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.
The first time I voted (back in the 1980s), I was very surprised that I didn't have to show any kind of identification. I assumed it was because I lived in a small North Carolina town of 300 people where "everybody knew everybody" ... but they told me that nobody
Over the New Year's weekend, I was listening to the re-broadcast of Dick Clark's Top 100 music countdown from the 1980s ... it was the music from my high school and college years, when synthesizers and fun-rap music popped onto the scene. Another thing that started in the 1980s was
When I was growing up, our family had a bookcase containing a set of encyclopedias - it was where I went to obtain information and facts about various things, to satisfy my curiosity and impress my friends. Now that we have the Internet, Wikipedia has taken the place of encyclopedias
Most of us put on a few pounds over the holidays. It's difficult not to, with the holiday dinners, and then all the special desserts, snacks, and candies. But there might also be another source of extra calories that you hadn't thought about - fast-food! Let's have a look at
With the Christmas holiday approaching, I got to wondering what they call Santa in other countries. Of course, some countries don't celebrate Christmas - but most countries at least have some sort of "winter holiday," and most also have some tradition of gift-giving. So, I guess the better question might
I was recently reading the Wikipedia page about the U.S. presidents. There was a table with a lot of interesting data, but I thought it would be much easier to get a handle on the information if there was also a timeline graph. So, of course, I set out to
Donald Trump is pretty spry and energetic for an old guy - he's currently 71 years old, and seems to have more energy than I do (and I'm about 20 years his junior). But is he the oldest US president? Well, as with many questions ... it depends. Follow along
Some people might think it's an urban legend that SAS gives its employees free M&M's. Well, I'm here to tell you it's true! Every Wednesday at the Cary headquarters, a bucket of M&M's shows up in each of the break rooms. I'm only half-kidding in my suspicion that this is
I recently read an interesting article about petroleum coke (petcoke). A lot of it is produced in the US, and lately a lot of it is consumed (burned) in India ... contributing to air pollution there. The article mentioned some numbers in the text, but the data was really begging to
Since Trump became the US president, many people have noticed that he posts a lot of tweets. While some people choose to analyze and critique the content of those tweets, I was more curious about something a little less controversial - the timing and frequency. Follow along as I dig into
