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Sian RobertsFebruary 24, 2017 0

2 Easy Steps to Write a Great Book Outline

Editor's note: This series of blogs addresses the questions we are most frequently asked at SAS Press! It worth spending some time on this. Arguably, this is one of the most important parts of the book. The table of contents and outline provide the blue print of your book –

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Robert AllisonFebruary 23, 2017 0

How to add roads to your SAS maps

Have you been using the SAS/Graph Gmap procedure to plot your data on maps for years, but never knew you could add roads to your maps?!? Follow along in this blog post, and I'll teach you how... But before we get started, here's a picture of a nice aerial view

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Government

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Sian RobertsFebruary 21, 2017 0

7 Simple Steps from Proposal to Print: Development of a SAS Press Book

Editor's note: This series of blogs addresses the questions we are most frequently asked at SAS Press! In our last post about how to write a good outline, we discussed the importance of developing an outline for your proposed SAS Press book and gave some tips on how to do

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Ron CodyFebruary 21, 2017 0

The Other 27 SAS Numeric Missing Values

What?!?  You mean a period (.) isn't the only SAS numeric missing value? Well, there are 27 others: .A .B, to .Z and ._ (period underscore). Your first question might be: "Why would you need more than one missing value?"  One situation where multiple missing values are useful involves survey data. Suppose

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Robert AllisonFebruary 16, 2017 0

Data wrangling - down the rabbit hole, and back again!

Are your friends passing around clever memes (supposedly) featuring something your favorite actor said, or sharing news articles that you think might be "fake news"? If there's even a hint of data analyst in you, then you probably check the actual data, and confirm or disprove the supposed facts yourself. I

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Government

Learn SAS | SAS Events

Stacey SyphusFebruary 14, 2017 0

Learn about SAS Studio, SAS Enterprise Guide and (drumroll) SAS Viya at SAS Global Forum 2017!

When mentioning to friends that I’m going to Orlando for SAS Global Forum 2107, they asked if I would be taking my kids. Clearly my friends have not attended a SAS Global Forum before as there have been years where I never even left the hotel! My kids would NOT enjoy it… but,

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Robert AllisonFebruary 13, 2017 0

Purging inactive voter registrations in North Carolina

After the recent presidential election, I was updating my graphs of the voter registration data and noticed that the number of registered voters decreased after the election. At first I thought that was odd, but then I realized that maybe inactive voters were being purged. I wanted to find out

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Government

Advanced Analytics | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinFebruary 13, 2017 0

An easy way to run thousands of regressions in SAS

A common question on SAS discussion forums is how to repeat an analysis multiple times. Most programmers know that the most efficient way to analyze one model across many subsets of the data (perhaps each country or each state) is to sort the data and use a BY statement to

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanFebruary 10, 2017 0

Truncating vs rounding SAS time values

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

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Robert AllisonFebruary 9, 2017 0

Visualizing 100 years of US presidential pardons

A topic that's been in the news a lot lately is the presidential power to grant pardons, commutations, and such. But all the articles I've seen just quoted numeric totals - I haven't seen a graph of the data anywhere! So I set out to find the data and graph

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Robert AllisonFebruary 7, 2017 0

Using Chinese characters as labels on SAS Maps

Doing business in a global economy, have you ever found yourself wanting to show Chinese (or Korean, or Japanese) labels on a map? If so, then this blog is for you! Before we get started, here is a photo of some Chinese characters to get you into the mood. This

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Sanjay MatangeFebruary 3, 2017 0

The importance of proximity in graphing

Back in 2013, I wrote a paper for the SAS Global Forum, reviewing the attributes that go towards making a good graph.  In this paper, I covered many recommendations from industry thought leaders that can help enhance the effectiveness of graphs to deliver the intended information. One of the aspects that

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Banking | Health Care | Life Sciences

Advanced Analytics | Analytics | Learn SAS

Jeff ThompsonJanuary 24, 2017 0

Step into the wonderful world of SAS Enterprise Miner

Editor's note (10/25/17): You can practice what you learned in class with 15 hours of Free virtual lab time when you attend the in-person or Live Web Applied Analytics Using SAS Enterprise Miner class. Register now. Are you interested in taking an advanced course on the machine learning topic of Neural Networks? Does text

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Learn SAS | SAS Events

Mark StevensJanuary 23, 2017 0

Kick off your SAS Global Forum journey with a SAS Certification

We are a few months away from SAS Global Forum in Orlando. You might think that the conference kicks off Sunday night at opening session, but there are plenty of weekend activities before then and I’d like to highlight one of them: SAS certification exam sessions. Isn’t now a great

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJanuary 9, 2017 0

ODS OUTPUT: Store any statistic created by any SAS procedure

In the beginning, SAS created procedures and output. The output was formless and void. Then SAS said, "Let there be ODS," and there was ODS. Customers saw that ODS was good, and SAS separated the computation from the display and management of output. The preceding paragraph oversimplifies the SAS Output

