SAS Hackathon 2024: Student Track Support

[LGroves]

Here are a few assumptions about participants in the 2024 SAS Hackathon Student-Only Tracks:

• You’re (somewhat) new to SAS
• You’re still learning SAS Viya
• You’re naturally inquisitive and looking to learn something (besides just showing off your awesome Hackin skills)

If that sounds about right, then great – we pegged you perfectly for our Student-Only Competition (and if you’re still confused about the Student Track in the 2024 SAS Hackathon, details are here).  By providing you with data and a use case in a low/no-code environment – we’re hoping that you can spend more time focused on the analyses and storytelling, rather than debugging code. Additionally these tracks don't require mentors - because the data and use cases are provided - students can start Hacking right away on September 16th.

With all that newness to SAS, you likely have a LOT to learn.  But have no fear, we are here to support you with resources!  As a starting point, please refer to the suggested Learning Resources in the Appendix in each of the use-cases.  No, seriously – if you are new to SAS – please start there before you try to start solving your use-case.  And, as a reminder, the use-cases + data can be found in GitHub repositories here:

• Option 1 | Data for Good | Climate Change + Vulnerable Populations
• Option 2 | Ethical Data Analysis | