Friday June 27, 2003 @ LL Bean, Freeport, Maine
Speaker #1: Russ Lavery
Bio: Russ Lavery is an independent contractor who has used SAS for 15 years. He is
the creator of the "An Animated Guide: series of presentations on SAS and statistical topics."
Topic for Morning Session: An Animated Guide:The Map of the SAS Macro System
Abstract: As all SAS programmers should understand the Program Data Vector, macro programmers should understand the Map of the Macro System. Understanding the flow of data through the Macro System helps programmers create and debug macros. Several attendees have commented that the Map of the Macro system is the "easiest to understand" conceptualization of the macro system they have seen. This animated presentation makes it easy to understand this complex topic. It uses the latest findings in cognitive psychology on effective teaching of complex topics. Specific topics covered are:
macros recall text and conditionally execute code
the three SAS compiles and the three SAS executes
review of tokenization and regular SAS job
assigning/resolving a macro variable (what causes errors)
macro Compiling/Execution of a Macro Program (what causes errors)
Processing the %IF on the Macro Map
the processing of the &&
Symget
Call Symput
Call Execute
An Introduction to Macro timing issues
Presentations by Russ Lavery during the Afternoon Meeting
An Animated Guide: Resource Usage of Common SAS Processes
Selecting the most efficient technique for your big job requires
understanding how SAS uses CPU and disk resources. This presentation
animates how SAS uses resources for formats, IORC merges, by-merges,
Updating, Key indexing, bitmaping, hashing, tag sorting and indexed
by-merges.
An Animated Guide: The Logic of Hypothesis Testing
The logic of Hypothesis testing is understood by 7 year olds and is made
difficult to understand by the use of very abstract examples. The author
animates the logic, and subtleties, of hypothesis testing through the story
of one of his failed romances (names have been changed to protect the
embarrassed). Topics covered are: the logical process of hypothesis
testing, Ho, HA, the burden of proof, alpha error, beta error and the
meaning of the P value.
An Animated Guide: The Logic of One Way Anova
The logic of ANOVA is easily to understand and is made difficult to
understand by the use of very abstract examples. The author animates the
logic, and many subtleties, of Anova via the story of his losing a
playground contest in first grade. Topics covered are: Variability, the
hypothesis of Anova, SSE, SST, SSModel, "within group variability", between
group variability", MSModel, MSE and R-squared. The logic of the F test is
also explained in simple terms.
***
Speaker #2: Judy Loren, Health Dialog Data Service
Bio: Judy Loren is a Senior Analyst at Health Dialog Data Service, the analytical arm of Health Dialog, which partners with insurance companies to coach members with chronic conditions or impending health care decisions. She uses SAS to warehouse claims information and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions. An avowed SAS bigot, Judy is proud to follow in her grandmother's footsteps--the one who converted the State of Maine payroll to a computer-based system back when programming meant hard-wiring boards.
Topic #1: Using the Power of SAS Macro Language to Manage Variables
Abstract: This short presentation will walk through some code that manages variables. In this specific example, two datasets containing many numeric variables are merged to create one very large output dataset. To cut down on the volume, a LENGTH statement is generated to set the lengths to 3. Also included is code to reset missing values to zero for all numeric variables. The utility of the macro language allows this code to work on any incoming datasets; you do not need to know the names of the variables.
Topic #2: Paul Grant's paper, Creating Code Templates in the SAS Enhanced Editor Using Abbreviations and User Defined Keywords (PDF document on the SAS web site.)