This morning, as I was writing this blog post at the kitchen table, my 5-year old daughter ran into the room from watching “Sesame Street.” She excitedly announced, “Mommy, the letter of the day is R!” Too true. The recent NY Times story on the R programming language, which included
At SAS, our Windows client products (such as SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office) feature hundreds of Windows forms, or dialog windows, implemented with Microsoft .NET. Because we encourage customers to extend our products with their own custom tasks, I wanted to share some tips on how
On the twelfth day of Christmas, analytics gave to me… Twelfth graders passing, Eleven pipes for piping, Ten cards for keeping, Nine nurses nursing, Eight beers for tilting, Seven Days of Swimming, Six bets parlaying, FIIIIIIVE Lion Kings, Four fraud alerts, Three linchpins, Two perfect gloves, AND A TIGER WITH
Saw an interesting Tweet (a post on Twitter) from investor and writer Paul Kedrosky today: "geeks only: five best data visualization projects of the year http://is.gd/cwIk" The link takes you to the FlowingData blog (created by a PhD statistics student in NY), and a post on some amazing examples of
SAS recently appointed a Social Media Manager for the company. Check out Dave Thomas' recent interview here. The interview question that must have been edited out: "So, why did you decide to leave Wendy's?" Just like SAS ("what's a shoe company got to do with business analytics?"), I imagine that
Doug Henschen, Intelligent Enterprise Editor-in-Chief, in a recent blog post, provides his usual insightful analysis of the market as he cuts through the dizzying spin of IBM exec Ambuj Goyal. The general manager of IBM’s information management division questions the value of business analytics in an interview with Intelligent Enterprise.
Today's featured topic on support.sas.com teaches you how to use SAS to work with multiple languages and character sets in a single SAS session. The ability to switch locales and languages "on the fly" depends on the improved support for Unicode within SAS 9.2. Although it's a less heralded component
Today I discovered this thoughtful blog from AnnMaria (I found it by way of her Twitter tweet). I was pleased to see SAS Enterprise Guide in the "wonder" column. Here's the entry: The Dangers and Wonders of Statistics Using SAS.
Jason posted his thoughts on using a netbook with a thin layer of applications to do the stuff that he needs to do: surf the web and work his inbox. But don't underestimate these little machines. Over on the Dell Mini forum there is a discussion among folks who use
Who knew? It turns out that Santa gets more done using SAS. Maybe he even gets his mittens dirty with a little bit of DATA step: data good_kids; set world.allchildren (where=(BEHAVIOR <> "NAUGHTY")); run; title "Nice children"; proc print data=good_kids; run;
You know that game that people play with fortune cookie messages where you add a certain phrase to the end of the message to lend it a whole new meaning? Well, according to this announcement on our SAS support site, you'll be able to play that game with statements about
I'd love to believe that our loyal SAS customers never have to touch a statistical package from another company. Even as I work away in my comfy SAS bubble here in Cary, NC, I occasionally catch wind of stories about SAS customers who need to use data that comes from
From the "how far can we take this metaphor?" department... Want to whet your Thankgiving appetite? Read this blog post from R. L. Burns. The "meat and gravy" section is near the bottom of the post. (Personally, I consider myself the giblets.)
In the long-running television sitcom “Seinfeld,” Jerry’s neighbor (and nemesis) Newman often commented on his job as a U.S. postal worker. Making fun of the mail; and post office; was a recurring theme. In the show’s final season, one episode was even titled “The Junk Mail I was reminded of
In addition to writing code, SAS R&D developers are very accustomed to writing poems. I don't mean rhyming poetry like sonnets (though we do hear the occasional randy limerick). When a developer wants to make a code change in a SAS product, he or she is required to complete a
I saw an article this morning about the "world's most stupid bug" found in the firmware of a G1 phone. This flaw makes the phone interpret certain keywords in your text messages as system commands (among them: "reboot" to cause a system reboot). It reminds me of that quirky villian
Have you ever glanced through the obituaries and felt stunned to recognize an old friend? That's how it felt when I saw this announcement about Windows 3.11. One of my first assignments when I joined SAS in 1993 was to write Changes and Enhancements to the SAS System Release 6.10:
Tired of all the depressing news about the economy? Me too. That’s why it was oh so refreshing to hear some good news this past week. I got a firsthand look into how SAS is helping companies weather -- and in some cases, thrive – in our current "challenging" economy.
I see some donors looking at me. At least, that's how I read the last paragraph of this piece about SAS in the local Raleigh newspaper today: WWF, a global conservation group, uses SAS software to determine which potential donors to contact, and how frequently. One recent campaign boosted WWF's
I’ve read - and heard - that SAS spoils its employees. I’ve been at SAS for six months, and it’s true. A great example is the training. Earlier this week, I was invited to attend a SAS® Hands-On Workshop. The workshop is actually designed for customers, but open to everyone.
My family and I attended the North Carolina State Fair on Tuesday (weather was beautiful), and noticed two differences from previous years: Everything was more expensive -- getting in, riding the rides, and especially the food. It was easier to get around, because it wasn't so crowded. We didn't have
Recently our support site has raised awareness that SAS Enterprise Guide 2.0 (and related releases 2.05 and 2.1) will "expire" at the end of this year. If we wanted to learn how many customers are still using this release of software, this was an effective way to do it. We've
As I have been at SAS for a while now, well 10 years, I started to reflect on my time with SAS. I went from being a data mining systems engineer (SE), to an analytical strategist, to now being the Global Industry Marketing Manager for Education. I started in the
Like millions of Americans, I watched the vice presidential debate on television last night. I also watched it on Twitter -- which is to say that while watching the debate, I watched the real-time responses of hundreds of Twitter users. Twitter users, as you may know, have up to 140
Despite my evangelization efforts, this is still one of the best kept secrets about SAS Enterprise Guide: you can create your own tasks. (These also work within the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office.) So I'm taking the evangelization to a new level: I've been writing a book on the topic.
I know it's difficult to keep track of all of the lists that feature Jim Goodnight. But I thought it was especially interesting when I saw him on someone's "bucket list". I'm not sure if the list in priority order. Dr. Goodnight falls just below Thomas Friedman, but ahead of
Jerry Williams is a Project Manager for Environmental Sustainability at SAS. What are you working on right now? There is so much going on…. No two days are ever quite the same. Some of my priority projects include: Balancing expectations of employees so passionate about stewardship while giving fair consideration
For the past couple of school terms I've had the privilege to speak to high school students about SAS. I first blogged about this back in March of 2007. The title of my presentation is "The Many Applications of SAS", where "applications" is an overloaded word. We talk about the
The SAS support site has a new example of how to create a Top N report using SAS. The Top N report is pervasive in our society. From the Billboard Top 100 to the New York Times Best Sellers list to the Forbes list of the 100 Richest Americans, the
Yesterday I posted an entry about SAS nerds, but some experts have put it another way: that SAS users are "fanatical" about SAS Business Intelligence solutions. Any way you say it, we've got folks who are passionate about SAS.
