These are a few of my favorite things. —Maria in The Sound of Music For my annual Christmas-themed post, I decided to forgo fractal Christmas trees and animated greeting cards and instead present a compilation of some of my favorite data visualization tips for advanced SAS users. Hopefully, this
Suppose you are creating a craft project for the Christmas holidays, and you want to choose a palette of Christmas colors to give it a cheery holiday appearance. You could use one of the many online collections of color palettes to choose a Christmas-themed palette. However, I didn't want to
In a previous article, I visualized seven Christmas-themed palettes of colors, as shown to the right. You can see that the palettes include many red, green, and golden colors. Clearly, the colors in the Christmas palettes are not a random sample from the space of RGB colors. Rather, they represent
In data visualization, colors can represent the values of a variable in a choropleth map, a heatmap, or a scatter plot. But how do you visualize a palette of colors from the RGB or hexadecimal values of the colors? One way is to use the HEATMAPDISC subroutine in SAS/IML, which
"O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches!" The idealized image of a Christmas tree is a perfectly straight conical tree with lush branches and no bare spots. Although this ideal exists only on Christmas cards, forest researchers are always trying to develop trees that approach the
Rockin' around the Christmas tree At the Christmas party hop. – Brenda Lee Last Christmas, I saw a fun blog post that used optimization methods to de-noise an image of a Christmas tree. Although there are specialized algorithms that remove random noise from an image, I am not going to
The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear! -Buddy in Elf In the Christmas movie Elf (2003), Jovie (played by Zooey Deschanel) must "spread Christmas cheer" to help Santa. She chooses to sing "Santa Claus is coming to town," and soon all of New
It might snow this weekend here at the SAS headquarters! This would be the first snow of the season for us, and it got me thinking about snow again (see some of my previous blog posts about snow). Apparently these thoughts have manifested themselves in my computer graphics work ...
This week I noticed that they've started building the lot where they sell Christmas trees near SAS (at the intersection of Maynard & Reedy Creek Rd). They put up a nice rustic wooden fence, and lights, and maybe even a fire pit to keep their workers warm. They sell some
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
Happy holidays to all my readers! My greeting-card to you is an image of a self-similar Christmas tree. The image (click to enlarge) was created in SAS by using two features that I blog about regularly: matrix computations and ODS statistical graphics. Self-similarity in Kronecker products I have previously shown
"Two weeks to go," Santa said to himself, with millions of toys stacked up on the shelves. Each year worry hit at the same time – "How do I get the right toy to the right child without losing my mind?" Though Old St. Nick didn't have a computer science degree, deep down
We want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who donated their leftover (and excess) Halloween candy this year, you outdid yourselves!! We tipped the scales right at 450 pounds of candy!
Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, Over the woodlands brown and bare, Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Silent, and soft, and slow Descends the snow. "Snow-flakes" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Happy holidays to all my readers! In my last post I showed
If you’ve worked hard to reduce added sugars in your eating plan, the looming holiday sugar fest can send shivers down your spine. It’s not visions of sugar plums causing concern; it’s the fear of turning into the blueberry girl from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!
I was reading through Deloitte University Press' 2015 Holiday Spending survey - the results were interesting, but their graph made you jump through mental hoops to understand the data. So of course I used SAS to create a simpler version of the graph, so you'll have more time for holiday shopping!
Santa Claus and his elves are gearing up for another holiday season, busy filling orders and wrapping gifts for all of the good little boys and girls. Since snowglobes are popular gifts this year, Santa Claus has dedicated an entire department to build and wrap the 32,768 snowglobe orders that
Hidely-hodely, everyone! As you might imagine, the size and variety of the gift inventory at the North Pole puts Wal-Mart to shame. And while we’ve been at this for hundreds of years, we still make too many of some things and not enough of others. No elf can forget the
You’d better watch YouTube, you’d better not cry You’d better not post, I’m telling you why Big data is coming to town He’s making many lists (and selling them too), he’s writing it twice (for redundancy’s sake), He’s gonna find out whose naughty or nice Big data is coming to town
We want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who donated their leftover (and excess) Halloween candy this year, you outdid yourselves!! We tipped the scales at just under 250 pounds of candy! So what happened to ALL that candy? Well, we are happy to report that we were able
Lo how a rose e'er blooming From tender stem hath sprung As I write this blog post, a radio station is playing Chrismas music. One of my favorite Christmas songs is the old German hymn that many of us know as "Lo, How a Rose E're Blooming." I was humming
The British spy agency GCHQ recently posted a grid-shading puzzle that the director sent out in his Christmas cards this year. The puzzle, shown here, is known as a nonogram and by various other names, including Paint by Numbers and FigurePic: Each cell is to be colored black or white,
With all the holiday treats and fixins’, it’s nice to find some healthy options in the mix. These two recipes are as much fun to make as they are to eat. Create them with your children, grandchildren or significant other and enjoy eating them without guilt. Either recipe will make
How does Santa keep track of everything on his big night? I can't confirm or deny that he uses SAS software -- but if he does, it would look a lot like this! ... A couple of years ago, I blogged about a prototype dashboard that I wrote for Santa. This
Just yesterday, Santa called my cell phone asking for a favor... Yes, Santa has my direct line, and I owe him (he once did me a solid, back in 1984, for Christmas, scoring me an awesome Optimus Prime Transformer). That's me there in the front - sporting plaid duds and
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, One year a fractal made thee! O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, A heat map can display thee! From Pascal's matrix we define! Reflect across, divide by nine. O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, Self-similar and so divine! Eventually I will run out of
As 2014 slowly winds down it’s time to gear up for the holiday shopping rush. As in recent years the Consumer Electronics Association reports tech gifts will again be high on everyone’s list this holiday shopping season. A new addition to the list this year are numerous Internet of Things
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, Last year a fractal made thee! O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, A heat map can display thee! O tree of green, adorned with lights! A trunk of brown, the rest is white. O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, A heat map can display
Each year my siblings choose names for a Christmas gift exchange. It is not unusual for a sibling to pick her own name, whereupon the name is replaced into the hat and a new name is drawn. In fact, that "glitch" in the drawing process was a motivation for me
'Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the world ... dot-matrix printers were humming as Santa's naughty/nice list was unfurled... Can you imagine what it must have been like years ago when Santa had to maintain his naughty/nice list by hand, with a feather quill pen?!? Or even these
