I've known Jim Cox for a long time. He's the SAS R&D manager for SAS Text Miner, and a gifted singer. We almost never talk about work stuff, because Jim is waaaaay too smart for me. That's why I was so pleased to discover Jim's series of blog entries about
English
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Like any good SAS professional, I subscribe to the SAS Samples RSS feed. The other day I found this sample that shows how to create a PDF report about the contents of a SAS Information Map. It's a nice example: it shows how to use the INFOMAPS engine and ODS
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As Shane reveals on his blog, your SAS session is equipped to read data that are encoded for all types of machine architectures and locales. ASCII, EBCDIC, 32- or 64-bit, English, Japanese, Greek, Hebrew: the list goes on and on. SAS accomplishes this by using a feature called Cross-Environment Data
Susan and Lora share all of the details on the OpenMic blog. (You can also see it on the SAS Publishing Facebook page.) I was pleased to have reviewed the book for technical content before it was published. As usual, Susan and Lora did a great job; they know what
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Why does this SAS program produce an error? proc means data=sashelp.cars mean median min max; by origin; run; It's because SASHELP.CARS is a SAS data set, and SAS data sets observations are stored and processed sequentially, and a BY group operation requires that the observations are already grouped and sorted
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Was it the economy? the timing? the location? or the brilliant and good looking Forum panel? That will be for history (or you) to decide. What we do know is that is that the Institute of Business Forecasting’s Best Practices Conference in San Francisco, April 28-30, drew a large and
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SAS catalogs have been around for a long time. Not quite as long as the Sears or L.L. Bean catalogs, but SAS customers have used catalogs to store and retrieve content for many years. A SAS catalog is a special type of SAS file that acts as a container, like
Curt Monash posted a nice summary of the current and planned offerings that help to make SAS analytics more available "in the database" -- allowing you to analyze your data quickly without having to move it around so much. If you use SAS with Teradata, Netezza, or DB2, much of
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This is the topic of an 8-minute video tip from SAS Education. What's great about this tip: not only does it show you how to keep historical versions of reports and data that you create in your projects, but it also provides a nice example of cross-tab reporting in SAS
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My friend Tom Reilly of Automatic Forecasting Systems posted this comment on the INFORMS discussion group on LinkedIn: Some use all of the data and some withhold data to find the best forecasting model? Withholding is arbitrary as changing the withhold from x to y means a completely different model
I've just read that Sony plans to discontinue the manufacture of 3.5-inch floppy disks. [Update: a more complete tribute to the floppy disk is over on Geek News Central.] The announcement made me nostalgic for the days when we shipped The SAS System on floppies. I don't think we've done
Little SAS Book author Susan Slaughter attended SAS Global Forum this year, as she always does. She had to travel to Seattle this time to get her hands on an early copy of her own new book, The Little SAS Book for SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2, which she updated with
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I had the pleasure of attending Gongwei Chen’s SAS Global Forum 2010 presentation, Get Certified as an Advanced SAS® Programmer in Six Months or Less! As you might expect, Gongwei is a Certified Advanced Programmer. To become certified at the advanced level, a programmer must pass both the SAS Base
For a service organization like ours, there are few things more valuable, let me correct that, nothing is more valuable, than feedback from our users. We are really lucky in this regard; SAS users are not bashful about sharing their opinions when it comes to “their” software. We certainly benefited
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Dave Thomas interviews SAS CMO Jim Davis at SAS Global Forum 2010 in Seattle. Davis talks about the launch of SAS Social Media Analytics and the apparently awakening over analytics even in a tough economy. Web Links:YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZgSLLIkAgE SAS.com:http://www.sas.com/apps/webnet/SGF2010VideoBlog/index.html?videoID=isgf10episode12
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SAS CEO Jim Goodnight talks about SAS' new offerings in High Performance Computing and Social Network Analysis, price changes for SAS OnDemand for Education and this year's SAS Global Forum conference in Seattle. Web Links:YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBdv5ofvaGk SAS.com:http://www.sas.com/apps/webnet/SGF2010VideoBlog/index.html?videoID=isgf10episode11
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Jean Balent gave a quick 20-minute presentation of her ideas that may help programmers become more organized and therefore more productive. The presentation is a shortened version of her paper, How to become an organized SAS programmer. In fact, her tips may be useful in other areas of your career.
