WUSS 2018

The Western Users of SAS Software 2018 conference is coming to Sacramento, CA, September 5-7.  I have been to a lot of SAS conferences, but WUSS is always my favorite because it is big enough for me to learn a lot, but small enough to be really friendly.

On Wednesday afternoon, I will once again present SAS Essentials, a whirlwind introduction to SAS programming in just three hours specially designed for people who are new to SAS.

If you come I hope you will catch my presentations.  If you want a preview or if you can’t come, click the links below to download the papers.

How SAS Thinks: SAS Basics I

Introduction to DATA Step Programming: SAS Basics II

Introduction to SAS Procedures: SAS Basics III

I hope to see you there!

 

SAS Global Forum 2018

I’m excited because in a couple days I will fly to Denver for SAS Global Forum 2018, the biggest SAS conference of the year, attended by thousands.

If you are coming, I hope you will attend the presentation that Lora Delwiche and I have.  It is “SAS Studio: A New Way to Program in SAS” on Wednesday April 11, 10:00-11:30am in Meeting Room506.

It’s a Hands On Workshop so it’s best if you can be there in person.  If you can’t, you can still read the paper.

In fact, you can access the proceedings for the entire conference.

Update 04/15/2018

SAS Global Forum 2018 is now over, but if you missed the live webcast, you still can see the Opening Session here. (The presentation starts about 12 minutes in.)

 

There is also a library of interesting videos available on demand.

 

WUSS 2016: The Papers

The Western Users of SAS Software 2016 conference is over.  I have been to a lot of SAS conferences, but WUSS is always my favorite because it is big enough for me to learn a lot, but small enough to be really friendly.  I’m already excited about next year’s conference in Long Beach, September 20-22.

If you missed my presentations this year or if you just want a written version, click the links below to download them.

How SAS Thinks: SAS Basics I

Introduction to DATA Step Programming: SAS Basics II

Introduction to SAS Procedures: SAS Basics III

SAS Studio: A New Way to Program in SAS presented by Lora Delwiche.

Errors, Warnings and Notes (Oh My): A Practical Guide to Debugging SAS Programs presented by Lora Delwiche.

SAS Certification As a Tool for Professional Development presented with Andra Northup.

 

 

 

Free Resources for Learning SAS (and Other Tips from SAS Authors)

In celebration of SAS Global Forum, the folks at SAS Press gathered tips from SAS Press authors.  Here is my contribution:

This is the best time ever to learn SAS!

When I first encountered SAS, there were only two ways that I could get help. I could either ask another graduate student who might or might not know the answer, or I could go to the computer center and borrow the SAS manual. (There was only one.) Today it’s totally different.  I am continually amazed by the resources that are available now—many for FREE. 

Here are four resources that every new SAS user should know about:

1. SAS Studio

This is a wonderful new interface for SAS that runs in a browser and has both programming and point-and-click features. SAS Studio is free for students, professors, and independent learners. You can download the SAS University Edition to run SAS Studio on your own computer, or use SAS OnDemand for Academics via the Internet.

2. Online classes

Two of the most popular self-paced e-learning classes are available for free: SAS Programming 1: Essentials, and Statistics 1. These are real classes which in the past people paid thousands of dollars to take.

3. Videos

You can access hundreds of SAS training videos, tutorials, and demos at support.sas.com/training/tutorial. Topics range from basic (What is SAS?) to advanced (SAS 9.4 Metadata Clustering).

4. Community of SAS users

If you encounter a problem, it is likely that someone else has faced a similar situation and figured out how to solve it. On communities.sas.com you can post questions and get answers from SAS users and developers. On the site, www.lexjansen.com, you can find virtually every paper ever presented at a SAS users group conference. The site www.sasCommunity.org is a wiki-style compendium of all things SAS.

For more tips from SAS Press authors, click here to read them all.

 

Missed SGF 2016? It’s not too late

 

SAS Global Forum 2016 is over.

Thousands of conference attendees are now back home.  Much of the conference was live-streamed, but if you missed it, that’s all right because many of the best sessions were recorded.  However, finding particular videos can be tricky.  So, here are my favorites.  Click the heading to link to the video:

Opening Session Highlights

Learn where SAS is now and where it’s going including cloud computing with SAS Viya in a short and sweet 5 minute summary.

Ariana Huffington on The Sleep Revolution

Huffington talks about the importance of a good night’s sleep for doing our best.  This is the full presentation.

David McCandless on Data Visualization

McCandless is an amazing graphic artist of data.  This is the full presentation.

Breakout Sessions

The heart of SAS Global Forum has always been papers by SAS users for SAS users.  This year more have been recorded than ever before.

 

Sending Text Messages from SAS

For me, a major highlight of SAS Global Forum 2015 was seeing Matthew Slaughter’s presentation, Sending Text Messages from SAS.  You may have noticed that his name is similar to mine.  This is not a coincidence as he is my son.  However, this paper was his idea.  He researched the topic on his own, and wrote the paper by himself.  In his presentation, he described two ways to send text message from SAS.  The first uses a FILENAME statement and DATA _NULL_ to send a text message via the email-to-SMS gateway.  The second uses an X command to send a text message via Amazon’s Simple Notification Service.  To download his paper click here.

SAS Certification on a Budget

I recently returned from SAS Global Forum where Andra Northup and I presented an updated and expanded version of our paper “SAS Certification as a Tool for Professional Development.”  You can read our paper here.

