English

Waynette Tubbs 0
Sy Truong reporting from WUSS 2011

If you've been to a SAS Forum, US SAS Regional or local SAS event, you know that it is impossible to see and hear everything that is on your list. Imagine how disappointed your SAS colleagues are who are sitting at home. They would love to hear about what you

Rick Wicklin 0
Four essential functions for statistical programmers

Normal, Poisson, exponential—these and other "named" distributions are used daily by statisticians for modeling and analysis. There are four operations that are used often when you work with statistical distributions. In SAS software, the operations are available by using the following four functions, which are essential for every statistical programmer

Waynette Tubbs 0
Thanks from NESUG 2011 conference co-chairs

~Contributed by Paul Gorrell and Warren Stinson, Conference Co-Chairs There were 384 attendees from 23 states and 6 countries gathered at the Holiday Inn By The Bay in Portland, Maine for three days to present, discuss, code, blog and tweet, using both familiar and new ways to share SAS expertise.  There

Waynette Tubbs 0
Modern portfolio theory using SAS® OR

The premise of the modern portfolio theory (MPT), proposed by Harry Markowitz in 1952, is diversity. Murphy Choy says that means you should “never put all of your eggs in the same basket.” According to Choy, the theory was never meant to be used with complex investment products because they

Rick Wicklin 0
Does SYMPUT work in IML?

I received the following email: Dear Dr. Wicklin, Why doesn't SYMPUT work in IML? In the DATA step, I can say CALL SYMPUT("MyMacro", 5) but this doesn't work in IML! Frustrated Dear Frustrated, The SYMPUT subroutine does work in SAS/IML software! However, the second argument to SYMPUT must be a

Anne-Lindsay Beall 0
WUSS 2011: By the numbers

Ready for some fun facts? These tidbits were all shared during the Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) conference held in San Francisco this week:    1.    How many million dollars did a simple Excel spreadsheet error cost TransAlta?  Answer: $24 million  2.    What percentage of mobile phone users older

Rick Wicklin 0
Optimizing? Two hints for specifying derivatives

I previously wrote about using SAS/IML for nonlinear optimization, and demonstrated optimization by maximizing a likelihood function. Many well-known optimization algorithms require derivative information during the optimization, including the conjugate gradient method (implemented in the NLPCG subroutine) and the Newton-Raphson method (implemented in the NLPNRA method). You should specify analytic

Anne-Lindsay Beall 0
What’s new in SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3

At the Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS)conference this morning, I witnessed my first Super Demo, taught by SAS’ own Andy Ravenna covering the major improvements to the latest version of SAS®  Enterprise Guide®. The coolest new new features: Mouse over tooltip – gives you help right in the program editor

Anne-Lindsay Beall 0
WUSS up San Francisco??

The Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) have the best acronym ever, and they're putting on an amazing conference in San Francisco this week.  The conference kicked off today with conference chairs Kathryn Valdes and Ginger Carey’s announcement that the Pacific Northwest Users Group is merging with WUSS next year, adding

Rick Wicklin 0
Maximum likelihood estimation in SAS/IML

A popular use of SAS/IML software is to optimize functions of several variables. One statistical application of optimization is estimating parameters that optimize the maximum likelihood function. This post gives a simple example for maximum likelihood estimation (MLE): fitting a parametric density estimate to data. Which density curve fits the

SAS Events
Sara Jones, CMP 0
A great learning adventure

SAS experts are gearing up to share knowledge, expertise and insights at SAS Global Forum 2012 In the last two months alone, we have launched SAS 9.3, created a think tank on healthcare analytics, hired a Chief Medical Officer, released a new version of Curriculum Pathways and offered flashcards for

Rick Wicklin 0
SAS/IML tip sheets

To celebrate the first anniversary of Statistical Programming with SAS/IML Software, you can now download the SAS/IML tip sheets (also called "cheat sheets") that I created for the book. At conferences, SAS Press displays these tip sheets next to my book. They have been very popular. Download these SAS/IML cheat

Waynette Tubbs 0
Upcoming events – get in on the fun!

Users groups and users group events are a great way to get the most from the software that you use every day: learn new coding and analysis techniques, gain efficiencies and productivity, and meet other SAS users. The final months of 2011 will fly by. Don’t let them escape without

Rick Wicklin 0
Distances between words

When you misspell a word on your mobile device or in a word-processing program, the software might "autocorrect" your mistake. This can lead to some funny mistakes, such as the following: I hate Twitter's autocorrect, although changing "extreme couponing" to "extreme coupling" did make THAT tweet more interesting. [@AnnMariaStat] When

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How I avoided jail in Kansas City, and other useful MWSUG tips

In 1979, my ninth-grade teachers named me "Most Likely to Replace Rona Barrett" on TV's Good Morning America. Although the prediction never came to pass, it did at least stoke my enthusiasm for "conversation" and my passion for "sharing." So, yeah, I can be a real talker sometimes. Up for some spirited, banal chit-chat? Give me a call! Delighted by the meandering

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