Robert has worked at SAS for over a quarter century, and his specialty is customizing graphs and maps - adding those little extra touches that help them answer your questions at a glance. His educational background is in Computer Science, and he holds a BS, MS, and PhD from NC State University.
I recently read an article that claims 35% of men, and 40% of women in the US are now obese. Yikes! I wondered when this happened, and whether it had been a gradual or sudden change. If I only had some graphs ... which the article didn't provide. I did some
With recent advances in quadcopters, or drones, they have become pretty capable and fun flying machines. And just about anybody can afford the entry-level models. They've recently become prevalent enough that the government has started coming up with rules, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) started requiring owners to register drones that
For the first time in 4.5 years, we had a day with zero sunspots - I think this special occasion calls for some sunspot graphs! But before we get started, here's one of the many pictures my friend Kirk took of the sun down in Marco Island, Florida. Spots or no
When using visual analytics, it's important to realize that WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) is not always true. By recognizing a few optical illusions and tricks, you might become a better data analyst ... and have some fun along the way. Let's start with the Koffka Rings
Teacher salaries have been a hotly debated issue in our state for the past few years. In this blog post, I examine a graph that recently appeared in our local news, point out some deficiencies, and create an alternate graph. But before we get started, here's a picture of my
The US has almost 400 national parks, and has been keeping attendance data for about 100 years. With a holiday weekend coming up, I thought this would be a good time to crunch those numbers, and see how each park compares to all the others... I first saw the tip of
Do you need help picking a summer vacation destination - one that's not just great, but surreal? If so, this blog's for you! It's that time of the year again - I've got gobs of vacation time saved up, but I was drawing a blank on where to go... So I turned
How bad was the recent recession on the Las Vegas housing market, and what lingering side effects are still being felt? If you don't know squat about real estate housing markets, then this blog post is for you! It takes a simple graphical look at some data that helps explain
In this blog post I explore some of the open data police incident reports for Raleigh and Cary, while showing you the easy way to handle various types of CSV files. In recent years, many cities have set up open data websites, to share various kinds of data about their city.
I was sad to hear that one of my favorite singers, Prince, died last week. This blog post describes a graph I created to show his legacy. Prince was at the height of his popularity when I was in high school and college, which were the formative years for much of
