Get the right information, with visual impact, to the people who need it
Recently I posted an article on this blog on how to create bar charts with log response axes in response to a question by a user. This generated some feedback suggesting that bar charts should not be used with log response axes or with a baseline of anything other than
During the SAS Global Forum this past week, SAS offered several demos on mobile technology including: Michael Hecht, SAS, JMP iPad App Super Demo Chris Hemedinger hosted a Live Tech Talk on Tuesday that covered the new SAS Visual Analytics Explorer with demos on Microsoft Surface and iPad Apps Remember everyone is using mobile devices
Getting the axis values just right generally requires some work, and the values you want can change from case to case. One such example was discussed by Dan Heath in his post on custom axis values. Here Dan shows the usage of non uniform axis values using the VALUES option on
Unfortunately, my clone attempt didn't work like Chris Hemedinger's did. With all my papers, presentations, and demo hall duties, I realized yesterday that I certainly missed a lot. Included is my to-do list for items to watch and catch up on this weekend. Not really sure how I missed the
Creating bar charts with log response axis has come up a few times in the past few days. Before we look into how we could do this, it would be worth pointing out the considerable opinion in the blogosphere against use of log response axes for bar charts. See BizIntelGuru and
Whether you call it Business Intelligence, Business Analytics, Visual Analytics, etc. - getting information to the users when they need it and make it actionable requires more than just software. BI Content Developers can have a certification but to be successful they really need to have an understanding of human
One of the biggest hits of the demo hall at SAS Global Forum was the cute Koala bear swag from MetaCoda.com. Everyone wanted to stop by the booth and pick one up for their badge. Driving people to your booth is the first step, but then you must have cool
On Friday before the conference, I presented a 1 day "developer led" seminar on SG Procedures and GTL, along with a discussion of new features for SAS 9.3. The experience was very gratifying as all users were now using SAS 9.2, and some were using SAS 9.3. We had a lively
My friend and fellow blogger Steve Overton was tasked with presenting not one by two papers in a single one hour block. My original strategy was to take Instagram pictures of him running down the hall to get to the second session on time, but since both were in the
We already miss you and wish you could be here. WAIT! Don't cry in your office! There are so many ways to stay connected to the SAS Global Forum happenings this year. If you are not able to attend in person, here is a list of sites that you can
Recently, an interesting question was posed on the previous article on this blog by a reader. Can we use the new DiscreteAttrMap feature to create just a legend with specific entries, with no graph. The question was intriguing enough that I did not wait to ask - "Why?". I just got
This past Monday, Tricia and I released our 2nd book this year. "The 50 Keys to Learning SAS Stored Processes" provides a step-by-step approach to transitioning from SAS code into user driven (prompted) stored processes. Trimming down all the things you can do with SAS Stored Processes is next to
SAS Global Forum 2012 at Orlando, Florida is just round the corner and we are excited to see so many presentations offered by users on SG procedures and GTL. We'll add a few more on new SAS 9.3 features of SG procedures and GTL. These include cluster groups for discrete and interval axes, cluster
There are only four more days before the big kickoff! But for many of us (including me), the countdown to SAS Global Forum 2012 began last fall with the submission of paper ideas to the incredibly awesome section chair volunteers. I live for this event, the networking, training opportunities, customer
I don’t know about you … but I get hundreds of e-mails a day! Not only e-mail – but text messages, tweets, e-mail advertising, notices from blogs, rss feeds…coming to me at a numbingly fast pace day and night. It’s information overload. It’s also overwhelming. And, on a personal level –
PROC STP is a new procedure for SAS 9.3 Stored Processes. It's so new and different that I have not had the opportunity to use it yet in a customer engagement. When writing about it for the now released "The 50 Keys to Learning SAS Stored Processes" book, I had
Recently, a user asked about creating a Bar Chart of Value by Date, where the dates are displayed on a scaled interval axis. Consider this simulated data set of value by date and treatment shown below. This data set only has one value for each date and treatment combination. We can use the VBAR statement
A recent article in the SAS and R blog was about current winter temperatures in Albany, NY. The temperature data for the recent winter (Dec 2011 - Mar 2012) was plotted on a polar graph. Robert Allison posted an article on displaying the same data as a Polar Graph using SAS/GRAPH . Here is his
A user recently posted a question in the SAS communities forum about how to best display two measures by one classifier using a Bar-Line graph, where the scale of the two measures is vastly different. This got me thinking about various different ways to represent such data. Here are some of my thoughts,
The topic of cluster groups comes up often. By cluster group I am referring to the feature in bar charts where the group values are displayed side by side. With SAS 9.3, SG Procedures support stack or cluster grouping for Bar Charts and overlay or cluster grouping for all other
In my last blog post I revealed the WOW factor of SAS Visual Analytics. In summary: analyzing billions of rows of data, across vast numbers of columns, via 100+ correlation calculations in SECONDS (wow). What exactly does that mean? SAS Visual Analytics takes full advantage of SAS’ high-performance analytics technology.
ODS Graphics system was initially motivated by the need for high quality graphs for SAS Base, STAT, and other analytical procedures. Use of SG Procedures, ODS Graphics Designer and GTL by users too has initially focused on analytical graphs. But just like wheels on carryon bags that started for the specific needs of flight
I have previously spoken about using custom formats and from SAS Information Maps and how they can be used to categorize data differently for your end users. The problem for some is that this requires establishing the format on the SAS server, typically on lockdown by the SAS Administrator. Another
Creating a graph that looks nice, with readable, high resolution fonts is important and should be easy to do. With SG procedures and GTL, this is easy to do with a simple option, but not the default. Creating a high resolution (image) for a graph consumes higher system resources. When working on a graph,
The first quarter of the fiscal year is the time that banking industry analysts provide clients with their vision on the key challenges and solutions in banking for 2012. TowerGroup’s Nicole Sturgill recently wrote that “understanding consumer use of the financial institution’s delivery channels is a critical element” for institutions
When the data is classified by multiple class variables, you can certainly create graphs using BY variables. This results in separate graphs, one for each level of the BY variable crossings. Each graph is scaled by its own data subset, and comparisons across BY levels is harder. When comparisons need to be
When you are constantly taking the data tables and completing joins to begin working on your reports or analysis it might be time to consider creating permanent views. Then you can just add the view to the Enterprise Guide project rather than dealing with the joins in a Query Builder
After unwittingly getting involved recently in a code vs GUI discussion another pro GUI vote came in yesterday when presenting to a customer's internal user group. When creating and using prompts in SAS Enterprise Guide, it is a no-brainer to recommend leveraging the %_eg_WhereParam as it handles all the special
Most users of the ODS Graphics system have probably had the need to adjust the dimensions of their graph output at times. The ODS GRAPHICS statement makes this easy to do. This statement supports the WIDTH= and HEIGHT= options. If you set just one of these, the system will calculate
The Adverse Event Timeline graph posted earlier used the MARKERCHAR option of the SCATTER plot to draw the AE names. This option places a center-justified label at the marker position. There is no option in SAS 9.2 version to right-justify the label. Hence, we have to compute an offset in data
