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Rick WicklinOctober 14, 2011 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

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Anne-Lindsay BeallOctober 13, 2011 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

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Waynette TubbsOctober 13, 2011 0

Visit your customer loyalty team at the US Regionals

~Contributed by Melissa Perez, SAS Customer Loyalty~ Making sure our customers have a great experience with SAS is the goal of the US Customer Loyalty team. SAS has a wealth of resources available to our customers and the loyalty team is a dedicated resource to provide support and act as

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Anne-Lindsay BeallOctober 12, 2011 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

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarOctober 12, 2011 0

Bad words in SAS - PG rating

Picture this – a student grabs the Programming 1 textbook, scans it quickly seemingly searching for something specific, and shakes his head indicating an unsuccessful search. He plants himself smack dab in the front row, looks me squarely in the eye, raises one eyebrow quizzically and says, “Bad words?” I

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SAS Events

Michael SmithOctober 12, 2011 0

Call for papers: From far, far away

The road to becoming a SAS Rock Star often starts at SAS Global Forum. Start making your mark by sharing how you use SAS at the 2012 SAS Global Forum, to be held in sunny Orlando, FL, from April 22 to 25. Submissions are being considered in the technology

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Rick WicklinOctober 12, 2011 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

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SAS Events

Sara Jones, CMPOctober 11, 2011 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

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerOctober 10, 2011 0

10 tips for organizing your SAS Enterprise Guide projects

What is the best way to organize your SAS work in a SAS Enterprise Guide project? There are no project templates or enforced structure, really, but isn't there a best practice? I don't have a single prescription for the best project organization. I believe that it depends on the nature

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Rick WicklinOctober 10, 2011 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

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Advanced Analytics

Waynette TubbsOctober 7, 2011 0

Friday's Innovation Inspiration - He's No SAS Dummy

Chris Hemedinger, author of the SAS Dummy blog, read last week's Innovation Inspiration post and was reminded of a couple of cool things he'd seen SAS users do. He also told me of one of his most recent rock star moments. (In all fairness to Hemedinger, he didn't call his

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Rick WicklinOctober 7, 2011 0

Creating bar charts with confidence intervals

I've noticed that a lot of people want to be able to draw bar charts with confidence intervals. This topic is a frequent posting on the SAS/GRAPH and ODS Graphics Discussion Forum and on the SAS-L mailing list. Consequently, this post describes how to add errors bars to a bar

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Students & Educators

Nadja YoungOctober 6, 2011 0

Part 3 of the 3 R’s of Education: Relationships that Raise Learning

With an increasing volume of curriculum to cover and no time to spare, teachers often hit the ground running with the full throttle rigor and relevance critical to teaching and learning. However, I argue that the first two R’s are futile if teachers don’t have meaningful relationships with their students.

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Education | Government

Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerOctober 5, 2011 0

Netflix streaming: Making every minute count

It turns out that I'm not receiving the maximum potential value from my Netflix streaming service. Perhaps it's because I place too much value on sleep. With my monthly subscription, I am permitted to view Netflix content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In my house I have

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Waynette TubbsOctober 5, 2011 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

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Rick WicklinOctober 5, 2011 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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October 4, 2011 0

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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Programming Tips

Waynette TubbsOctober 3, 2011 0

Five easy steps to write your presentation in SAS®

Most SUG presentations are written in PowerPoint – they may even be written in Word first, and then fancied up a bit in PowerPoint – but they are rarely written in SAS. But Louise Hadden, from Abt Associates Inc, had a need to produce a lot of PDF presentations. She

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Programming Tips

Rounding up and rounding down in SAS

Rick WicklinOctober 3, 2011 0

Rounding up, rounding down

SAS has several ways to round a number to an integer. You can round a number up, round it down, or round it to the nearest integer. If your data contain both positive and negative values, you can also round numbers toward zero, or away from zero. The functions that

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Advanced Analytics

Waynette TubbsSeptember 30, 2011 0

Friday's Innovation Inspiration - SASS

I used to get an email with a joke in it every Friday from my former boss, he called it Friday's Funnies. Some were really funny. Some - not so much. Well, I've decided to start my own Friday treat - a new series - called Friday's Innovation Inspiration. I'll be using

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Rick WicklinSeptember 30, 2011 0

Matrices and mattresses

Birds migrate south in the fall. Squirrels gather nuts. Humans also have behavioral rituals in the autumn. I change the batteries in my smoke detectors, I switch my clocks back to daylight standard time, and I turn the mattress on my bed. The first two are relatively easy. There's even

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Advanced Analytics

Mike GillilandSeptember 29, 2011 0

When poor forecast accuracy is a good thing

Webinar October 4, 1:10 pm ET: What is Your Product Forecastability??? Thanks to Rich Gendon and the Chicago APICS chapter for hosting me last week at their professional development dinner meeting. I always enjoy evening speaking gigs, as they provide a chance to break out some of my nightclub-worthy material.

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Rick WicklinSeptember 29, 2011 0

A math puzzle solution

I previously wrote about an intriguing math puzzle that involves 5-digit numbers with certain properties. This post presents my solution in the SAS/IML language. It is easy to generate all 5-digit perfect squares, but the remainder of the problem involves looking at the digits of the squares. For this reason,

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September 28, 2011 0

PREMIER takes charge of the Credit CARD Act

The Obama Administration and subprime lenders agree on one thing: Borrowers with bad credit lack the clout - both financial and political - to rebuild their lives without help from somebody ... somewhere. Where they disagree - royally - is over how. The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act of

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerSeptember 28, 2011 0

Jumping into Windows 7 Jump Lists

Filed under "Little changes that you probably didn't notice". When Microsoft introduced Windows 7 to the desktop, one of the many usability features that they added were "Jump Lists". Jump Lists serve as a sort of shortcut to not just open an application, but "jump right in" to a particular

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Rick WicklinSeptember 28, 2011 0

What is the chance that a random matrix is singular?

A few sharp-eyed readers questioned the validity of a technique that I used to demonstrate two ways to solve linear systems of equations. I generated a random n x n matrix and then proceeded to invert it, seemingly without worrying about whether the matrix even has an inverse! I responded to the

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Analytics

Robert PowellSeptember 27, 2011 0

Thoughts on software procurement from a former state controller

Private sector vendors/suppliers seeking to conduct business with government often find frustration with the maze of policy and legislative hurdles encountered during the procurement process. As difficult as the experience may have been from the private sector perspective, take a moment to look at the other side of the procurement

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September 27, 2011 0

Top 10 sites for SAS programmers

With a combined 62 years of experience using SAS and JMP, consultants Kirk Paul Lafler and Charles Edwin Shipp have authored countless papers, articles, books - even puzzles - about analytics. Over the years, they've pretty much seen the world more than a few times during their travels to international,

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Rick WicklinSeptember 27, 2011 0

A math puzzle: 5-digit squares with certain properties

I was intrigued by a math puzzle posted to the SAS Discussion Forum (from New Scientist magazine). The problem is repeated below, but I have added numbers in brackets because I am going to comment on each clue: [1] I have written down three different 5-digit perfect squares, which [2]

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerSeptember 26, 2011 0

The default settings are not good enough

Today, I came across this article that discusses how software users rarely change the settings in the applications that they use. Users assume that the software vendor sets the default values as they are for a reason, and who are they to set them otherwise? I'm a software developer (and

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