A recent article in the SAS and R blog was about current winter temperatures in Albany, NY. The temperature data for the recent winter (Dec 2011 - Mar 2012) was plotted on a polar graph. Robert Allison posted an article on displaying the same data as a Polar Graph using SAS/GRAPH . Here is his
The birthday matching problem is a classic problem in probability theory. The part of it that people tend to remember is that in a room of 23 people, there is greater than 50% chance that two people in the room share a birthday. But the birthday matching problem is also
A small, North American marketing firm (a division of a much larger international firm that provides data-driven, multichannel marketing solutions) provides its clients with "effective one-to-one marketing and ROI-focused strategies by applying advanced predictive analytics."
In yesterday's post, I discussed a "quick and dirty" method to smooth periodic data. However, after I smoothed the data I remarked that the smoother itself was not exactly periodic. At the end points of the periodic interval, the smoother did not have equal slopes and the method does not
Over at the SAS and R blog, Ken Kleinman discussed using polar coordinates to plot time series data for multiple years. The time series plot was reproduced in SAS by my colleague Robert Allison. The idea of plotting periodic data on a circle is not new. In fact it goes
Celebrating anniversaries is part of our culture. We celebrate the important ones – like 50 years of marriage – and the difficult ones, like going a week without chocolate. Parents celebrate the number of times a toddler uses the potty, and teenagers celebrate the weeks they have been dating. Big
Over at the SAS Discussion Forums, someone asked how to use SAS to fit a Poisson distribution to data. The questioner asked how to fit the distribution but also how to overlay the fitted density on the data and to create a quantile-quantile (Q-Q) plot. The questioner mentioned that the
In September 2010, I questioned whether you should care about native 64-bit client applications (or the lack thereof). At the time, SAS did not have a 64-bit version of SAS Enterprise Guide or SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office. A skeptical reader might assume that I was just trying to make
When I first attended SAS Global Forum, you had to wait until you arrived at the conference to get connected with other attendees. There wasn’t a good way to find out in advance who was going to attend or what they were interested in. And if you weren’t attending for
Locating missing values is important in statistical data analysis. I've previously written about how to count the number of missing values for each variable in a data set. In Base SAS, I showed how to use the MEANS or FREQ procedures to count missing values. In the SAS/IML language, I
A user recently posted a question in the SAS communities forum about how to best display two measures by one classifier using a Bar-Line graph, where the scale of the two measures is vastly different. This got me thinking about various different ways to represent such data. Here are some of my thoughts,
Today, SAS announces a new addition to its global certification program: you can now become "SAS Versions"-certified. Over the past 36 years, SAS has delivered hundreds of software products to the business analytics marketplace. Each of those products has a version number. As new revisions are released, the combination of
A 23-year Harvard and Columbia University study was recently published shedding new light on the long-term impacts of teachers with both high and low value-added estimates. Researchers Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff tracked math and reading assessment data on over 2.5 million students from 1989-2009. They then incorporated 90% of these
The topic of cluster groups comes up often. By cluster group I am referring to the feature in bar charts where the group values are displayed side by side. With SAS 9.3, SG Procedures support stack or cluster grouping for Bar Charts and overlay or cluster grouping for all other
There may be some of you who don't remember this song, but in high school and early college it was one of my favorites. "Get a haircut and get a real job," by George Thorogood and the Destroyers, really spoke to the rebel in me. Most of my rebellious days are behind
In a previous post I showed how to implement Stewart's (1980) algorithm for generating random orthogonal matrices in SAS/IML software. By using the algorithm, it is easy to generate a random matrix that contains a specified set of eigenvalues. If D = diag(λ1, ..., λp) is a diagonal matrix and
In my last blog post I revealed the WOW factor of SAS Visual Analytics. In summary: analyzing billions of rows of data, across vast numbers of columns, via 100+ correlation calculations in SECONDS (wow). What exactly does that mean? SAS Visual Analytics takes full advantage of SAS’ high-performance analytics technology.
“When I started using predictive analytics in 1991, I had a desktop computer with a 600 megabyte hard drive running SAS® 5.0 something,” said Olivia Rud, respected business intelligence thought leader and author of Data Mining Cookbook: Modeling Data for Marketing, Risk and Customer Relationship Management. Technology has vastly improved
Because I am writing a new book about simulating data in SAS, I have been doing a lot of reading and research about how to simulate various quantities. Random integers? Check! Random univariate samples? Check! Random multivariate samples? Check! Recently I've been researching how to generate random matrices. I've blogged
Of course you are a superhero - an analytics superhero. I know because every week, I write about your feats of super SAS brilliance. The League of Analytic Superheroes is the culmination of a powerful partnership between SAS and Teradata, the leaders in business analytics and enterprise data warehousing. Now, you
SAS Global Forum 2012 is right around the corner. If you will be in Orlando, too, be sure to say hello! If you have ideas for improving SAS/IML software or you would like to discuss my blog, please visit me during my hours at the SAS/IML booth in the Demo
The fundamental units in the SAS/IML language are matrices and vectors. Consequently, you might wonder about conditional expression such as if v>0 then.... What does this expression mean when v contains more than a single element? Evaluating vector expressions When you test a vector for some condition, expressions like v>0
ODS Graphics system was initially motivated by the need for high quality graphs for SAS Base, STAT, and other analytical procedures. Use of SG Procedures, ODS Graphics Designer and GTL by users too has initially focused on analytical graphs. But just like wheels on carryon bags that started for the specific needs of flight
Did that set off a trigger for you? It did for my SAS SQL 1: Essentials class, packed with SQL and SAS programmers alike. To clarify matters I pulled up some examples to help get the differences quickly. Set operators and Joins are similar in that they both combine multiple
Earlier this week I described a common programming pattern in the SAS macro language. The pattern sets up a loop for processing each distinct value of a classification variable. The program uses the PROC SQL SELECT INTO feature to populate SAS macro variables. The effect: you can roll your own
As public safety officials leaf through their favorite criminal justice periodical they are greeted with pages and pages of analytics advertisements. These ads are laden with promises of robust and scalable solutions, improved efficiencies and, yes, the promise of prediction. While reading the advertisements, the mental conversation may go something
I think this DATA step Post-It author may be a bit like my mother. When I was a child, my mother was always coaching me on two things: being independent and being efficient. I believe those are the two traits she considered most admirable in a person. It's little wonder
After my post on detecting outliers in multivariate data in SAS by using the MCD method, Peter Flom commented "when there are a bunch of dimensions, every data point is an outlier" and remarked on the curse of dimensionality. What he meant is that most points in a high-dimensional cloud
I've heard many questions during my 6 years as Sales Manager for SAS Publishing. I’ve noticed that we frequently get similar questions from customers. I’ve compiled a few of these frequently asked questions below with answers. I hope this helps. Please let us know what information would help you navigate our books. Question: I am
I have previously spoken about using custom formats and from SAS Information Maps and how they can be used to categorize data differently for your end users. The problem for some is that this requires establishing the format on the SAS server, typically on lockdown by the SAS Administrator. Another
