From time to time I get asked, “Can you recommend a book like Structural Equation Modeling for Dummies?” My unspoken thought is always, “You’re f***ing kidding me, right?” SEM isn’t the sort of thing done by dummies. Well, ask no more if you want straightforward, basic treatment of CALIS – the SAS procedure for structural…
Despite the title, this is not the new show in Las Vegas. John Sall is Mr. JMP . In fact, it is said behind his back that JMP actually stands for John’s Macintosh Project, this being the product SAS started about the time that they made the move away from running SAS on Mac OS…
In three minutes before the next statistics session, here’s some more on the opening session last night. SAS Chief Marketing Officer Jim Davis made the comment that for every SAS product they are asking the question “Is there a mobile application for this and if so what does it look like?” He also showed some…
I was very thrilled to be invited to speak to six classes of seventh- and eighth-grade students at an urban school. Actually, they wanted me to speak to seven classes but there is no way on earth I am getting up at 6:30 a.m. or whatever ungodly hour would be required for me to make…
Yesterday, Matt Keranen (a.k.a. @HybridDBA) made the comment about SAS giving free software to universities as response to R << “Would be nice if they did the same for developers” The more I thought about that, the more convinced I became that he is right. There are a few reasons. First, let’s look at the…
I’ve just been hired on a project that uses SAS and I know nothing but SPSS, but I know that really well. Can I come over to your office tomorrow? … so began a very interesting afternoon, where the new employee would show me code that she had written, say VALUE LABELS and ask, “Can…
The first programming language I learned, 36 years ago, was BASIC, followed by Fortran the next semester. A couple of years later, my employer had me learn COBOL, FORESIGHT and M (the successor to MUMPS). Haven’t touched either in decades and of the three, COBOL is the only one that I’m sure still exists. In…
Remember that old saying that 1,000,000 monkeys on a typewriter would eventually produce Shakespeare? After the equivalent of more than a 1,000,000 monkey-years of text published on the web, so far, no Shakespeare. (For a superb, in-depth discussion of this point, read Jason Lanier’s book, “You are not a gadget”) In very, very, brief, Lanier …
SAS macros (well, any macros, really – Excel, whatever), can be a great thing. While at first glance they may look a bit hairy, if you have repetitive tasks it makes it easier to debug your code. That may sound nuts at first glance. How can adding something with the %global %do &var and call…
Anyone who wonders why there are not more women in technology, not more women startups should read the book, A strange stirring, by Stephanie Coontz about the impact the book The Feminine Mystique had on America. Like Coontz, I read The Feminine Mystique and found it kind of boring, although there were parts that resonated….