I enjoyed the Dataists' data-driven blog on the best numbers to choose in a Super Bowl betting pool. It reminded me of my recent investigation of which initials are most common. Because the Dataists' blog featured an R function that converts Arabic numerals into Roman numerals, the blog post also
The other day, someone asked me how to compute a matrix of pairwise differences for a vector of values. The person asking the question was using SQL to do the computation for 2,000 data points, and it was taking many hours to compute the pairwise differences. He asked if SAS/IML
I'm not supposed to be working on this blog post right now. I've stayed late at the office under the pretense of working on "the book." It's the book about creating custom tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide, and I've been working on it for quite a while. I enjoy writing
On Friday, I posted an article about using spatial statistics to detect whether a pattern of points is truly random. That day, one of my colleagues asked me whether there are any practical applications of detecting spatial randomness or non-randomness. "Oh, sure," I replied, and rattled off a list of
When you pass a matrix as an parameter (argument) to a SAS/IML module, the SAS/IML language does not create a copy of the matrix. That approach, known as "calling by value," is inefficient. It is well-known that languages that implement call-by-value semantics suffer performance penalties. In the SAS/IML language, matrices
Millions of Americans will be gathering around the television this Sunday to watch Super Bowl XLV. They'll gather in bars and private homes, prepare billions of calories worth of snacks, and root for their favorite teams. But if you're looking for an alternate form of entertainment, why not watch "New
Last week I generated two kinds of random point patterns: one from the uniform distribution on a two-dimensional rectangle, the other by jittering a regular grid by a small amount. My show choir director liked the second method (jittering) better because of the way it looks on stage: there are
One of my New Year's resolutions is to learn a new area of statistics. I'm off to a good start, because I recently investigated an issue which started me thinking about spatial statistics—a branch of statistics that I have never formally studied. During the investigation, I asked myself: Given an
Last week I presented a SAS Talks session for SAS programmers using SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3. It was well attended, which pleased me. You never know how it's going to go with a webinar. People register and sign in, but they are at their desks in their offices/cubicles/homes where distractions
SAS Global Forum, with its long standing history, continues to be the hub and melting pot of brain-stimulating concoctions and eureka moments for SAS users across the globe! This year the magic continues in Las Vegas, at Caesars Palace from April 4 – 7. This series, Snapshot of the Best
I've never met Sy Truong face-to-face. (That will be one of the top items on my SAS Global Forum 2011 to-dos.) I’ve talked with him on Twitter and enjoyed his blog so much that I listed it in an edition of the SAS Tech Report. I’ve even talked with him
As Cat Truxillo points out in her recent blog post, some SAS procedures require data to be in a "long" (as opposed to "wide") format. Cat uses a DATA step to convert the data from wide to long format. Although there is nothing wrong with this approach, I prefer to
I sing in the SAS-sponsored VocalMotion show choir. It's like an adult version of Glee, except we have more pregnancies and fewer slushie attacks. For many musical numbers, the choreographer arranges the 20 performers on stage in an orderly manner, such as four rows of five singers. But every once
I have recently had the great opportunity to be a part of a very special project called the North Carolina Bio-Preparedness Collaborative (NCB-Prepared) It is a public-private partnership that includes the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), North Carolina State University, and SAS, with support from the US
Last week I talked about how I volunteered to serve as a judge for a middle-school science fair. As I expected, I enjoyed the experience quite a bit, and I hope the students got something positive from me as well. I evaluated several really impressive projects at the 7th grade
A histogram displays the number of points that fall into a specified set of bins. This blog post shows how to efficiently compute a SAS/IML vector that contains those counts. I stress the word "efficiently" because, as is often the case, a SAS/IML programmer has a variety of ways to
Have you ever wanted to compute the exact value of a really big number such as 200! = 200*199*...*2*1? You can do it—if you're willing to put forth some programming effort. This blog post shows you how. Jiangtang Hu's recent blog discusses his quest to compute large factorials in many programming languages.
For all our SAS Global Forum connoisseurs, welcome to this series - Snapshot of the Best Papers of 2010. Despite running for more than three decades, there’s always something new and exciting cooking at SAS Global Forum. Through this series, I will be sharing some of those vibrant flavors from
Who doesn’t like bargains? I’m sure you will all agree that good quality at a next-to-nothing cost is irresistible. My recent Dollarama run had me ecstatic about the gloves that come in all colours, styles and sizes for just over a dollar. (Fact: big retail stores charge over 10 times
The other day I needed to check that a sequence of numerical values was in strictly increasing order. My first thought was to sort the values and compare the sorted and original values, but I quickly discarded that approach because it does not detect duplicate values in a montonic (nondecreasing)
It has become routine. For the 14th straight time – which is every year since its first publication in 1998 – SAS has made the Fortune “100 Best Companies to Work For” list. This includes eight appearances in the top ten, and in 2011, for the second year in a
There are over 400 hundred presentations to choose from at SAS Global Forum 2011. With all of these options, it pays to plan ahead. Why not start building your agenda now? The Personal Agenda Builder tool allows you to plan your conference schedule with point and click ease. It has
In a previous post, I described ways to create SAS/IML vectors that contain uniformly spaced values. The methods did not involve writing any loops. This post describes how to perform a similar operation: creating evenly spaced values on a two-dimensional grid. The DATA step solution is simple, but an efficient
I'm not even at work yet, but I've already learned that SAS has been ranked as the #1 workplace on the Fortune 100 list for 2011. SAS was also number 1 last year in 2010, and has been high on the list since its inception. I'm sure there will be
How many times have you taken a vacation and wished you had a little more time to check out the city? Have you ever extended your stay at a conference to enjoy a "mini-vacation" and peruse the local venues? Well, why not plan ahead and stimulate your mind as well?
Tomorrow I'll be taking a few hours away from work to build something important: the self-esteems of a handful of middle-school-aged children. I'm volunteering as a judge in a middle-school science fair. And even though I'm not a scientist ("computer science" isn't a category), I understand enough about physical science
The SASonality series is about connecting you with SAS users that you may not have taken time to really get to know. Today, I’m going to introduce you to someone that you’ve seen at the SAS regional users group conferences. As you’ll see after reading his interview, he’s created a
"What is the chance that two people in a room of 20 share initials?" This was the question posed to me by a colleague who had been taking notes at a meeting with 20 people. He recorded each person's initials next to their comments and, upon editing the notes, was
A colleague posted some data on his internal SAS blog about key trends in the US Mobile phone industry, as reported by comScore. He graciously shared the data so that I could create a graph that visualizes the trends. The plot visualizes trends in the data: the Android phone is
I think being greedy is a virtue – especially when you are trying to feed your intellectual curiosity! You can satiate that hunger at SAS Global Forum, which offers an unlimited buffet of thought-provoking ideas and discussions. To give you a glimpse of what to expect at Las Vegas this
