an InformationWeek article about the need for more analytic talent and tips for finding the right talent. InformationWeek failed to include information about using SAS to uncover fraudulent responses in applications. This Post-It Note author uses SAS for that and entertainment.
Two weeks ago SAS hosted over 20 users group leaders from across the US and Canada for our annual Users Group Summit. The purpose of the summit is to plan for 2013 conferences, and one of those in attendance was Craig Brelage, academic co-chair for PharmaSUG. It was a great opportunity
SAS programmers will immediately recognize the importance of reviewing the SAS log to provide insights into what’s going in a SAS program. As a SAS Administrator, however, you rarely have the luxury of being able to sit down with a cup of coffee and read through the server logs to
It's that time of year: too much shopping, endless parties and another round of budget cuts! Whether it's personal or business budgets, December finds many of us looking for ways to be good stewards of whatever resources we have available. One of our teams was recently asked ““If I want
I'm on the SAS Technical Support list serve, so I get some very interesting information to pass along to you guys. Sometimes, I put the information in the SAS Tech Report - Hot Fix and product roadmap information, executive briefings and maintanence releases - but sometimes the information needs a little broader
Are you ready for the upcoming International Year of Statistics? I have prepared myself by doing a correspondence analysis. Excusez-moi? Correspondence analysis is a technique that has been very popular in France and is therefore sometimes referred to as French Statistics. Correspondence analysis is a technique for categorical data analysis.
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
We’ve already heard from more than 900 SAS users! Now we need to hear from you!
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
