Whether you are a SAS code creator, a blogger, a technical writer, an editor-in-chief, an executive, a secretary, a developer or programmer in any programming language or simply someone who uses computer or hand-held device for writing, you need to read this blog post – your life is about to
The full text of Fermat's statement, written in Latin, reads "Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadrato-quadratum in duos quadrato-quadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet." The English translation is:
There is a well-known Russian saying that goes “Если нельзя, но очень хочется, то можно.” The English translation of it can span anywhere from “If you can’t, but want it badly, then you can” to “If you shouldn’t, but want it badly, then you should” to “If you may not,
Small matters matter. Imagine saving (or spending wisely) just 1 second of your time every hour. One measly second! During your lifespan you would save or spend wisely (1 sec-an-hour * 24 hours-a-day * 365 days-a-year * 100 years) / (3600 seconds-an-hour * 24 hours-a-day) = 10 days, a whole
The title of this post borrows from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 comedy “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” It stars the great Peter Sellers as the titular character as well as George C. Scott and Slim Pickens. The black and white film is strange
"Where do you go to get help with SAS?" It's a question I've asked users more times than I can remember. Some will tell me they take a SAS class or call SAS Technical Support, but the most common answer is "colleagues." There's no doubt fellow users are a great resource, but if you're only relying on colleagues at your
Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen, has excellent ideas on organizing your information so it is effective and interesting. One tip is “Start with the End in Mind” – what is the purpose of your presentation? What do you want the audience to walk away knowing?
Windows 8 was officially released Friday October 26. This was Microsoft’s first operating system release since the introduction of Apple’s iPad and the subsequent surge in popularity of tablets. To align their OS with the new computing devices, Windows 8 has two interfaces to allow access from traditional desktops and laptops and
Kirk Paul Lafler, Software Intelligence Corporation, has written four SAS books and more than 500 peer-reviewed papers - 19 of which were awarded Best Contributed Papers or Poster, so I’m going to believe him when he says that he’s figured out a thing or two about tuning SAS systems.
Many of you know Mike Zdeb. He's a long-time SAS user and frequent presenter at SAS conferences. Zdeb is also a reviewer of many SAS Press books and author of his own SAS book, Maps Made Easy Using SAS. Zdeb contacted me after he read the May SAS Tech Report
Can you actually get something for nothing? With PROC SQL’s subquery and remerging features, yes, you can. Often there is a need to add group descriptive statistics such as group counts, minimum and maximum values for further by-group processing. Instead of first creating the group count, minimum or maximum values
I am part of a 'virtual team from SAS Technical Support' who provide the suggestions for the Tips & Techiques section for the SAS Tech Report each month. A couple of days ago, Bill Gibson, Chief Technology Officer from SAS Australia, sent us an email saying that like him, many
Now, we all know by now that I'm not a programmer (that makes me very sad sometimes and may frustrate some of you at times), but I know a good paper and presentation when I see one. Christopher Bost knows how to teach a topic. I went to his Tuesday
Disasters happen every day. Often times they occur at inconvenient hours and in remote locations. So it’s important to have a plan - before the emergency - to get qualified personnel to those locations in the most efficient way. Pilots are an example of qualified personnel who could act as
Today, everyone from chief marketing officers to the senior vice president of sales to bloggers want to know more about the behavior of the readers and consumers who are clicking on Web pages, Internet articles and blogs. Clickstream data is a valuable source of information about the products, services and information that resonates with
As many of you know, I'm also the Editor of the SAS Tech Report. For those who don't know what that is, the SAS Tech Report is a free newsletter published once a month and sent straight to your email inbox. I gather SAS papers, tips and practical information about
In a production environment, where dozens of SAS programs are run in sequence, often monthly or quarterly, and where logs can span thousands of lines, it’s easy to overlook the small stuff that can cause data hangovers. Recognize any of these? A temporary data set finds its way into subsequent
“I really wish someone had shown me this function in SAS sooner, because it’s saved me a ton of time and effort,” said Brandi Rhoads as she opened her presentation at the Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) conference in San Francisco.
Most SUG presentations are written in PowerPoint – they may even be written in Word first, and then fancied up a bit in PowerPoint – but they are rarely written in SAS. But Louise Hadden, from Abt Associates Inc, had a need to produce a lot of PDF presentations. She
Metadata is data about data. For the purposes of his NESUG 2011 presentation, Frank DiIorio defined metadata more precisely as data about data and data that describes workflow objects and processes. DiIorio wrote his paper because organizations are challenged more and more today to do more with less. Metadata can
Kathleen Harkins, Carolyn Maass and Mary Anne Rutkowski, from Merck Sharp and Dohme, collaborated to write T.I.P.S: Techniques and information for programming in SAS® for NESUG 2011. These three women are highly experienced programmers: Harkins has more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and aerospace industries; Maass has
~Contributed by Philip Busby, Applications Developer at SAS (@Philihp)~ My mind was blown just now at Paul Gorrell's talk on numeric values within SAS. The nice thing that hooks new programmers to SAS is how easy it is to do so many things, but what I find really makes a
Contributed by Kirsten Hamstra, SAS Social Media Manager Prolific blogger and author of SAS for Dummies Chris Hemedinger knows maybe a little too much about his Facebook friends. Presenting his paper titled “Social Networking and SAS: Running PROCs on your Facebook Friends,” Chris shared basic techniques to analyze your friends
Jean Balent gave a quick 20-minute presentation of her ideas that may help programmers become more organized and therefore more productive. The presentation is a shortened version of her paper, How to become an organized SAS programmer. In fact, her tips may be useful in other areas of your career.
