Okay…I don’t usually do the rah-rah SAS stuff, but it was a really great week here and I wanted to share. The Analytic Cheerleader is getting out her pom-poms and cheering for SAS! Since I’ve been a SAS employee for exactly 3 months, I thought it was a good time
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
There is nothing quite like third-party validation to complete the picture when telling a story. A quick peek at our Customer Success Stories page and any number of Analyst Reports tell versions of the SAS story as a great source of business solutions in ways that we could never do
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
In the latest news from the frontier of Internet technology, the NY Times presented an interesting article about the work that high tech providers are doing to ensure maximum system availability. Companies strive for the "5 nines," or 99.999% availability, although a more realistic number is a "4 nine," or
"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
As you’re making your New Year’s Resolutions or reconsidering some that you’ve already put on the list, be sure to think about including SAS Press. Here are our Top 10 Suggestions: Check out the latest SAS Press books. In 2010, we published 20 books. In 2011, we’re on schedule to
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
When your data are in rows, but you need them in columns, use the matrix transpose function or operator. The same advice applies to data in columns that you want to be in rows. For example, the vectors created by the DO function and the index creation operator are row
Interesting article in this quarters sascom magazine by Jeff Ma – the guy behind “bringing down the house” and the movie “21”. After explaining how he felt the power of analytics and statistics was not unlike believing in God, he shared 2 stories where that faith was put to the
One of the best things about writing for the sascom blog is the amazing number of people, both internally and externally, that have reached out to share their stories and perspective, and ask more questions. It’s important for us bloggers to remember that while we may not see published comments
A colleague related the following story: He was taking notes at a meeting that was attended by a fairly large group of people (about 20). As each person made a comment or presented information, he recorded the two-letter initials of the person who spoke. After the meeting was over, he
Last December I taught a SAS Programming 1: Essentials class at Statistics Canada (Statcan). My class could barely contain their mirth while I valiantly struggled to find the semicolon on the French keyboard. Far cry from my first move to Canada (which is a bilingual country) and my excitement about
Did you know that our tongue possesses an average of 10,000 taste buds to differentiate between the myriad flavors? Luckily for you, at SAS Global Forum we have a wonderful array of flavors to appease your every taste bud. There is something special for everyone in the new series that
SAS/IML software is often used for sampling and simulation studies. For simulating data from univariate distributions, the RANDSEED and RANDGEN subroutines suffice to sample from a wide range of distributions. (I use the terms "sampling from a distribution" and "simulating data from a distribution" interchangeably.) For multivariate simulations, the IMLMLIB
If I think back to the training, education and networking opportunities in my business intelligence and analytics career that have made the most difference, SAS user groups (SUG) stand out. As a new user to SAS many moons ago local, regional and international groups helped me develop skills that I
AUTOEXEC.SAS wasn't enough for you. Yes, it's a sure-fire way to run SAS statements (such as LIBNAME assignments or macro definitions) whenever you start your SAS session, but you found it has limitations when used in configurations with lots of users who connect with SAS Enterprise Guide. Limitations such as:
It is often useful to create a vector with elements that follow an arithmetic sequence. For example, {1, 2, 3, 4} and {10, 30, 50, 70} are vectors with evenly spaced values. This post describes several ways to create vectors such as these. The SAS/IML language has two ways to
Retail is an interesting industry. It has its own challenges and opportunities, but what happens in retail is worth watching for marketers in any industry because retailing is the essence of a market. The storefront / cash register / online shopping cart is literally the intersection of the “supply” curve
Computing probabilities can be tricky. And if you are a statistician and you get them wrong, you feel pretty foolish. That's why I like to run a quick simulation just to make sure that the numbers that I think are correct are, in fact, correct. My last post of 2010
Appetizers usually play a significant role in ensuring a good restaurant experience…right? A good appetizer whets your appetite and gets you psyched and excited for the main course! This series of blog posts aims to do just that…whet your appetite for what’s in store at SAS Global Forum. In the
I'm pleased to announce that I'll be presenting another SAS Talks session on January 27th, 2011 (this month!). This talk will focus on the cool stuff in SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3, especially for the SAS programmer. Here's some of what you'll learn about: Syntax suggestion and autocomplete for the SAS
If I say, social media analytics, and you say, What's that? I have some good links for you. First, you'll want to read this interview with Katie Paine, where she explains, among other things, the difference between social monitoring ,social measurement and social analytics. "Social analytics is where measurement and
Happy New Year to everyone! As we gear up to start 2011, I thought I would share a holiday story about Apple’s tablet device - the iPad! When it first appeared on the market last April, critics derided the device as being an Apple gimmick – it was, after all,
The Junk Chart blog discusses problems with a chart which (poorly) presents statistics on the prevalence of shark attacks by different species. Here is the same data presented by overlaying two bar charts by using the SGPLOT procedure. I think this approach works well because the number of deaths is
If I say, social media analytics, and you say, What's that? I have some good links for you. First, you'll want to read this interview with Katie Paine, where she explains, among other things, the difference between social monitoring ,social measurement and social analytics. "Social analytics is where measurement and
