This year, SAS users are flocking to the Western Users of SAS Software’s (WUSS) annual conference. I had a chance to catch up with Operations Chair MaryAnne DePesquo, and she shared her excitement about this year’s conference. This is the first year that WUSS will be hosted in Las Vegas
San Antonio plays host to this year’s South Central SAS Users Group (SCSUG) Educational Forum. Instead of the usual Sunday to Tuesday schedule, this year’s forum is being held on a Thursday (Oct. 31) and Friday (Nov. 1). But don’t worry – Halloween costumes aren’t being encouraged – the focus
Although she’s an analyst, Anca Tilea estimates that she spends 80% of her time cleaning data. Tilea and co-author Deanna Chyn shared seven of their favorite methods for checking, cleaning and restructuring data. Attendees at MWSUG 2013 got a bonus tip: Ask SAS peers in one of the SAS Support
I’m here at MWSUG 2013 soaking up the regional experience. After spending a couple of days in Columbus, I’m seeing first-hand how much users care about working with SAS software and about being part of the SAS community. It’s been a great conference so far—-presentations are packed! Walking through the
One of our readers asked if we could explain some of the thinking behind SAS’ recent decision to modify its support for US regional users groups. Over the past five to ten years, users have been telling SAS they need more targeted, more local and more immediate types of support, especially technical
Fall is rolling around, which means time to plan and attend at least SAS regional conferences. I’m heading to the Southeastern SAS User’s Group (SESUG) conference in beautiful St. Petersburg, Florida. While I do love the conference, they had me at St. Pete Beach!
With registration for the Midwest SAS Users Group well underway, I reached out to conference chair George Hurley to get the scoop on what makes MWSUG a can’t-miss event for SAS users. As a veteran MWSUG attendee, he’s an absolute expert in what makes it such a rewarding opportunity for
As the NorthEast SAS Users Group (NESUG) approaches, I sat down with NESUG volunteer and Executive Committee member Sue Douglass to discuss all the features of this year’s conference and why SAS users can’t wait to register. This year, they’re offering over 125 papers, expanded preconference training sessions and perennial
Professional development, popularity, untold fame: the benefits of submitting a paper to a SAS conference are certainly varied and widespread! In a recent SAS Users LinkedIn discussion started by David Corliss, avid SAS users and former presenters discussed their motivations for writing, researching and presenting papers. From the many wonderful
It's that time of year: too much shopping, endless parties and another round of budget cuts! Whether it's personal or business budgets, December finds many of us looking for ways to be good stewards of whatever resources we have available. One of our teams was recently asked ““If I want
Once you have submitted your abstract for SAS Global Forum, the wait is on! It can be very grueling, especially for first time presenters who don’t know the ropes yet. The key is not to second guess yourself or your idea. The wait can be long, weeks or even months,
We’ve already heard from more than 900 SAS users! Now we need to hear from you!
Apply now for the SAS Global Forum Junior Professional Award. Only 20 professionals will be selected. Congratulations to the SCSUG awardees!
Have you used the MEANS procedure to calculate frequencies: for several variables in the same step? without sorting the data first? without checking for missing values? using the TYPE statement and the CLASS statement together? At the recent SouthEastern SAS Users Group conference, Janet Willis shared what can go wrong
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.
'Develop an Analytic Center of Excellence (COE)' could be translated to – develop a culture of analytics in your organization such that every department and division sees value in analytics and pursues measurement for all strategic decisions.
Justin Smith and William “Gui” Zupko were looking at manufacturing data over time and wanted to know the minimum value in their dataset, and they wanted to pinpoint its exact location – the specific row and column. PROC ARIMA uses the ARIMA (auto-regressive integrated moving average) model or the ARMA
Editor's note: This post was updated on 8/5/16. “One time a fellow came up to me and said, ‘Tell me something unique about you,” said David Chapman, of Chapman Analytics, “I said, ‘I used SAS when SAS was free.” Needless to say, Chapman has been using SAS for a long
Congratulations to this year's NorthEast SAS Users Group Student Scholarship winners! Student scholarships make it possible for young professionals to learn new SAS skills, meet other SAS users, hear about innovative new research, and network with other professionals from around the world. Rachel Bray, University of Maryland College Park, is pursuing a
The North East SAS Users Group Conference (NESUG) will be held November 11-14, in Baltimore, Maryland. I’m psyched to be attending this year, and hope I’ll see you there.
You’ve just started a new job as SAS administrator, and there’s no documentation. How do you know which SAS products are installed? Where they are deployed? Where do the data and programs reside? Brian Varney tells us that SAS administrators often run into undocumented environments whenever they begin working in a new
Our SAS Users Group regional road trip is coming to an end. Final destination -Baltimore, MD. That will be the site of the Northeast SAS Users Group regional conference November 11-14. More than 500 users are expected to come together to share ideas, learn from experts, and increase their SAS
Never been to Houston? November 5-6 is perfect for your first trip. Make plans to see some of what the fourth-largest city in the US has to offer; there are some famous visitor destinations - and some not well-known. The South Central SAS Users group is holding its annual SAS Educational Forum in this
It's hard to get away from data these days, especially Big Data. The news is full of stories about how fast it's accumulating, about technologies for capturing and analyzing it, and about the creative ways organizations are using it. Pundits have even dubbed personal data the “new oil” that will
Sigurd Hermansen, from Westat, got his idea for breaking big data into small pieces after watching Jim Goodnight dissect a blade server to show the power high-performance analytics has processing for big data. Goodnight also demonstrated how Visual Analytics Explorer transfers the data from the servers to a workstation and
You may still believe that Hadoop is going to solve all of the world’s problems with big data. It won’t. Hadoop is a framework for storing large-scale data processing with both pros and cons for organizations. Christopher Stevens, from Greenplum, explained that Hadoop is rapidly becoming the go-to for big
Leanne Tang has learned a lot about encoding in her work of providing relevant user data and securing the database from accidental changes. There are hundreds of SAS users at the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Tang didn’t want to create thousands of accounts and passwords to allow those users to
Congratulations to all of these winners in the MWSUG Best Contibuted Papers! I hope you have all submitted your papers to the 2013 SAS Global Forum. The deadline for submissions ends soon! Here's a list that I know you have all been waiting for:
Leanne Tang had a problem. She has one giant database that houses data from all of the units at National Agricultural Statistics Service. She has hundreds of people who need access, but she wants individual users to have access only to the data that meets their needs. In Tang’s
Do you finish the Word Search in the Sunday paper? Several years ago, Robert Matthews decided to design a word search to help his kids in their school work. Matthews wanted to be able to put in the words of his choice and provide difficulty levels so that game users could
