Blogs

Blogs

SAS Events

Read stories about the SAS events and discover SAS in a variety of formats. Whether meeting in person, watching online or listening from your home or office, check out the events SAS has to offer.

SAS Events

Christina HarveyNovember 21, 2012 0

Too much CLASS for the MEANS procedure

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

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Programming Tips | SAS Administrators | SAS Events

Waynette TubbsNovember 20, 2012 0

Tune your SAS system for max performance

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.

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SAS Events

Tricia AanderudNovember 15, 2012 0

Considering submitting a paper for SAS Global Forum?

Are you considering submitting a paper to the SAS Global Forum? The deadline for submissions is right around the corner – here’s some ideas to help you get your paper selected! Steve Overton and Tricia Aanderud have presented papers at several of the SAS user groups and here are a

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SAS Events

Waynette TubbsNovember 14, 2012 0

How to build an Analytic Center of Excellence

'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.

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SAS Events

Waynette TubbsNovember 13, 2012 0

PROC ARIMA: Penetrating the matrix

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

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SAS Administrators | SAS Events

Larry LaRussoNovember 12, 2012 0

How to find your SAS version and components list

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

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SAS Events

Christina HarveyNovember 12, 2012 0

NESUG 2012 Student Scholarship winners

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

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SAS Events

Sara Jones, CMPNovember 5, 2012 0

SAS users are California dreaming

OK all you mamas and papas, and SAS users who aren’t. It’s time to turn your SAS Global Forum dreams into a reality. Registration for the 2013 event is now open. The event promises to offer no time for “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” with an anticipated 400

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SAS Events

Quentin McMullenNovember 4, 2012 0

NESUG turns 25! Will you be there?

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.

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SAS Administrators | SAS Events

Christina HarveyOctober 31, 2012 0

How to document your SAS environment

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

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SAS Events

Sara Jones, CMPOctober 29, 2012 0

SUG Road Trip: Final destination Baltimore

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

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SAS Events

Michael SmithOctober 25, 2012 0

SUG Road Trip: Quilts, bats and boots in the Bayou City

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

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SAS Events

Christina HarveyOctober 24, 2012 0

Data mining 101: Ask the right questions

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

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SAS Events

Waynette TubbsOctober 23, 2012 0

Tutorials, tutorials, tutorials at SAS Global Forum

It's not too early to think about what presentations and pre-conference training to attend while at SAS Global Forum 2012. Tutorials are an extra-fee that is only available as additions to a conference registration. But you can get a deal: Registration package 3 includes your choice of one Sunday Pre-Conference Tutorial.

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SAS Events

Waynette TubbsOctober 22, 2012 0

Big data in small bites

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

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SAS Events

Waynette TubbsOctober 18, 2012 0

Why use Hadoop?

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

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SAS Administrators | SAS Events

Waynette TubbsOctober 18, 2012 0

Encoding a password

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

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SAS Events

Waynette TubbsOctober 17, 2012 0

MWSUG 2012 Best Contributed Papers!

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:

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SAS Administrators | SAS Events

Waynette TubbsOctober 17, 2012 0

Security: Purposeful database access

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

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SAS Events

Waynette TubbsOctober 16, 2012 0

Let's play a game

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

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SAS Events

Christina HarveyOctober 16, 2012 0

Macro headaches? Learn how to prevent them

The Macro facility is a powerful and flexible tool, but sloppy techniques can make macros one of your biggest headaches. Poorly handled macros may run without error but leave your users with unexpected results and litter your system with unwanted files and variables.

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Advanced Analytics | SAS Events

Polly Mitchell-GuthrieOctober 12, 2012 0

Is experimental design the red-headed stepchild of modeling?

Andy Pulkstenis of State Farm thinks it is, stating that this red-headed stepchild among modeling technques is where predictive modeling was ten years ago. He opened his talk, "Do You Know or Do You Think You Know? Creating a Testing Culture at State Farm," at the A2012 conference in Las Vegas with

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SAS Events

Waynette TubbsOctober 11, 2012 0

Thinking about SESUG 2012

Have you registered for the 20th annual SouthEast SAS Users Group conference (SESUG) yet? NO? What are you waiting for? I've heard it going to be a real party, so come help us celebrate SESUG's 20th birthday (hmm ... SESUG isn't even old enough to drink). The last time I went was

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SAS Events

Waynette TubbsOctober 10, 2012 0

Happy 25th birthday NESUG!

~ Lisa Pyle and Rob Russell, NESUG 2012 Conference Co-chairs Can you believe it?! In just a few weeks we will all be together at NESUG's 25th conference! We are looking forward to all the presentations and workshops we have planned and to seeing all our old friends and meeting some new ones too.

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Advanced Analytics | SAS Events

Radhika KulkarniOctober 5, 2012 0

An invitation to look inside advanced analytics at SAS

A year ago I set out to periodically blog from my perspective of leading R&D for our advanced analytics software. I invited SAS colleagues who also work in various areas of advanced analytics to blog on their own interesting conversations with each other and with customers about the intersection of

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SAS Events

Michael SmithOctober 3, 2012 0

Get in gear for SAS Global Forum

It may only be early October, but now is the ideal time to plan, save and prepare for SAS Global Forum 2013, scheduled for April 28 – May 1 in San Francisco. Three Quick Recommendations 1. Check out the pre- and post-conference classes – The topics are great and the

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Advanced Analytics | SAS Events

Waynette TubbsSeptember 28, 2012 0

Friday's Innovation Inspiration - The big C PROCs: CONTENTS AND COMPARE

I chose this Post-It note this week because it reminded me of a MWSUG paper presentation that I listened to and wrote about. Patricia Hettinger presented "New vs. Old - Under the Hood with PROCs CONTENTS and COMPARE" in the Data Management and Data Mining section. I didn't do it justice in my

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SAS Events

Andy Kuligowski, SAS Global Forum 2012 Conference Chair

Waynette TubbsSeptember 25, 2012 0

Parsing useful data out of unusual formats

If you remember Andy Kuligowski for nothing else, you probably remember that he was the SAS Global Forum conference chair for 2012. I remember that he has a wonderful sense of humor, which he used more than once during his Hands on Workshop at the MidWest SAS Users Group conference

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SAS Events

Chris BattistonSeptember 24, 2012 0

TASS, SASDummy, and I – Part II

You may recall that I am a novice SAS user - I've been using SAS for about two years now and work for Canada's largest pediatric hospital as a database administrator and data analyst. In April, during SAS Global Forum 2012, I wrote my first blog post on the SAS Users

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SAS Events

Waynette TubbsSeptember 20, 2012 0

Using SAS Enterprise Guide effectively

Chris Hemedinger is not the only person who’s excited about the capabilities of SAS Enterprise Guide. Tom Miron, from Systems Seminar Consultants, a SAS author with more than 35 years of SAS experience, shared some great advice for using SAS Enterprise Guide.

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