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BrennaJanuary 6, 2017 0

11 new SAS Press titles for 2017

Whether your resolution is to get SAS certified or to become a more advanced SAS programmer, we’ve got you covered with these new titles and upcoming SAS Press books, many of which will be making their bookshelf debut at SAS® Global Forum 2017 in Orlando, FL! Want to be notified when a new book

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Ron CodyJanuary 3, 2017 0

Character to Numeric Conversion in SAS

How many of you have been given a SAS data set with variables such as Age, Height, and Weight and some or all of them were stored as character values instead of numeric?  Probably EVERYONE! Yes, we all know how to do the old "swap and drop" (rename and convert), but

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

SAS JediDecember 28, 2016 0

SAS Jedi Christmas - SAS 9.4 M4 DS2 Do Loop Upgrade

This SAS Jedi is very excited about the SAS 9.4 M4 release, which brought many wonderful gifts just in time for Christmas. So in the interest of extending the Christmas spirit, I'm going to blog about some of my favorites! I've long loved the SAS DO statement variant which allows

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Ron CodyDecember 27, 2016 0

SAS Temporary Arrays, Not Just for Experts

SAS temporary arrays are an underutilized jewel in the SAS toolbox. I find that many beginning to intermediate SAS programmers are not familiar with temporary arrays. The good news is that there is nothing complicated about them and they are very useful. First of all, what is a temporary array?

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Analytics | Learn SAS

Chris HemedingerDecember 22, 2016 0

Learning SAS programming for R users

TL; DR Free training from SAS: "SAS Programming for R Users." Check the available Live Web offerings and register for one that fits your schedule. Or use the free e-Learning version and learn at your own pace. The complete course materials are on the SAS Software GitHub space and you

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Learn SAS

BrennaDecember 21, 2016 0

5 Benefits of writing a book with SAS Press

Editor's note: This series of blogs addresses the questions we are most frequently asked at SAS Press! Do you have a great book idea already in mind, or think you might want to write about an analytics or industry topic? Consider writing a SAS Press book or a SAS &

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Leo SadovyDecember 19, 2016 0

SAS Certification for the Non-Practitioner

Let me make this clear right from the start: I needed to answer 44 of the 62 exam questions correctly to earn my BASE SAS Programmer certification, and I got exactly 44 right.  No margin of error.  I never thought I’d be proud of a 70%, but I’m more than

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Rick WicklinDecember 19, 2016 0

Solve linear programming problems in SAS

In some applications, you need to optimize a linear objective function of many variables, subject to linear constraints. Solving this problem is called linear programming or linear optimization. This article shows two ways to solve linear programming problems in SAS: You can use the OPTMODEL procedure in SAS/OR software or

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanDecember 15, 2016 0

Truncating decimal numbers in SAS without rounding

Imagine making $50K a day out of thin air. Did you know that NASDAQ routinely processes around 10,000,000 trades a day? What if instead of rounding cents for each transaction, market makers truncated fractions of cents in the amount they owe you? Under the assumption that each transaction, on average,

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Art CarpenterDecember 7, 2016 0

Using the SAS Macro Language to Create Portable Programs

As technology expands, we have a similarly increasing need to create programs that can be handed off – to clients, to regulatory agencies, to parent companies, or to other projects – and handed off with little or no modification needed by the recipient. Minimizing modification by the recipient often requires

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Learn SAS

BrennaDecember 2, 2016 0

5 Reasons to write your first SAS Press book

Editor's note: This series of blogs addresses the questions we are most frequently asked at SAS Press! Ever thought about writing your own SAS or JMP book? Here are a few reasons why writing a SAS Press book can be a fantastic career move! 1.      Your book establishes you as

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerNovember 27, 2016 0

Debugging the difference between WHERE and IF in SAS

In the DATA step, the WHERE statement and the IF statement (a.k.a. the "subsetting IF") have similar functions. In many scenarios, they produce identical results. But new SAS programmers are taught early on that these two statements work very differently, and in important ways. To understand the differences, it helps

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Data Management | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanNovember 25, 2016 0

Modifying variable attributes in all datasets of a SAS library

Using the DATASETS procedure, we can easily modify SAS variable attributes such as name, format, informat and label: proc datasets library=libref; modify table_name; format var_name date9.; informat var_name mmddyy10.; label var_name = 'New label'; rename var_name = var_new_name; quit; We cannot, however, modify fixed variable attributes such as variable type

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Chris HemedingerNovember 15, 2016 0

Zodiac signs of US Presidents

Rick Wicklin showed us how to visualize the ages of US Presidents at the time of their inaugurations. That's a pretty relevant thing to do, as the age of the incoming president can indirectly influence aspects of the president's term, thanks to health and generational factors. As part of his

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarNovember 3, 2016 0

The difference between the Subsetting IF and the IF—THEN—ELSE—IF statement

My river walk last week turned into a spectacular fall show. But if it rains this week in San Antonio, like the weatherman predicts, what will I do? In the coming days, I’ll be presenting at two user groups,  one in eastern Canada in Halifax, and the other all the

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