Question for the clinical programmers here. TLF validation is usually well defined (double programming, compare). But the CSR body text also quotes a lot of numbers: p-values, percentages, LS means, hazard ratios. Who checks that those quotes match the final outputs, especially after a late rerun? Is that part of the programming QC, done by the medical writer, or a separate review step? And roughly how long does it take for a phase 3 CSR? ... View more

For SAS Bowl LXIII, we're going old school, back to the basics, with an event based on statistics. We'll test your knowledge on mean, median, mode, ROC curves, p-values, hypothesis testing, different types of models, etc. And of course we'll cover a few SAS PROCs along the way. There will be no limits in the topics. We'll keep it fresh.  SAS Bowl LXIII is scheduled for Wednesday, November 11, at 10 a.m. ET. We hope to see you there.   With all of the new technology bursting onto the landscape recently (AI, GenAI, Agentic AI, MCP, RAG, etc.), it's easy to get caught up in all the buzz. So let's take a step back and focus on some of the foundations of data analytics and talk about base statistics. Make sure to bring your thinking caps.    Game Details The SAS Support Community trivia event, SAS Bowl LXIII - Statistics is scheduled for Wednesday, November 11, at 10 AM ET. Register for the event and receive an invite to a Microsoft Teams meeting and a calendar event. On game day, join the Teams meeting and access the game here.   Below are some resources to introduce you to MCP and the SAS MCP Server that will help you prepare for the game. Statistical Procedures in SAS: The Not Scary Overview Part 6 - SAS Communities article with links to parts 1-5 Statistics 101 - YouTube intro statistics course Best Practices for Data Scientists and Analysts: Communicating Your Results - SAS Ask the Expert Webinar Model data from published summary statistics - SAS blog post   SAS Bowl and event details For those who may be new to the SAS Bowl, you can find game history and specifics in this Community memo. There you'll also find links to previous events, which include recordings.   Register for the event and receive an invite with game details and a Teams meeting link. On game day, Join the TEAMS meeting to play, and show off your SAS and worldly knowledge while competing for bragging rights and SAS Community game gear.     ... View more

What if the biggest lesson in analytics leadership is not about being “ready”, but about understanding where you are today? What if analytics leadership is not about having all the answers — but about knowing where you are on the journey? For Humphrey Brydon, Senior Lecturer and Departmental Chairperson at the University of the Western Cape, this was one of the strongest takeaways from the SAS Analytics Leadership Program.   Humphrey works in the Department of Statistics and Population Studies. He oversees academic programs with a strong industry focus, including a master’s program where students spend six months in real data environments. This makes it important for him and his team to stay close to what is happening in industry.   “We want to train our students, but we also want to keep ourselves up-skilled at the same time,” he says.   Learning for real data environments   The University of the Western Cape has worked with SAS for more than 20 years. When Humphrey heard about an analytics-focused leadership program, it immediately felt relevant.   Many leadership programs are general. But this one looks directly at analytics, AI, data maturity, business value and leadership. For Humphrey, this was important because his students need to be ready for real companies, real challenges and real decisions. They do not only need technical skills. They also need to understand the environment they will work in.   Are organizations already mature in analytics? Are they still developing? And how can young data professionals help them move forward? These are questions Humphrey now wants to bring more strongly into his teaching.   Maturity, not yes or no   One topic stood out most for him: analytics maturity. The program helped him see that analytics and AI are not black-and-white topics. It is not simply about whether an organization “has it” or “does not have it”. It is about maturity — where an organization is today and how it can develop further.   This view also fits well with the current AI discussion. Many organizations are excited about AI, but also careful. There is uncertainty about how to use the technology in the best way. For Humphrey, this makes maturity models and practical frameworks especially useful. “It is not about whether you have analytics or AI, or whether you do not have it. It is more about maturity. Where are you on that journey, and how do you develop further?”   Bringing it into teaching   Humphrey now plans to bring these ideas into his curriculum. He teaches topics such as data mining, business intelligence and optimization. In the future, he wants students to look beyond methods and models.   He wants them to ask: What is the organization’s level of maturity? What is possible in this environment? How can I use my skills to help the organization develop? This is where the value of the Analytics Leadership Program becomes very practical. It gives participants language, structure and ideas they can use directly in their own work. It also shows that analytics leadership is relevant across industries. Even as an academic leader, Humphrey found strong value in the exchange with participants from other backgrounds.   “You would think an analytics leadership program may not apply to an academic leader. But it does. It really does.”   A program for the next step   For Humphrey, the program was also a chance to take stock: of his own thinking, his department’s direction and the skills students will need in the future. This is what makes the SAS Analytics Leadership Program valuable for many organizations. It helps leaders, teams and educators understand analytics and AI in a more structured way. It can also be booked as training, including through Training Points, making it easier to invest in the people who guide data and AI transformation.   Because in the end, analytics is not limited to one industry or one role.   As Humphrey tells his students every year: “Data is in everything, everywhere, all the time. Be prepared.”     For anyone interested in analytics leadership, AI readiness and data-driven transformation, the Analytics Leadership Program page offers more background on the program and its focus areas.       ... View more

We need to get one-way frequency output for several hundred variables into a single SAS data set, so that we can compare counts and percents across different years of data. I looked at the data set produced by the OneWayFreqs ODS output option. It provides both unformatted and formatted values (e.g. columns for Sex and F_Sex), but the data set is hard to work with for a large number of tables, since it has a separate pair of columns for each tabulated variable. It then occurred to me that it might be simpler to just route the PROC FREQ output to a CSV file, and it turns out that this output is much more compact and directly usable for my purposes. However, it only contains the formatted variable values, and it would be handy if I could get both formatted and unformatted. One would think this would be possible, but after spending some time looking at the template code and PROC TEMPLATE code, I sure can't figure out how. ... View more

Error: ERROR: The SERVER= option is required for establishing a connection through the SAS/ACCESS Interface to PC Files.   code :   proc sql; connect to pcfiles(path="&path/database/SQL_DB.accdb" dbpassword=sastest); select UserID, Income format=dollar16., State from connection to pcfiles (select top 10, UserID, Income, State from customer order by Income desc); disconnect from pcfiles; quit;   I am learning sas sql 1 essential , currently at lesson 7 , there is an activity s107a01.sas . I don't know the server ! Please help . ... View more