Last week I wrote about using acceptance-rejection algorithms in vector languages to simulate data. The main point I made is that in a vector language it is efficient to generate many more variates than are needed, with the knowledge that a certain proportion will be rejected. In last week's article,
Kirk Paul Lafler, Software Intelligence Corporation, has written four SAS books and more than 500 peer-reviewed papers - 19 of which were awarded Best Contributed Papers or Poster, so I’m going to believe him when he says that he’s figured out a thing or two about tuning SAS systems.
A recent question by a user lead led me to experiment with what is often referred to as conditional highlighting. The user wanted to display a bar chart of response by year, where each bar is colored by year, and show a cross hatch pattern on the bars where the
Have you heard the expression "Talk Turkey"? Well then, what better (tongue-in-cheek) thing to do around the Thanksgiving holiday, than talk some turkey using SAS Graphs! ;) I don't usually decorate my graphs with images and pictures (they typically make the graph more difficult to read), but when it comes
The LOC function is one of the most important functions in the SAS/IML language. The LOC function finds elements of a vector or matrix that satisfy some condition. For example, if you are going to apply a logarithmic transform to data, you can use the LOC function to find all
Most custom tasks need to access SAS data in some way. Since custom tasks are built using Microsoft .NET, and the .NET Framework is object-oriented, it would be convenient if we had an object-oriented method for navigating SAS data sources. That was the thinking behind the "SasData"-namespace classes within the
As the holidays approach, we’ll all have some down-time to catch up on personal and professional reading, hopefully cozied up by a fire with a cup of hot chocolate in hand. While most books regarding data-driven decision making and value-added analyses can be pretty heavy, I’d like to suggest two
In pharmaceutical research, analysts often want to see the number of respondents who are at each site and the treatment they receive. Apparently, there's more than one way to produce correct results when you are using the PROC MEANS procedure. In Janet Willis' paper, Do You Have Too Much Class?, (awarded Best
Are you considering submitting a paper to the SAS Global Forum? The deadline for submissions is right around the corner – here’s some ideas to help you get your paper selected! Steve Overton and Tricia Aanderud have presented papers at several of the SAS user groups and here are a
Analytics maturity is a hot topic right now. Many come to SAS for answers on how to assess their analytics maturity and advance their use of analytics, especially at a corporate level. I want to share the highlights of what we usually prescribe from a best practices perspective regarding advancing
'Develop an Analytic Center of Excellence (COE)' could be translated to – develop a culture of analytics in your organization such that every department and division sees value in analytics and pursues measurement for all strategic decisions.
As one of the external instructors for the SAS Platform Administrator Fast Track course in Australia, I have found that the students who attend the courses come from diverse backgrounds. My experience so far has been an approximate 50-50 split, with half being IT system administrators wanting to learn how
A few days ago on the SAS/IML Support Community, there was an interesting discussion about how to simulate data from a truncated Poisson distribution. The SAS/IML user wanted to generate values from a Poisson distribution, but discard any zeros that are generated. This kind of simulation is known as an
Justin Smith and William “Gui” Zupko were looking at manufacturing data over time and wanted to know the minimum value in their dataset, and they wanted to pinpoint its exact location – the specific row and column. PROC ARIMA uses the ARIMA (auto-regressive integrated moving average) model or the ARMA
Editor's note: This post was updated on 8/5/16. “One time a fellow came up to me and said, ‘Tell me something unique about you,” said David Chapman, of Chapman Analytics, “I said, ‘I used SAS when SAS was free.” Needless to say, Chapman has been using SAS for a long
Congratulations to this year's NorthEast SAS Users Group Student Scholarship winners! Student scholarships make it possible for young professionals to learn new SAS skills, meet other SAS users, hear about innovative new research, and network with other professionals from around the world. Rachel Bray, University of Maryland College Park, is pursuing a
How do you hire a Chief Data Scientist? That's not a hypothetical question: I know of at least three companies that are actively looking for a "Chief Data Scientist" at the moment. Hiring the right person is harder than you'd think. Whether or not a Chief Data Scientist is a
I was recently asked, "Does SAS support computing inverse hyperbolic trigonometric functions?" I was pretty sure that I had used the inverse hyperbolic trig functions in SAS, so I was surprised when I read the next sentence: "I ask because I saw a Usage Note that says these functions are
Last week I attended my first SCSUG conference, this one in Houston. Houston, the fourth most populous city in USA, is the world's capitol of the Oil and Gas industry. So it was no surprise I met many attendees from local oil and gas related companies. But, I also met many
We are careening towards the holiday season, and this year more than ever before it's going to mean one thing: Online Shopping. As you enter your credit card number over and over to complete your many purchases, you might occasionally transpose or mistype your account number. Does it surprise you
Did I tell you that I went to Andrew Kuligowski's hands-on workshop while I was at MWSUG 2012? Actually, I only attended the first portion of his session; it didn't make sense for me to take up a computer since I'm not a programmer. His workshop was to teach users how to parse useful data from unusual
IBM Global Financing offers 100 percent financing on your SAS purchase In this economy, many companies are counting their pennies. Those budget constraints can put a real damper on requests for the SAS products and solutions that you need for your data challenges. IBM Global Finance (IGF) – the world's
There are people who claim that an IT expert professional with no knowledge of SAS can get the SAS Administrator job done. That's probably true. It also depends on your definition of getting the job done. At some SAS sites, it can be that the administrator's role in supporting SAS is to install it and
The other day I was constructing covariance matrices for simulating data for a mixed model with repeated measurements. I was using the SAS/IML BLOCK function to build up the "R-side" covariance matrix from smaller blocks. The matrix I was constructing was block-diagonal and looked like this: The matrix represents a
Disasters like Hurricane Sandy, by and large, shine a positive light on humanity, with the heroic actions of first responders and volunteers, and the massive outpouring of support from across the nation. They also present fraud opportunities for the shady operators and criminals among us. Hurricanes leave behind a lot
Recently, SAS Talks hosted a webinar to give SAS users an overview of the new features and functions available in the new release of SAS Enterprise BI Server. Rick Styll, BI Global Product Manager at SAS, says that most of the enhancements were prioritized based on customer feedback.
In the U.S. we have a presidential election every 4 years - and as luck would have it, 2012 is an election year! I see a lot of election maps & graphs in the news, and I'm always subconsciously critiquing them in my mind and thinking to myself, "How would I graph this
OK all you mamas and papas, and SAS users who aren’t. It’s time to turn your SAS Global Forum dreams into a reality. Registration for the 2013 event is now open. The event promises to offer no time for “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” with an anticipated 400
Each spring and fall, I start clearing out the kid's small clothes, old toys, etc. It can sometimes go too far and reach into my "digital pack-rat" issues. (Wait, what does that mean? Well, just ask the person who last week requested detail on a project I worked 3 years
I recently encountered a SUGI30 paper by Chuck Kincaid entitled "Guidelines for Selecting the Covariance Structure in Mixed Model Analysis." I think Kincaid does a good job of describing some common covariance structures that are used in mixed models. One of the many uses for SAS/IML is as a language
