Our new book, Exercises and Projects for The Little SAS® Book Fifth Edition, includes a variety of exercises to help people learn SAS programming. Rebecca Ottesen, Lora Delwiche and I designed this book so that it can be used either in a classroom setting or by individual readers working alone.
Today’s Medicaid environment is drastically different from that 5, 10 or 20 years ago. Medicaid enrollment has grown to monumental heights with recent CMS numbers (April 2015) at over 70 million. As enrollment rises, concerns about efficient management of care access, cost, quality, and effectiveness have become even more prominent.
This tip is from Heath Rushing, coauthor of Design and Analysis of Experiments by Douglas Montgomery: A Supplement for Using JMP®. After a recent design of experiments (DOE) course, a student asked about experiments with dependent factors. Throughout the two days of training, we spent considerable time designing experiments to
~ This article is co-authored by Biljana Belamaric Wilsey and Teresa Jade, both of whom are linguists in SAS' Text Analytics R&D. When I learned to program in Python, I was reminded that you have to tell the computer everything explicitly; it does not understand the human world of nuance
This SAS author tip is from Robert Virgile, author of “SAS Macro Language Magic: Discovering Advanced Techniques”. It actually came about when a reader posted a comment on one of Virgile’s blogs. Thank you to that reader for their comment! Technically, %INCLUDE is not part of macro language. Yes, it
Love them or hate them, value-added models (VAMs) have changed the way we look at education today. VAMs have reshaped our thinking about the effectiveness of programs, schools, educators and colleges that prepare them. While VAMs have been used in the social sciences for decades, we can credit a few
I remember when I first started in public child welfare 21 years ago and the word "outcomes" was introduced. At that time, we believed that if it felt good and children and families seemed happy that we were doing a good job - those were our outcomes. We were wrong.
Bill Benjamin’s bestseller, Exchanging Data between SAS and Microsoft Excel: Tips and Techniques to Transfer and Manage Data More Efficiently, was pipped at the post as he narrowly missed the top spot to Implementing CDISC Using SAS: An End-to-End Guide, at last month’s PharmaSUG 2015 meeting in Orlando -- by one
The final figures are in! This year there was a fierce battle for the top spot of the SAS Global Forum 2015 books bestseller list. In a nail biting finish, newcomer, Exchanging Data between SAS and Microsoft Excel: Tips and Techniques to Transfer and Manage Data More Efficiently, beat off
What prompted me to find a co-author and write a new edition of my original book on PROC TABULATE? It’s those inventive developers at SAS. They keep adding new features to make the product even better. There are too many new features and techniques in the book to name, but these are
This SAS tip is from Robert Virgile and his book “SAS Macro Language Magic: Discovering Advanced Techniques”. We hope you find this tip useful. You can also read an excerpt from Virgile’s book. When CALL SYMPUT creates a new macro variable, it places that variable in “the closest non-empty symbol
In 1988 President Ronald Reagan proclaimed May as National Foster Care Month as a way to recognize foster parents for opening their homes to and caring for children in need. This annual celebration has grown to generate awareness of foster care and a recognition of all involved. The children, foster
According to Time Magazine, the next Ebola outbreak will cost the World Bank in excess of $30 billion dollars. In 2014, America spent in excess of $1.16 million dollars to treat two victims of the dreaded disease. While Ebola and other microorganisms of the deadly variety are scary creatures there
Many of our authors often ask us where they can find real data that they can use without copyright or other confidentiality issues. Instructors too are always on the look-out for real-life data. Well, thanks to a new initiative supported by SAS, you can now access data from more than
I’m headed to Orlando, May 17- 20, for the annual PharmaSUG conference. PharmaSUG is the Pharmaceutical Industry SAS Users Group, consisting of professionals worldwide in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries who use SAS software in their work. I will be at the SAS Publications booth in the demo room and
We have all heard the old joke about the person who sidles up to a doctor at a party and describes in great detail a medical problem a "friend" is having in order to get free medical advice. It could just as easily be a person buttonholing an accountant for
Everyone loves a “mental health” day, one of those days when we get to relax and escape from the everyday worries and stresses of life. Imagine the challenge of dealing with true mental health issues everyday – especially as a child or youth where mental health issues can cause isolation,
“What we do to our children they will do to society.” Greek philosopher Pliny the Elder said that more than 2,000 years ago, and it’s just as true today. In 2013, more than 600,000 children in the US were confirmed victims of maltreatment in the home, according to U.S. Department
Tax fraud…5-7 years in prison. I thought I had it all figured out. The government wades through millions of returns and tries to issue refunds quickly. Sure, I filed over a thousand for my clients, but that’s just a blip on their radar. I never thought I’d get caught. But
Judging by the spike in media coverage of tax fraud, one might think accountants have suddenly been inspired by Breaking Bad re-runs, and turned en masse to lives of crime. Umm… no. But, there are two good reasons for all the attention. One reason is because of a new law
So, how did you first learn SAS programming? Originally, I was self-taught. Many years ago, I learned SAS on the job when a systems programmer quit and I took over supporting a mainframe performance software package that was written in SAS. I got a copy of the Base SAS users
March is national Social Work Month and this year the National Association of Social Workers celebrates its 60th anniversary of facilitating positive social changes and improving the lives of individuals and families. Social work is a profession that considers the needs of others every day. Individuals who dedicate themselves to
We had a lot of books at the ENAR 2015 Spring Meeting in Miami last week, but these were the top three bestsellers. Analysis of Observational Healthcare Data using SAS by Douglas E. Faries, Robert L. Obenchain, Josep Maria Haro, and Andrew C. Leon Survival Analysis Using SAS®: A Practical
Are you heading to the ENAR 2015 Spring Meeting in Miami this week? SAS author and Program Chair Mithat Gönen, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Associate Chair Brisa Sánchez, of the University of Michigan School of Public Health have created an outstanding scientific program this year. The sessions cover
For Parent’s Weekend this year, I needed to choose a restaurant for dinner in my son’s college town. Our extended family was attending the college football game and spending the weekend with our son. Before making my decision, I searched the internet for all the restaurants located within a reasonable
Public educators have increasingly been told to produce the “workforce of the future.” States are striving for alignment between what students learn and the jobs that ultimately will be available to them. This alignment is critical for students so they have the right skills and knowledge to excel at college
Many states are starting to crack down on the serious abuses of government programs, cutting down on outright fraud as well as reducing abuses and errors. I wanted to highlight one of those, now that they've been on this path for a few years. North Carolina, where SAS is headquartered,
According to a 2012 report, it was estimated that over the next five years the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will issue more than $20 billion in potentially fraudulent tax refunds. Figures like this do little to boost taxpayers’ confidence in our nation’s tax system. And tax fraud is not
This year the American Statistical Association Conference on Statistical Practice (CSP) has some weighty themes including Big Data Prediction and Analysis and all of its exciting applications. But just as important is the theme Communication and Impact. Everyone knows that if you have a great idea or discovery but you
Data simulation is a fundamental technique in statistical programming and research. My book Simulating Data with SAS is an accessible how-to book that describes the most useful algorithms and the best programming techniques for efficient data simulation in SAS. Here are five lessons you can learn by reading it: Learn strategies
