While you're at SAS Global Forum (or any conference) in Las Vegas, you might have a bit of spare time to do some sightseeing. Therefore I've put together a list & map of interesting things you might want to experience! Below is a snapshot of my map - click it
The East Coast is having lots of snow and ice storms today, and SAS headquarters is officially closed. But I thought it would be a great day to get a few things done! And among those few things is "write a snow-related blog". Hope you enjoy it! After 21 years of
Do you have fun being a computer geek, and programmatically creating holiday images? If so, then this blog's for you! In this example, I demonstrate how to take simple x/y coordinates, and create map polygons shaped like holiday images, that can be plotted using SAS/Graph's Proc GMap. Once you learn the
When I was a kid, I always found it difficult to pick a Halloween costume. Now that I'm older, perhaps I can use computers & analytics to make my decision (and yours) easier! ... There are several different schools of thought on Halloween costumes - for example, some like to
It's that time of year again - time to choose what Halloween candy to buy for the trick-or-treaters! This is always a tough decision that has me angsting in the candy aisle. And if selecting the perfect candy wasn't enough pressure, my city (Cary, NC) was recently recognized as #1 on
Fun ideas for Children and Older Adults to do Together When my daughter was a year old my mother had a stroke. Since my mother was my child care and then she needed help, I stopped working so I could care for them both. My daughter got to spend most of
Update: This blog has been updated with the 2016 map. You can use SAS for just about anything - that includes finding a great fireworks show to watch during the US Independence Day holiday! Here's a fireworks-locator map I created using SAS (see technical details below). The red dots represent
As a kid, I was always intrigued with UFO sightings and I guess I'm still a little that way ... therefore how could I not jump at the opportunity to explore some UFO sightings data! I guess "UFO" doesn't necessarily imply that something is an alien space ship - just
Would you rather see a list of the world's 50 best roller coasters, or an interactive map? (... how about both!) Before we get started on this ride, here's a picture of my friend Jennifer's daughter, getting an early/young start on riding roller coasters (she's in the back, with her
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
Find out which state you'll live in, if the US state borders are redrawn so we have 50 states with equal population! (Don't worry! - This is just a fun/hypothetical "what if" blog!) To get you in the mood for this topic, here's a picture of one of the many
In this blog post, I put some classic rock song data under the SAS Analytics microscope, to see if I could get a better picture of exactly what is considered 'classic rock' these days... Michael Raithel recently pointed me to an interesting article/study about 'classic rock' music, and invited (or is
This blog post describes a neat example of some cool SAS capabilities, and also teaches you a little more about the state where SAS software is made... Here at the SAS headquarters in Cary, NC, the main TV news channel is WRAL TV5. And my favorite segment during the news is Scott
Every day of the year is an official 'national day' for something - here's a SAS chart to help you find which bizarre 'national day' falls on your birthday! I recently read an article that lists weird and unconventional national days. It was very interesting, but I found the data
I'm sure that most of you have seen the really cool interactive Baby Name Voyager, right? If not, go have a look and try it out (be sure to plug in your name, and the names in your family, and so on). Here's a screen-capture: That's a pretty cool application! ...
While I'm waiting for the next "data intense" event to show up in the news (so I can blog some SAS graphs about it), I thought I'd share a few fun SAS graphs in the spirit of the holiday season! Please don't hold me to too high of graphical "best practices"
Sometimes, I pick something fun to do with SAS/GRAPH so that I can learn and experiment with some of the more obscure functionality that I'm wanting to master. This is one of those situations. This fun graph allowed me to experiment with crosshatch patterns in maps, overlapping map areas and creating 'holes' in maps.
Usually when you hear the expression "That's gonna leave a mark!", it's a bad thing! ... But, in this case, it's actually good! Since many of you SAS Global Forum attendees and/or your family members might be visiting the Disney park, I thought it would be fun to use SAS/GRAPH®
