Last week I was a SAS consultant. Oh, not a real consultant, but for two hours in the Support and Demo room I stood under the "Analytics" sign and in front of rollshades about SAS/STAT, SAS/QC, and SAS/IML. Customers can walk up and ask any question they want. And ask
I recently returned from a five-day conference in Las Vegas. On the way there, I finally had time to read a classic statistical paper: Bayer and Diaconis (1992) describes how many shuffles are needed to randomize a deck of cards. Their famous result that it takes seven shuffles to randomize
This morning I delivered a talk to visiting high school students at the SAS campus. The topic: using SAS to analyze Twitter content. Being teenagers, high school students are well familiar with Twitter. But this batch of students was also very familiar with SAS, as they all have taken SAS
Contributed by Sy Truong, co-founder of Meta-Xceed. SAS Global Forum has always been a chance for developers and managers at SAS to shine, and this year in Las Vegas was no exception. There are a couple of trends and development directions that I found interesting on the demo floor in
Linking business analytics to economic value is a hard problem. Despite all the smarts that get poured into models, it's hard to tie them to financial measures such as profitability. And, because of that, it's hard to justify investment in analytics. Need headcount? Sorry, try again. Need tools? Sorry, can't
"Convergence after 23 iterations to (1.23, 4.56)." That's the message that I want to print at the end of a program. The problem, of course, is that when I write the program, I don't know how many iterations an algorithm requires nor the value to which an algorithm converges. How
Like many SAS users, Bill Roehl uses SAS in some very clever ways that aren’t necessarily work-related. Roehl is a Research Analyst at Capella University and an outspoken community journalist. When he isn’t working for Capella University, he is hard at work blogging about community news for Dakota County, Minnesota
At the beginning of 2011, I heard about the Dow Piano, which was created by CNNMoney.com. The Dow Piano visualizes the performance of the Dow Jones industrial average in 2010 with a line plot, but also adds an auditory component. As Bård Edlund, Art Director at CNNMoney.com, said, The daily
~Contributed by Becky Graebe, SAS Communications Manager~ If there was any doubt in the minds of SAS Global Forum attendees that the computing landscape has changed remarkably in recent years, Vice President of Platform R&D Paul Kent and Research Statistician Developer Oliver Schabenberger set that idea squarely off the grid
A big thank you to EVERYONE for your contribution to the success of SAS Global Forum 2011. You all came together – presenters, volunteers, mentors, first-timers, repeat attendees and SAS – to help make this year’s conference a “don't miss” event! Special thanks go out to Debbie Buck, this year’s
In a previous blog post about computing confidence intervals for rankings, I inadvertently used the VAR function in SAS/IML 9.22, without providing equivalent functionality for those readers who are running an earlier version of SAS/IML software. (Thanks to Eric for pointing this out.) If you are using a version of
Now that I’m finally adjusted to the three-hour time difference from my home, it’s time to head back to SAS World Headquaters in Cary. What a terrific conference this has been! In case you didn’t catch it all, or were unable to make it to Vegas this year, be sure
~Contributed by Becky Graebe, SAS Communications Manager~ Did you know that you could save and export one, some or all of your keyboard macros/abbreviations in one simple operation? sasCommunity.org users do, thanks to today’s Tip of the Day, submitted by Arthur Tabachneck (better known as Art297 on the site). The
In her paper presentation "Using SAS® Enterprise Guide® to Provide Water and Conserve Electricity for SAS® Global Forum Attendees" Cecelia Adair, Senior Operations Support Manager for the Las Vegas Valley Water District (LVVWD), explained how the LVVWD uses SAS® software to manage and maintain water and energy usage in Clark
Contributed by Bill Roehl, Data Geek at Capella University (@garciasn) Analysts love raw data and end-users love to see that same data displayed in beautiful charts and pictures with exciting color. Dr. Danni Bayn, a Research Analyst at Capella University in Minneapolis, provides a drop-in method for SAS users to
~Contributed by Elizabeth Ceranowski~ Yesterday, I posted about the 23 papers being presented by students at SAS Global Forum. I am happy to report that 14 students presented yesterday, and all of them did a wonderful job! In addition to presenting, the students have been meeting other users, which has
~Contributed by Philip Busby, Applications Developer at SAS (@Philihp)~ My mind was blown just now at Paul Gorrell's talk on numeric values within SAS. The nice thing that hooks new programmers to SAS is how easy it is to do so many things, but what I find really makes a
Critical Information: 8:30 - 11:30 PM tonight SAS Global Forum Attendees and guests ONLY Drink tickets given at the door Tonight, ultralounge and Las Vegas behemoth, PURE Nightclub opens its doors to SAS Global Forum 2011...and guess what? THERE'S NO LINE! (Ok, maybe a small line). Join us for what
JMP founder John Sall talks about the new, exciting features in JMP 9 and why he likes to attend SAS Global Forum.
Anna Brown interviews Stu Bradley, Director of Financial Crimes Practice with SAS about the many different industries that utilize fraud solutions.
~Contributed by Debbie Buck, SAS Global Forum Conference Chair~ Today is the last full day of SAS® Global Forum 2011. Every year, I’m amazed at how quickly the days go by. I hope you’re enjoying the conference as much as I am. I want to thank you for attending and
When comparing scores from different subjects, it is often useful to rank the subjects. A rank is the order of a subject when the associated score is listed in ascending order. I've written a few articles about the importance of including confidence intervals when you display rankings, but I haven't
~Contributed by Varsha Chawla, SAS~ What could a business analyst possibly like better than understanding the data in a database? Try understanding the metadata (data about data) and knowing how to access this in an ORACLE database. According to Carole Jesse, Senior SAS Analyst at Prime Therapeutics, databases have their
Contributed by Kirsten Hamstra, SAS Social Media Manager Prolific blogger and author of SAS for Dummies Chris Hemedinger knows maybe a little too much about his Facebook friends. Presenting his paper titled “Social Networking and SAS: Running PROCs on your Facebook Friends,” Chris shared basic techniques to analyze your friends
~Contributed by Elizabeth Ceranowski~ If you have ever visited SAS headquarters or if you work in Cary, you know that the speed limit on campus is 23 mph. This week the number 23 has taken on a new meaning. There are 23 papers being presented by students at SAS Global
Contributed by Karen Lee and Kim Darnofall, SAS Communications Thirty-five years ago, SAS changed the world of computing when it opened its doors for business in Raleigh, North Carolina. A lot has happened in 35 years, but one thing remains the same: SAS is still changing the world of computing,
~Contributed by Karen Lee, SAS Communications Director~ Open. In one word, that is how I would describe the communication environment at SAS Global Forum. Wide open. This is an amazing time for communication. For a long time, the only way attendees could find out what was happening at SAS Global
