Having an article about SAS published in VIEWS News is the only qualification required to become a VIEWS Consultant, which is globally recognized, but is unpaid, like the Newsletter Editor!
VIEWS News is now being published quarterly in February, May, August and November, and I am constantly looking for new SAS-related content and new contributors. Contributions should be short punchy articles about SAS-related topics, reviews of SAS-related conferences you have attended, or even advertising articles for future conferences. The choice is completely up to you, and my task, as Newsletter Editor, is to put together an issue with a range of articles that will be of interest to our global membership. Therefore, if you have an idea for something you’d like to contribute to the next, or future, issue of VIEWS News, then please contact me at views-uk@hollandnumerics.org.uk. I just need any articles for each issue before the 1st day of the publication month, so I can include it in the newsletter, and give you the opportunity to check that I’ve not changed anything important before the final published version is posted on the site.
If you are thinking about contributing to VIEWS News, then I would recommend you register on this blog site and request access to VIEWS News, as you will need to log in to the blog site to get to the VIEWS UK forum, where VIEWS News lives, so you will have access to the past issues. As I write this post the blog members that have requested access to VIEWS News (total 116) are located in:
UK = 47
North America = 27
Indian Sub-continent = 23
Europe = 13
Rest of the World = 6
Many of the blog members that have requested access to VIEWS News are already VIEWS Consultants, and more contributions are welcomed from them. However, I also encourage you to become a new VIEWS Consultant.
Remember the deadline for articles in the August issue (VIEWS 57) is the 1st August!!
PharmaSUG US 2019 was held at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown from 15-19 June 2019.
My wife and I flew from London to Boston, where we spent 2 nights visiting the historical sites in and around the city, as well as tasting some excellent local beers.
We then flew to Buffalo and crossed the border into Canada to visit Niagara Falls for 2 nights, walking behind the Horseshoe Falls and braving the mist. This spot had been high on my wife’s “bucket list” for many years. Admittedly the Hornblower catamarans used from the Canadian side do have transparent screens, so we didn’t get as wet as some of the other passengers! In contrast, the Maid of the Mists boats from the American side have no protection at all, but, as single-hull boats, can’t approach as close to the falls either.
We then flew from Buffalo to Philadelphia for the start of PharmaSUG, where I was a First Timer. I proudly wore my First Timer ribbon legitimately, as I’d never been to PharmaSUG before, along with my Presenter and Code Doctor ribbons. However, it was also a bit misleading, as I’ve presented previously at more than 30 international conferences in Europe and the USA, so several conference friends told me off for cheating.
My presentation wasn’t about ODS Graphics this time, but about SAS programming techniques to reduce data surprises. The room was about half full early on Tuesday morning, and, judging by the number of questions afterwards, well received (and I didn’t see anyone leave in the middle!). My room was run with friendship and precision by Frank Canale and Maggie Ying, who both made me very welcome, so I must give them a big thank you.
I had sat on the Code Doctors table in the “Code Clinic” at SAS Global Forum, but my 2 official sessions in Philadelphia, and several unofficial sessions too, were actually more enjoyable. Each session started very quietly, so I got to chat with my fellow Doctors, many of whom I’d met many times before. The last half hour of each session was filled with varied questions about concatenating strings in R, working around annoying “features” in old Microsoft applets, and answering questions about CDISC SDTM and ADaM specifications. Note the lack of “real” SAS questions, but still very entertaining, and I hope the answers proved useful!
PharmaSUG US 2019 had a record attendance of 910 this year, but I’d previously attended SAS Global Forum with 6,500 attendees, so it felt much smaller and more personable. Being relatively small also made it easier to meet up with people there. The conference lunches were excellent too, so a big thank you to MaryAnne DePesquo, although I was initially worried she might be cross with me for missing SAS Global Forum 2019 in Dallas, where she was Conference Chair, but she did forgive me!
I knew I would meet several conference friends I’d met before at SAS Global Forum and PhUSE, but I never expected so many friends would be there. In fact there were, apparently, rumours beforehand that I was coming to PharmaSUG, and some there didn’t believe them! Anyway, everyone was very welcoming, and I made lots of new conference friends at PharmaSUG too.
I have run free prize draws for copies of my latest book at most of the conferences I had attended since it was published in 2015, using the free copies Apress, the publisher, had sent me. My penultimate book prize draw at PharmaSUG was won by Qinxiao (Catherine) Shi, a Statistics student from the University of Connecticut (see photo). I wish I’d been able to take a photo of her reaction when she found out she had won. Let’s just say she was very pleased to win!
After 9 days in North America we had to travel home to the UK again, but not without one last adventure by rail, as I had booked a train from Philadelphia to Penn Station in New York. From there we had to catch 2 more trains, buying tickets before each leg, to get to JFK, our departure airport. While the potential issues were many, including an unexpected power outage at the station in Philadelphia that morning, I can report nothing untoward happened en route to JFK, and we even arrived there earlier than expected.
Now we have been back in the UK a few days, I’ve had time to reflect on our PharmaSUG journey, and all I can think of are 3 words: Welcoming, Enlightening and Worthwhile! Thank you everyone we’ve met in the USA and Canada. We’ll be back!
PS. For those interested in my beer tastings, I tasted 20 new beers during this journey: 4 in Boston, 4 in Niagara, 11 in Philadelphia and finally 1 in New York.
Alberto Cairo created the Datasaurus Dozen to demonstrate the necessity to view data beyond its statistics. He created a scatterplot of a dinosaur, and then generated 12 very different scatterplots with almost identical statistics.
