In Base SAS you can use the DATASETS procedure to determine the SAS data sets in a library, and you can use the DELETE statement to delete data sets. Did you know that you can do the same operations from within the SAS/IML language? The following DATA step creates four
About a year ago (wow, has it been that long?), I posted an example program that lets you report on the contents of a SAS information map. Using my example, you can see the data items, filters, and folder structure within a given information map. Last week a reader posted
Readers' comments indicate that my previous blog article about computing the area under an ROC curve was helpful. Great! There is another common application of numerical integration: finding the area under a density estimation curve. This article provides an overview of density estimation and computes an empirical cumulative density function.
Many of you may be familiar with SAS Press author and consultant Don Henderson. Besides being the author of Building Web Applications with SAS/IntrNet: A Guide to the Application Dispatcher, Don is very active in the SAS user community--including being a frequent paper presenter and contributor to sascommunity.org. So, not
Contributed by Thornton May, IT Futurist On June 15, 2011 twenty plus analytic pioneers from twelve different vertical markets convened to explore the current state and future trajectory of enterprise analytics. Each participant in The SAS Power Series event brought with them intellect, energy, curiosity and a challenge. During the
I have recently discovered “mind mapping.” Mind mapping is not a new concept, but since I (re)learned it, I’ve found it to be an excellent tool for analyzing business problems and processes. I thought you might find it interesting too! Here’s an example: The other day, I was thinking about
This is Part 4 of my response to Charlie Huang's interesting article titled Top 10 most powerful functions for PROC SQL. As I did for eaerlier topics, I will examine one of the "powerful" SQL functions that Charlie mentions and show how to do the same computation in SAS/IML software.
Today marks the first day of summer and the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. While I can't join the summer solstice celebration at Stonehenge, I can pay homage to some of our sizzling sellers. Many of you are probably familiar with or use some of these
As far as numbers go, the number zero is rather mysterious for data. Is it something or is it nothing? What happens when you have missing data but enter 0? This topic triggered an intriguing discussion in my recent Programming 2: Data Manipulation Techniques class. In this post I’d like
We sometimes take it for granted, but the concept of the "SAS library" is just about one of the most awesome aspects of The SAS System. You can give your library a name (a library reference, or libref), tell the system how to get to your data (options on a
A reader commented to me that he wants to use the HISTOGRAM statement of the SGPLOT procedure to overlay two histograms on a single plot. He could do it, but unfortunately SAS was choosing a large bin width for one of the variables and a small bin width for the
The SAS office in New York City has one of the best views in the city. Sitting on the 47th floor of a skyscraper on 7th Avenue, the Executive Briefing Room overlooks Central Park and it has a highly distracting view – especially on such a nice sunny day. What
Recently Charlie Huang showed how to use the SAS/IML language to compute an exponentially weighted moving average of some financial data. In the commentary to his analysis, he said: I found that if a matrix or a vector is declared with specified size before the computation step, the program’s efficiency
I had the pleasure to be the host of the Risk and Finance Insight Session on the second day of The Premier Business Leadership Series, where we discussed the subject of enterprise risk management and financial stewardship. With global, political and financial upheaval becoming the norm (and during the conference
SAS Press has published 3 popular titles dedicated to demystifying PROC SQL. Today, I've selected Katherine Prairie's book The Essential PROC SQL Handbook for SAS Users to excerpt. One often cited highlight of Katherine's book is that it contains 300 examples of PROC SQL code. Katherine really knows SAS--she's been
In the world of technology, 2011 is unremarkable in some ways. As with every year, there are hot trends – hype, buzzwords and “must-have” technologies. Some might even assign analytics to the trending category this year. 2011 marks the 35th anniversary of the founding of SAS. For the past 35
SAS-based processes are critical to many organizations, but sometimes the trickiest part of your job falls into one or both of these activities: Getting stuff from the outside world "into" SAS. (Once it's in SAS, as many of you know, the world is your oyster.) Getting the output of your
Each Sunday, my local paper has a starburst image on the front page that proclaims "Up to $169 in Coupons!" (The value changes from week to week.) One day I looked at the image and thought, "Does the paper hire someone to count the coupons? Is this claim a good
Organizations have become good at finding answers to questions. Where they need to improve is in asking the right questions, according to Dries Van Nieuwenhuyse, General Manager Performance Management USG People Interservices NV. “IT people tend to be applied scientists whose job is to answer specific questions but in analytics,
The Premier Business Leadership Series focused largely – and rightly – on the business benefits of analytics. But driving those benefits requires a serious analysis of the business environment and what is going to deliver most value to the organization. Looking at what was done in the past won’t cut
At the Insight Session on Business Performance, Processes and Systems, George Ioannou, Professor of Operations Management at Athens University of Economics and Business said truth resides in data. But finding that data is like trying to find a pirates’ treasure buried on a desert island. It takes more than
Jim Davis, CMO at SAS reckons he has seen more change in business and economics in the past two or three years than in the previous 20. “To succeed in business you have to innovate, you have to do brand new things. Only problem is, that brings risks,” Jim said
The 2011 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) will be from July 31-August 3 in Miami Beach. Look for acquisitions editor and SAS Press conference mega-maven Shelley Sessoms at the SAS Publishing booth (#504). Shelley can talk with you about: New and forthcoming statistics-related books from SAS Press, including Statistical Analysis for
To re-use an old phrase: “May you live in interesting times.” And we certainly do. Today, Fareed Zakaria addressed these interesting times in his keynote address at The Premier Business Leadership Series, titled "A Roadmap Out of the Economic Crisis." Asked, “Which one of the following economic regions do you
A panel of risk experts gave their reaction to the publication of the fifth global risk management survey report undertaken by SAS and the Economist Intelligence Unit. The report suggests that while lessons have been learned, some institutions may be sliding into complacency. At any rate, risk appetites are growing
Last year Jim Goodnight shared the stage with Bill Green (the then CEO of Accenture) and talked about what it takes to build an analytical organization. This year Dr. Goodnight was with Pierre Nanterme, the current CEO of Accenture and they talked about what it means to lead an analytical
A colleague asked, "How can I enumerate the levels of a categorical classification variable in SAS/IML software?" The variable was a character variable with n observations, but he wanted the following: A "look-up table" that contains the k (unique) levels of the variable. A vector with n elements that contains
Sometime very recently, probably while you weren't looking, I changed jobs at SAS (yes, again). This time it's a bigger change for me, because I'm no longer part of the SAS R&D organization, where I've worked for nearly 14 years. Instead, I'm part of the team known internally as Professional
One of the astonishing benefits of my job is getting to travel to beautiful places around the world to meet with customers and prospective customers at The Premier Business Leadership Series conferences. This year is no exception, the historical city of Antwerp as our backdrop, where hundreds have gathered to
Now that the flurry of SAS Global Forum 2011 in Las Vegas has died down, you can take a little time to catch up on some of the reading you said you'd get to. For instance, have you worked your way through the proceedings? They are located here. And I