In one area of the Convention Center, writing on the wall is actually encouraged. The Innovation Wall, a giant semi-circular display in the Demo Area, shows a timeline of SAS innovations on one side with open space on the other for attendees to write about how they’ve innovated with SAS.
From agriculture to wholesale, 29 industries were represented at SAS Global Forum 2010. Which industry was the most well-represented? Here's a breakdown of the top ten by percentage of attendees: 1. Government (13%) 2. Education (12%) 3. Healthcare insurance (10%) 4. Pharma (9%) 5. Consulting and systems integration (8%) 6.
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The Spring 2010 issue of Foresight is now available. Here is Editor Len Tashman’s preview: What’s the connection between hindsight and foresight? That is the question Paul Goodwin asks in his Hot New Research column leading off this issue. The problem is that hindsight bias – the tendency to believe
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Social media is all the rage at this year’s SAS Global Forum. There’s a “Twitter Wall” outside the demo area featuring a steady stream of tweets about the conference. (The hashtag for this year’s event is #sgf10.) Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Jim Davis (@Davis_Jim) sent his second-ever
I first met SAS Global Forum’s 2011 co-chair, Debbie Buck, through my role as a SAS liaison to the South Central SAS Users Group. Over the years, I’ve gotten to know Debbie pretty well, and my admiration of her continues to grow. I’ve even forgiven her for the awful gift
Yesterday (Monday) was an incredibly busy day for me at SAS Global Forum. It began with a successful Technical Session where SAS R&D staffers showed off: the new features coming in SAS/STAT (with the 9.22 /nine-twenty-two/ release) SAS Enterprise Miner with the Rapid Predictive Modeler (hosted in SAS Enterprise Guide
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Dave Thomas reports from the SAS Social Media Analytics Press Launch Event held at SAS Global Forum in Seattle. Dave gets feedback from bloggers, journalists, influencers and analysts in attendance including Paul Greenberg, Wayne Sutton, Justin Levy, Katie Paine and more. Web Links:YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYozcF0BMAw SAS.com:http://www.sas.com/apps/webnet/SGF2010VideoBlog/index.html?videoID=isgf10episode7
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Dave Thomas and Waynette Tubbs review the highlights from the Opening Session of SAS Global Forum 2010 and talk about going to the SAS Social Media Tweetup. Web Links: YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYozcF0BMAw SAS.com:http://www.sas.com/apps/webnet/SGF2010VideoBlog/index.html?videoID=isgf10episode6
One of the events I look forward to every year is the unveiling of a year’s worth of SAS R&D’s magic. It occurs during the SAS Global Forum Technology Connection. Today’s show was all we could have hoped it would be! We heard from some SAS software, technology and statistics
SAS Vice President of Technical Support Annette Harris announced the features that will be added to SAS software and solutions as voted on by users through the SASware® Ballot. “Jim Goodnight always stresses the importance of listening to you, our users, and to be receptive to your ideas and suggestions,”
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Debbie Buck wants to see all of the folks who are attending their first SAS Global Forum here in Seattle, to return again next year. Buck, who will serve as the chair for SAS Global Forum 2011 in Las Vegas, led a “First-timers’ Session” before the main festivities of SAS
If you’re at SAS Global Forum 2010, you’re in good company. This year’s conference attracted more than 3,000 attendees, with 20 percent travelling to Seattle from outside the US. Here’s a quick breakdown of the top 10 countries represented outside of the US: Canada: 182 Denmark: 49 Netherlands: 42 Brazil:
Company: Santander Consumer Bank in Germany Title: Analytical Risk Expert Job responsibility: Developing risk scorecards Products: SAS Credit Scoring for Banking, SAS Enterprise Miner Thanks to her suggestions, bug reports and willingness to ask “What if?” Monika Nauroth helped SAS isolate problems and greatly improve usability and functionality in SAS