N: 142
Mean: X=54.27, Y=47.83
Standard deviation: X=16.77, Y=26.94
Correlation x-y: -0.06
The 12 data sets with almost identical statistics to those above are plotted here, including the x and y means as reference lines:
More information about the Datasaurus Dozen, including how the Dozen were generated and how to download the data, can be found here.
The program to create these graphs, including the data, can be downloaded as a zip file from here.
As part of the development of the VIEWS UK forum infrastructure, I’ve added a tag cloud for all of the forums used by logged-in blog members. This means that clicking a word or phrase in the tag cloud will generate a list of forum topics with that tag. I’ve also added a search form at the end of the page, in case you would like to search a specific forum.
Once you have logged into the blog site, this can either be accessed directly at Forum Tag Cloud page, or through the Menu via Forums, Features and Subscriptions > Forum Tag Cloud. If you have not logged in, then you will be directed to the Join Us page, and you won’t be able to see the item in the Menu! This is because the forums on the blog site can only be accessed by logged-in members.
VIEWS News will now be resuming production, because 100 blog members have requested free access to the VIEWS UK forum!
Issue 56 will now be made available to download from the VIEWS UK forum in May 2019, but, in the meanwhile, I’ll be developing indexes in that forum for the existing 55 back-issues of VIEWS News. New issues will, hopefully, be published in February, May, August and November each year, so, if you have a suitable SAS-related article you’d like to have included, please contact me at views-uk@hollandnumerics.org.uk.
Remember that free access to the VIEWS newsletter is restricted to logged-in blog members who have requested access to the VIEWS UK forum. This is so I have a list of interested members willing to received news about forthcoming VIEWS News issues. Any blog members who don’t wish to learn about new VIEWS News issues should not request free access, but any registered blog members who do want access to the VIEWS UK forum should contact me now, if they are not already on the list. Just log into the blog and look for “VIEWS UK” in the forum list to make certain.
I’m presenting at the Toronto SAS Meetup on 27Feb2019 05Mar2019, but I won’t be there, because, technology permitting, I’ll be presenting remotely from my nice warm office in the UK. This is intended to take advantage of remote communications and to avoid the need for me to fly over the Atlantic for a 20-minute talk!
More information, including registration details, can be found at the Toronto SAS Meetup site.
If you enjoy this presentation, then talk to Mamadou Dakouo about inviting me to present again at a future meeting, as this is the first of 4 different presentations about ODS Graphics.
Don, a past president of the SAS Global Forum and frequent presenter there, will be talking about his new book about the SAS Hash Object, which he wrote with Paul Dorfman, who invented the Hash Object. Having read this book I was surprised how useful Hash Objects could be. Even the background to why they had to generate the “baseball” data for the book is fascinating.
Stop Press: 2 signed copies of this book will be given away at the meeting!
I’ll look forward to seeing you at the Shard in London………..Phil
I was considering attending PharmaSUG China at the end of August 2019, but I’ve been told that a seminar held previously in China on SAS programming efficiency had a low attendance, as programmers there are relatively young, so they like to learn techniques on their own, or take classes on topics that they cannot learn from the internet. However, they prefer challenging topics, which are hard to learn on their own.
I have now decided to delay what could be my one and only visit to China until 2020, and use the extra preparation time to find out a little more about what SAS programmers in China would be most interested in.
Therefore, please could you help me by answering this quick poll about the 1/2 day training sessions I currently provide. The answers will guide me to the best package to offer to PharmaSUG China 2020. Links to most of the training courses can be found below the poll.
If you have not yet voted and can view the poll results, but the Vote button is grey, your IP address may already have been used to vote on this poll. This is in fact quite common when viewing blog posts from a company PC, so I would therefore recommend that you try voting using your phone or your home PC instead.
Thank you in advance………..Phil
I'm planning to go to PharmaSUG China in 2020. Which 1/2 day training courses would you be interested in attending there? (max 2)
Efficient SAS Programming (28%, 7 Votes)
Defensive SAS Programming (24%, 6 Votes)
Introduction to ODS Graph Templates (20%, 5 Votes)
The conference runs from 16-19 June 2019, but I’m hoping to arrange my flights across the Atlantic so my wife and I can take in some of our “bucket” list in Boston and Niagara.
Hope to meet up with you in Philadelphia, and maybe even see you at my presentation!
Now that I have Mondays free from client-related contracts, I am able to do whatever I want, such as work in my garden, read books, write my own books and articles, develop apps and other software applications, or even give SAS training! So, to help you book 1-hour 1-to-1 training sessions with me to talk about the SAS topics of your choosing, I have created a SAS training session booking calendar.
Training sessions will be provided using Google Calendar and Hangouts, and cost GBP100.00 for each hour. The booking form allows you to copy in your chosen SAS-related topics from the list provided, and then we get together at the selected time for an hour of discussion around that topic, so you will be able to ask me any questions you need answering to learn more about SAS software. The topic selection allows me to prepare demonstrations and information specifically for the session, and other topics will be added to the list over time.
Note that I will only send out one Google Calendar invite, but, if you want to have some friends and colleagues around to join in, then that will be just fine.
Have I told you about who won the Prize Draw at the October SUGUKI meeting in London? I don’t think I have, so I’d better rectify this omission and tell you that Richie McKern won a copy of the my Practical ODS Graphics Course notes as an ebook on a USB key in the Prize Draw, along with a load of other SAS-related papers.
My presentation on Annotate and ODS Graphics was well-received by a small band of SAS enthusiasts. I’ve not heard when I’ll next be presenting at a SUGUKI meeting, but I can tell you that my next presentation will be “Using SAS Studio Tasks to Plot with ODS Graphics”.
Looking forward to seeing you there, whenever it is.
Loading ...
You must be logged in to post a comment.