SAS certification has been around for a while.  The first SAS certification exam was offered way back in 1999.  So it’s fascinating to me that the program is currently growing in leaps and bounds.  Over 80,000 SAS certification credentials have been awarded and 13,383 of those were in 2014 alone.  The SAS certification program has experienced double-digit growth for the last five years.  I have a suspicion that technical certifications are growing in popularity in general, and that SAS’s certification program is riding that wave.  Over the last six months, I have begun to see job postings specifically asking for Base SAS certification.  This is totally new!  Of course, certification alone is not enough to get you hired or promoted as a SAS programmer, but it can help.

Unfortunately, preparing for certification can be expensive.  SAS Institute offers a Base Programming Certification Package.  This package includes four courses, a practice exam, and an exam voucher; and comes with a 40% discount that brings the total price down to $2,995.  Despite the hefty discount, this package is still out of reach for many people.  Fortunately, there are less expensive ways to prepare.  In fact, many excellent ways to prepare for certification are low in cost or even free!  With that in mind, I propose the

Build-Your-Own Base Programming Certification Package

Mix and match the following items to create a custom package to fit your budget:

$1,300-2,000 Instructor-based “Classroom” and “Live Web” classes
$1,100 SAS Certification Review: Base Programming class (both “Classroom” and “Live Web”)
$750-1,250 Online Self-Paced e-Learning classes
$150 Certification Prep Guides, Base or Advanced
$100 Course notes from classes offered by SAS Institute
$55 Online practice exam, Base, Advanced or Predictive Modeler (good for six months)
$50-75 Other books such as The Little SAS Book
FREE SAS University Edition software
FREE SAS Programming 1: Essentials online Self-Paced e-Learning course
FREE Statistics 1: Introduction to ANOVA, Regression, and Logistic Regression Self-Paced e-Learning course
FREE List of exam topics on support.sas.com
FREE Sample questions on support.sas.com
FREE Blogs

For more advice about how to prepare for, register for and take SAS certification exams, see our paper.  We wish you the best of luck!

SAS Certification as a Tool for Professional Development

If you had told me a year ago that I would write a paper about SAS certification for the Western Users of SAS Software 2014 Educational Forum and Conference, I would have been very surprised!  I became a SAS Certified Professional long ago, and that certification expired–long ago!  However, in the past six months, both my son and a friend have become SAS certified.  In the process, I learned a lot.

Now Andra Northup and I have written a paper titled SAS Certification as a Tool for Professional Development.  Doing the research for this paper, we gathered information and opinions both from SAS users and from experts at SAS Institute.  Here are some interesting things I learned:

• Over 67,000 SAS certificates have been awarded.
• The volume of tests taken has doubled in the past three years.
• The first SAS certification was in Europe and required passing 3 two-hour exams.
• Since 2006, certifications no longer expire, but are tied to a particular version of SAS.
• Some people claim that the Advanced exam is easier than the Base exam.
• The pass rate for the Advanced exam is, in fact, higher than for the Base exam.
• At only $55, the online practice exam for the Base exam is a bargain, and it’s good for six months.
• The SAS Programming 1: Essentials online self-paced course is FREE.

If you are going to the conference, I hope you will attend our presentation Thursday, September 4, 2014 2:00-2:50pm. If not, then you can download the paper here.

Using PROC SGPLOT for Quick High-Quality Graphs

Soon I will travel to San Jose for the Western Users of SAS Software 2014 Educational Forum and Conference.  I’m looking forward to doing a hands-on workshop on one of my favorite topics, ODS Graphics, specifically the PROCs SGPLOT and SGPANEL.  Here is the abstract:

New with SAS 9.2, ODS Graphics introduced a whole new way of generating graphs using SAS.  With just a few lines of code, you can create a wide variety of high-quality graphs.  This workshop shows how to produce several types of graphs using PROC SGPLOT, and how to create paneled graphs by converting PROC SGPLOT to PROC SGPANEL.  This workshop also shows how to send your graphs to different ODS destinations, how to apply ODS styles to your graphs, and how to specify properties of graphs, such as format, name, height, and width.

If you are going to the conference, I hope you will attend my workshop Thursday, September 4, 2014 4:00-6:00pm. If not, then you can download the paper, step-by-step handout, and syntax reference tables.

SAS Global Forum 2015 Here I Come!

I first attended SAS Global Forum (then called SAS Users Group International) way back in 1987.  Since then I have attended as often as possible.  Unfortunately, 2014 is not one of my years.  I will not be there in Washington DC March 23-26, 2014 to hear the great presentations, or learn about exciting new features from developers in the Demo Room, or see the many friends I have made over the years.  You can be sure that when March 23 comes, I’ll be hanging out in front of my computer to catch the Opening Session and any other live-streamed events I can glean.

Since I can’t be there this year, I’m already looking ahead.  I plan to be in Dallas next year for SGF April 26-29, 2015.  I might even make a presentation or two. I’m already trying to figure out possible topics for a paper or panel.  So I was intrigued when I heard a segment on the public radio program Marketplace about this very issue.  They have developed a Panel Generator to invent promising session topics for you.  Here’s the link.  Just click the Pick a Panel button, and they will create an original topic just for you.

Here are a few I’m considering:

Programmers Are Dead, Long Live Programmers

The Path to Freelancing: Innovation Sauce

Data Is [sic] Dead, Long Live Data

7 Things Coders Need to Know About Maximizing

Infographics Are Dead, Long Live Infographics

Your Profile is Your Brand

Coders as Employers: The Big Shift from Interaction

How to Redesign Developers with Artisanal Selfies

From Incubators to the Digital Divide: An Introduction to Success

Let me know if you’d like to hear me talk about any of these topics at SGF 2015, and I’ll try to figure out what they are.