I’ve spent about 35 years messing around with computers based on the assumption that most discoveries are not preceded by “Eureka!” but rather, “What the hell! May as well try it.” Having my new computer pretty much dissolve in smoke (less than a month after I bought it!), I decided to continue my analyses of…
I have been inspired by John D. Cook who does 11 tip accounts on twitter, each updated with a new tip, Monday through Friday. There is a Unix tool tip, an Algebra fact account, and nine others. How cool is that? Not being nearly as cool as him, I decided I’d just throw out a…
Before the semester began, I debated about requiring SAS on-demand for my statistics course. In fact, after giving it some thought, I decided to make use optional rather than mandatory. One reason for my hesitation was uncertainty about basing a major part of students’ grades on a project requiring an untested software package. I could…
Giving a whole new meaning to “computing in the cloud”, I finished up my paper “A gentle introduction to survival analysis” for the Nevada SAS Users Group from 30,000 feet up using on-board wi-fi and SAS On-demand. I was shocked to find that the performance was much better in-flight. Presumably, if you charge people $12.95…
Jon Peltier and I were going back and forth on twitter about why it is that people will post answers on a forum or mailing list that are completely incorrect. As Peter Flom says, “They are often in error but never in doubt.” Jon suggested there are three types; those who don’t know and admit…
I read Allen Englehardt’s post this morning, on R vs SAS/SPSS in corporations and it motivated me to set aside my infinite to-do list and write about something I’ve been thinking for a long time. Since Allen writes on R-bloggers, it will surprise no one that his conclusion was that R is preferable to SAS…
Two things, first of all. Those folks in Colorado are unbelievable studs to come out in inches of snow and more falling to a full house at the Denver & northern Colorado / Wyoming SAS users group meeting. I’ll bet the people in North Dakota are…
Let me just say off the bat that open data is awesome and there should be more of it available. This semester, I have been using SAS On-Demand in my statistics class and creating the data sets to meet students’ interests. Despite some people’s aspersions that I read on Twitter that some statisticians know no…
Anyone who claims to know all of SAS is clinically insane – Ernest Hemingway (not intended to be a factual attribution) Okay, I admit it, Hemingway didn’t really say that, but he would have, except for being dead and all. As usual, this year I didn’t have time to do everything I wanted at the…
At the opening session, Randy Guard from SAS talked about making a difference. That sounded promising, but then the examples he gave were how analyses could be run on large databases of stock market data so much more quickly that instead of having market value overnight traders could get the data hourly. It sounded like…