Angela recently posted about how important it is for technical experts to share, not hoard, their information. Late last year I completed a technical review of The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide 4.2. Before that I served as reviewer for The Little SAS Book, Fourth Edition (covers SAS 9.2).
Today my colleague Alison Bolen, Editor of sascom magazine, sent me this link to an interesting piece on NPR: "Can Economic Forecasting Predict The Future?" In a somewhat lighthearted take on the inability of our economists to predict the future -- or even precisely report the past for that matter
North Carolina law enforcement officials can now track individual criminal histories using a much more comprehensive collection of data, all managed and accessed via software provided by SAS. According to this recent news article, transitioning from the archaic text-screen-based system to the new web-based interface is "like switching between Pong
Thanks to all of you who tuned in live for my first episode of SAS Talks. If you missed it, don't despair! We recorded it for you and you can watch it any time that you want. Even while I was presenting the talk, we had a panel of SAS
Although I would like to flatter myself and believe that my readers rely solely on The BFD for all their business forecasting news and information, I realize this is not the case. While other sources may not be as honest, useful, or delightfully entertaining to young and old alike, they
2009 is almost over, and us SAS employees are busy compiling information for our managers to answer the question, "Just what did you do this year, anyway?" I'm asking the same question of you, Dear Reader. What did you get from this blog in 2009? Here are the most visited
There is an ancient t-shirt that I have from my first users group conference. It dates from 1995, and it shows a cat holding a floppy disk and the words WUSS (for Western Users of SAS Software) on it. Never mind that I can’t fit into it anymore; Nor can
My most-visited blog post of 2009 discusses how SAS programmers can use SAS Enterprise Guide effectively. Next Thursday (17Dec2009), I'll be discussing this topic live in the next installment of the SAS Talks series. It's a webinar presentation, where you can listen to me talk, watch me demonstrate the software,
The SAS Web Report Studio discussion forum has seen some action lately. Got a question (or some answers)? Don't be shy - join the conversation! Here are a few of the interesting topics: Prompts and Prompts Values How to ask multiple choice questions in your reports. (Hint: the answer is
I'm in the middle of restaging my primary desktop machine at work with Windows 7. It's exciting, but I still have the mundane task of resinstalling all of my essential applications so that I can work again. These apps include things like Notepad++, Chrome, Firefox, Paint.NET and more. Ninite.com offers
Constance Korol oversees the Institute of Business Forecasting & Planning group on LinkedIn. (No, she isn’t the meaner one I will be referring to, but she can swing a nasty rolling pin if you get out of line.) This week Constance posted a Wall Street Journal article “Follow the Tweets,”
I cannot blame SAS customers when they get confused about which SAS products do what. There are a lot of SAS products in play out there, and sometimes their given names don't help the cause. Take SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Enterprise Miner, for example. These are two very different
The SAS UK folks have put together a profile of SAS on BigAmbition.co.uk, a site meant to attract young people toward IT careers. The SAS profile includes a nice video that describes SAS as a company and what people can do with our software. While you're looking at videos, be
I’m going to put “An Operational Definition of ‘Demand’ – Part 3” on hold for a moment, to announce a new favorite article on forecasting, “Living in a world of low levels of predictability,” by Spyros Makridakis and Nassim Taleb (International Journal of Forecasting 25 (2009) 840-844. IJF is a
If you're accustomed to using "shell" commands from within your SAS programs (using the X command or SYSTASK statement, for example), you'll find that those statements won't work when you run your program from within SAS Enterprise Guide. When you try them, you will probably see one of the following
In the last post I argued that we don’t have a sure way to measure true (i.e. “unconstrained”) demand. While demand is commonly defined as “what the customer wants, and when they want it,” it is actually a nebulous concept. For a manufacturer, what a customer orders is not the
Sorry about not getting a post out last week, but I spent a good part of it cowering under my desk in fear. The SAS Security office issued a warning that there were wild coyotes roaming the campus, and I was having post-traumatic flashbacks to a painful encounter I once
It is definitely easier to force single selections for prompts used in SAS Stored Processes, however it isn't very usable when the majority of users need to select multiple values. For example, let us say we create a prompt for region (called 'region_prompt') and then use that in the query
If you want to save money when you register for SAS Global Forum 2010, check out the two new package offers. Both offers bundle popular registration options at a discount. Not only will they save you money, these special packages may also help you with getting conference approval. It’s an
If you've read this blog before, then you already know about the ODS statistical graphics that are available in SAS 9.2. We've been talking about this innovation at SAS for years. Now it's time to spread the news. Do your colleagues a favor: forward this post to them, or at
I've just returned from the Los Angeles Basin SAS Users Group (LABSUG), where I both presented a talk and learned from others. (The meeting was in Pasadena, but I did get a chance to tour the area, as you can see from my picture.) The title of my talk was
Last week I was a guest of Gaurav Verma on the SAS Applying Business Analytics Web Series, and presented “What Management Must Know About Forecasting.” One of the most important things you can bring to management’s attention is the benefit of making your demand forecastable. In forecasting we tend to
Yesterday I attended a virtual talk by Bob Rodriguez on his famous topic: ODS Statistical Graphics in SAS 9.2. You can learn lots of details by reading his paper. Bob's paper shows examples of the graphs you can get, how to control their appearance, and what SAS syntax to use.
The route that I use from my home in Raleigh to the SAS Cary headquarters takes me by two exits for the now-running NC State Fair. Last year’s total attendance was 765,067, and hopes are high that this year’s 142nd fair will be another success. So what does the State
I arrived at work this AM to see a link to this blog featured as part of the sasCommunity.org Tip of the Day. If you clicked on that link and landed here, welcome! I hope it was worth the click. Please, make yourself at home and browse through the 2
A customer posted on the discussion forum that, much his dismay, SAS Enterprise Guide sets the NOFMTERR option automatically when connecting to a SAS session. The FMTERR|NOFMTERR option specifies whether SAS should report an error when you attempt to reference a data column that has a SAS format applied, but
I was struggling with a calculated member that completes a distinctcount of members in a dimension, the performance was simply unacceptable. After attempting several other measures such as count(), processing changes on the source data, etc, I sent out a msg on Twitter asking for advice. Once again, why aren't
I found this excellent example of What Not To Do on graphjam.com. I was inspired to see if I could recreate something similar in SAS. You see the result here. Yes, the PIE3D statement is ready to do your bidding. If that's what you really want.
There are some things about forecasting that you may only discover by being a forecaster. Simply managing a forecasting process, or being a downstream consumer of the forecast, isn't always enough. If you have something to say to your management about forecasting, but would rather avoid the confrontation, maybe we
Along with hundreds of SAS users, Alison (of sas.com fame) is attending the MidWest SAS User Group meeting. She recently "live-blogged" the keynote presentation from Suzanne Gordon, our CIO. Suzanne does us proud every time. Check out what she had to say to the MWSUG attendees about her start at
