Humor — Unusual SAS PROCs

From SAS-L: undocumented PROCs

• PROC DELETE
• PROC EXPLODE
• PROC NICKNAME

That great PROC that SAS never got around to writing:

• PROC RASTINATE

The PROC for people who are a pain in the you-know-what:

• PROC TOLOGIST

Don’t forget:

• PROC REATE to spawn off a process
• PROC TOR to keep an eye on that process
• PROC LAMATION to announce when the process crashes
• PROC ARYOTE for the more primitive “genetic” algorithms
• PROC RUSTES to trim off the heads and tails of distributions
• PROC UREMENT the SAS/OR proc to do marketing forecasts

If your data doesn’t give you the answer your client wants, you can always get the right answer from:

• PROC FUDGE
• PROC FISH
  

New SAS Books By Users

Just published, hot off the presses! The list of new titles is here.

More Useful Links

Systems Seminar Consultants, Inc. (SSC) publishes a free newsletter called The Missing Semicolon. Browse through back issues and sign up to receive future editions via e-mail. I found one interesting tip in a back issue (Winter 2003) of The Missing Semicolon, regarding how to create macro variables using PROC SQL. You can also read copies of some of SSC’s recent SAS presentations.

I was directed to the SSC website by the Unofficial SAS Weblog (which you all should be reading regularly — that’s an order!) As evidence of the high calibre of work done by the Unofficial SAS Weblog, they even mention me and GVSUG! How can you not like a website like that?

From the Unofficial SAS Weblog we find Coruscation, which has a series of SAS posts. And from Coruscation, we learn of Paul Dickman, biostatistician from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, who has a long series of SAS tips, some statistical, some not. Some examples: using FIRST. and LAST. variables; working with SAS dates; and histograms using PROC CAPABILITY.

For those of you a little more statistically minded, Dale McLerran provides an example of how you can use PROC MIXED to do standard or paired t-tests. He expands on this example to show how if the data are correlated in time (example: you measure a lake for pollutants today, and then again tomorrow, expecting the level of pollutants to be similar, rather than independent of the previous day) to show how PROC MIXED can be used in this case as well to perform a serially correlated paired t-test.

SUGI 30 Presentations and Training

The list of presentations and training at SUGI 30 (April 10–13, 2005 in Philadelphia, PA) is now available. Here’s a talk I wish I could attend: “Applying Microsoft Word Styles to ODS RTF Output” by Lauren Haworth. Take some time and browse through the entire list, there’s something for everyone.

We Need Your Input

We are planning the next GVSUG meeting. We need your input.

If you would like to be a speaker, please click here.

If you would like to provide input on the meeting times or locations or provide other input about our meetings, click here.

New Job Posting

There is a job posting for a Senior SAS Programmer in the Rochester area.

Rhinowatch tracks endangered animals with SAS®

“Endangered black and white rhinos are reaping the rewards of SAS software, thanks to two innovative researchers. If funding can be found, tigers, too, can benefit from the technology.

“Their fierce roars echo through the trees, filling every inch of the Carnivore Preservation Trust. Beneath beautifully striped pelts, their muscles move gracefully as they stalk each other — and their human visitors — through 12-foot high fences. And their massive paws leave impressive tracks, tracks that can be used like fingerprints to identify individual animals or classify others by certain characteristics. These tracks could be important steps in the effort to save the species.

“Far away from this central North Carolina sanctuary for carnivores, wildlife biologists Zoe Jewell and Sky Alibhai of Rhinowatch build the database of tiger paw prints that forms the heart of this conservation project. These scientists were recognized recently with a Smithsonian Award from Computerworld magazine for ground-breaking work in foot-print identification and the resulting counting and monitoring of endangered rhinos. Now they have turned their attention to tigers.”

Read the rest of the story here.

SAS E-Mail Newsletters

Subscribe to a number of free SAS E-Mail newsletters, including SAS Technology Report, the SAS Business Report, SAS Publishing News, EDUmation and Financial Services Special Edition report. Or just view the archives of each report to see if the subject is of interest.

Here are the topics from the latest SAS Technology Report:

• New Statistical Graphics in SAS®9: The Story Behind the Plot
  
• Quick Tip: Clean Up Your Messy Raw Data
• Live Web Course Concentrates on ODS Topics
• U.S. Conferences Unite SAS® Users
• CustomerSupport Center Enhances “What’s New” Documentation
• Interested in Writing a Book?
• SAS Certified Professional Program Celebrates Fifth Anniversary
• Courses Support SAS®9 Solutions
• Quick Tip: Concurrent Access to SAS/SHARE® with an Exponential Backoff

Happy Birthday, Millard Fillmore!

In case you weren’t aware, today is the birthday of the 13th President of the United States, Millard Fillmore. He was born in the year 1800 right here in Western New York, in Cayuga County. Happy birthday, Millard! (What other SAS User’s group gives you this kind of useful information??)

Register for SUGI 30 now!

SUGI 30 will be held in Philadelphia, PA from April 10–13, 2005. Registration details are here.

Bad Graphs!

Stephen Few has seen enough bad graphs. He says:

I’m on a mission! No, I didn’t hear the voice of God, but I have heard the voices of countless people crying out in frustration for the data they desperately need to do their jobs, presented to them clearly, simply, efficiently and meaningfully. The current state of data visualization — the use of graphs to display information for the purposes of sense-making and communication — would be amusing if it weren’t so tragic. Most business graphs are poorly designed, many to the point of misinformation.

He goes on to take a very poorly designed graph at sas.com and turn it into a much simpler and more easily interpreted graph. Along the way, he gives some very good advice for anyone wanting to create a graph from their data.