John D. Cook shared a picture of "pretty squiggles" on his blog, as well as a prose description of the mathematics behind it. I'm more of a programmer than a mathematician, but I've attempted to transcribe his description into a SAS program. I used DATA step to generate the point
Netflix has made a big splash in the news with its use of big data. By analyzing millions of data points about the viewing habits of its customers, the movie delivery giant used the insight it gained to devise the "perfect show". One of the defining characteristics of the show,
When I travel to San Francisco in April for SAS Global Forum 2013, it will make my 12th time to attend the international SAS users group conference, and my 7th consecutive year. A lot of people assume that I automatically go every year, but the truth is that SAS employees
I've got a new trick that you can use to track progress in a long-running SAS program, while using SAS Enterprise Guide. I've previously written about the SYSECHO statement and how you can use it to update the Task Status window with custom messages. SYSECHO is a "global" statement in
Last year I published an example application for searching your SAS Enterprise Guide project files (EGP files). The example shows off some of the cool features of the automation API, and it's a useful tool. As neat of an example as that was, it had some limitations. It worked only
Sometimes I need to "disassemble" a SAS data set into a DATA step program. It's kind of like creating a "freeze-dried" version of the data that you can carry around and use anywhere, re-hydrating it in the SAS session where you next need it. Some example uses for this: Build
I'm now into my 20th year of working for SAS. This year in November I'll have my 20th "SAS-iversary" and thus mark the beginning of my third decade here. I've worked here since the Clinton administration. I've met SAS employees who were actually not yet born when I attended my
I'm always looking for ways to make my job sound more relevant to people who ask me, "so what does SAS do?" SAS does so much that I can't possibly list it all, so I need some umbrella terms that can capture the essence of it (and still keep the
Most people try to hide the evidence of their bad decisions. But this weekend I decided to share mine to social media. I hope that it's not a career-limiting move. Actually, I made quite a few good decisions as well, outnumbering the bad ones. Still, I had many missed opportunities,
I've bragged about how easy it is to install custom tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide. It's simple: you copy the .NET assembly (usually a single DLL file) into one of the designated folders in your SAS Enterprise Guide installation, and your task just shows up in the menu. Since I
