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Michael Smith 0
Thank You, PNWSUG, for 30 Great Years

More than 175 users attended the recent one-day conferences sponsored by the Pacific Northwest SAS Users Group (PNWSUG).  Conference chairs Sara Beck and Mark Thompson, supported by the PNWSUG Executive Committee, created another great learning experience for SAS users in Seattle (Sept 19) and Portland (Sept 21).    However, change is

Rick Wicklin 0
Modeling Finite Mixtures with the FMM Procedure

In my previous post, I blogged about how to sample from a finite mixture distribution. I showed how to simulate variables from populations that are composed of two or more subpopulations. Modeling a response variable as a mixture distribution is an active area of statistics, as judged by many talks

Waynette Tubbs 0
Unattention data miners!

Are you planning to attend WUSS 2011 or are you a data miner who will you be in the San Francisco Bay area on Saturday, October 15 and looking for an "Unusually," "Uninteresting" data mining Unconference? An unconference is an event where users suggest topics, get together and discuss them in

Rick Wicklin 0
The effect of holidays on US births

Last week I showed a graph of the number of US births for each day in 2002, which shows a strong day-of-the-week effect. The graph also shows that the number of births on a given day is affected by US holidays. This blog post looks closer at the holiday effect.

Rick Wicklin 0
Evaluate polynomials efficiently by using Horner's scheme

Polynomials are used often in data analysis. Low-order polynomials are used in regression to model the relationship between variables. Polynomials are used in numerical analysis for numerical integration and Taylor series approximations. It is therefore important to be able to evaluate polynomials in an efficient manner. My favorite evaluation technique

Chris Hemedinger 0
What's our sign?

Rick Wicklin and I are engaged in an arms race of birthday-related blog posts.  To recap: Rick analyzed national data about births in the USA and what time of year they are most likely to occur. I responded by analyzing the birthdays of my Facebook friends. Rick responded by analyzing

Waynette Tubbs 0
Posters anyone?

Contributed by Sara Jones, CMP, User and Customer Marketing at SAS So many papers, so little time. Looking at the SAS users group conference schedule and deciding what to attend and how to get the very most of your day can be overwhelming -  in a good way of course. So many

Chris Hemedinger 0
Running Windows PowerShell Scripts

Windows PowerShell is one of my favorite tools to use for gathering information from my PC and network, and also for automating processes.  If you are familiar with UNIX shells (such as Korn shell or its variants), you will probably be very comfortable with Windows PowerShell.  Just like its UNIX

Rick Wicklin 0
Storing and loading modules

You can extend the capability of the SAS/IML language by writing modules. A module is a user-defined function. You can define a module by using the START and FINISH statements. Many people, including myself, define modules at the top of the SAS/IML program in which they are used. You can

Waynette Tubbs 0
Touching beginning to #NESUG11

My first trip to Portland, Maine, gave me more than I had expected - it was a touching, heartwarming experience that was not what I thought I'd signed up for. Let me explain: While planning my flight and other travel arrangements, I realized that I would arrive in Portland early

Chris Hemedinger 0
Birthdays among friends

Earlier today, Rick posted interesting information about which time of year the most babies are born, at least in the USA. I don't have data nearly as extensive as what's available at the NCHS, but I do have a sample of birthday records to compare against Rick's findings.  My sample

Rick Wicklin 0
The most likely birthday in the US

Do you know someone who has a birthday in mid-September? Odds are that you do: the middle of September is when most US babies are born, according to data obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Web site (see Table 1-16). There's an easy way to remember this