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A little more to help the children learn – no SAS involved!

Since becoming a parent many years ago, I have had access to computers and written educational software for my children, and now for my grandchildren..

One of my original spelling programs now has a family nickname of “GIFAFFE”, due to a check I had failed to do while compiling the list of animals to spell! This program has been re-written (with completely correct spellings!) as a web app called SpiderWord, where a word must be correctly guessed to let the Bug escape from the Spider slowly descending on a thread with every incorrect letter. The currently available word lists now cover biology (Dinosaurs and Reptiles), spelling (Long Words (Things) and Long Words (Describing)), literature (Thomas the Tank Engine Character Names), geography (Countries) and sport (1-Word English Football Clubs).

If you would like me to include new word lists in this game, then please send them to me using the Contact Us link in the menu. Priority will be given to requests from Educational Games members.

Another of my interests is in mental arithmetic, and I have re-written some of my Chrome apps as browser-independent web apps covering multiplying (from x2 to x20), arithmetic (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and combinations using parentheses), decimal arithmetic (like the arithmetic app, but using decimals), detective (find the missing number in 13 different types of sequences) and fraction arithmetic (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing).

Note that all of the web apps have time limits that can be changed to specific times per question between “No limit” and a probably impossible limit of “5 seconds”.

Also, only the local storage in your browser is used to store the past results, so the statistics are never shared, and can be cleared by you at any time!

I have recently added a logic-based game called Number Logic.

You can choose how many numbers can be used:

— 1 to 4 = 256 possible numbers
— 1 to 5 = 625 possible numbers
— 1 to 6 = 1,296 possible numbers

(1) The computer sets the numbers, you guess and the computer scores.
(2) You set the numbers, the computer guesses and you score.
(3) Can you guess the numbers quicker than the computer?

All of these web apps, and more as I develop further programs, can be accessed via a menu link called “Educational Games”, which will be seen after you have subscribed to this blog’s Educational Games membership, which is currently priced at GBP 5.00 for 3 months access.

Note that, if you already have Programming or Recruiter membership, then changing to the Educational Games membership will remove all of your current privileges, as they are not compatible!! I would, therefore, recommend creating a new blog profile for Educational Games membership, as it will then not be sent any of the SAS-related emails from the site, and will have exclusive access to the web apps.

Something to help the children learn – no SAS involved!

This weekend marks to start of the half-term school holidays in most parts of the United Kingdom, although some schools have been encouraging learning-from-home since the beginning of the pandemic. Since becoming a parent many years ago, I have had access to computers and written educational software for my children.

One of my original spelling programs now has a family nickname of “GIFAFFE”, due to a check I had failed to do while compiling the list of animals to spell! This program has been re-written (with completely correct spellings!) as a web app called SpiderWord, where a word must be correctly guessed to let the Bug escape from the Spider slowly descending on a thread with every incorrect letter. The currently available word lists now cover biology (Dinosaurs and Reptiles), spelling (Long Words), literature (Thomas the Tank Engine Character Names), geography (Countries) and sport (1-Word English Football Clubs).

If you would like me to include new word lists in this game, then please send them to me using the Contact Us link in the menu. Priority will be given to requests from Educational Games members.

Another of my interests is in mental arithmetic, and I have re-written some of my Chrome apps as browser-independent web apps covering multiplying (from x2 to x20), arithmetic (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and combinations using parentheses), decimal arithmetic (like the arithmetic app, but using decimals), and fraction arithmetic (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing).

Note that all of the web apps have time limits that can be changed to specific times per question between “No limit” and a probably impossible limit of “5 seconds”.

My published Training Course list is for companies, the SAS course is for individuals

I published a list of available training courses for 2017 in January this year, but this course list is actually intended for companies, and not for individuals, as the courses have a fixed price no matter how many people attend them. All the training materials are personalised and supplied in digital form, and so can be duplicated for that client to re-use internally.

Individuals looking for SAS training should subscribe to the SAS course in the SAS Programming Forum instead, which is specifically targeted at individual SAS learners and programmers, and is priced as a low-cost monthly subscription. However, the SAS Programming Forum is not just there for the SAS course, but can be used to get answers to any SAS-related questions you may have too, even if they are from homework or interview questions.

Fast – Cheap – Good – Pick any 2!

Fast - Cheap - Good I’m sure you’ve seen this sign many times before, but it is a very important statement!

At Holland Numerics we strive to provide good service at all times, so we will never even consider providing fast service cheap, because it will not be good! That said, we can provide good service fast, but it won’t be cheap, and good service cheap, but it won’t be fast.

Sometimes we have to sit back and consider Oscar Wilde’s view (from his play “Lady Windemere’s Fan”) that at his point in time a cynic, but now everyone, knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing! This is particularly relevant for consultancies like Holland Numerics trying to determine appropriate pricing for consulting services.

That is why the SAS Programming Forum is accessed for a small subscription, not because we need it to be an income stream, but because we want to make certain that subscribers really want to access the valuable SAS-related information I have added over several months in that forum. I like to think this is perfectly exemplified by another quote, this time from my all-time favourite novel “Time Enough for Love” by Robert A Heinlein:

“Anything free is worth what you pay for it.”

What is the SAS Programming Forum and why does it cost to access?

It is rather sad that everyone knows the price of everything and the value of nothing! I have paraphrased this statement somewhat from the original written by Oscar Wilde for Lord Darlington in “Lady Windemere’s Fan”, but the reality is very much in evidence everywhere today. But how is that relevant to the SAS Programming Forum?

I wanted to create a place where students of SAS programming (which includes myself, as I try to learn something new about SAS every day) could ask SAS-related questions, even if they were from interviews or homework, without being criticised. However, I wanted to exclude those asking questions because they were too lazy to research the answers themselves (#LAZYWEB), so I hoped that charging a small amount to access the forum would filter out those trying to get free information with no effort, but encourage those enthusiastic enough to pay to learn about SAS an opportunity to do so. The SAS Programming Forum subscription is only GBP 5.00 per month for up to 3 months via PayPal, so it can be stopped at any time, but also renewed easily, and includes access to my SAS course about SAS programming topics, which I’m progressively building, and currently includes 4 sections on SAS components, Data Steps, PROC SQL and SAS macros, and now totals 25 topics in all. The sections are intended to be read sequentially, but are, for the most part, independent of each other. The key feature of the SAS Programming Forum and the SAS course is that questions can be asked at any time and they will be answered, provided sufficient information is given in the question. This is not a “get out” clause, but a learning point for all prospective SAS programmers that without sufficient information you cannot write a SAS program that meets the customer’s needs, so you have to be able to ask question yourself!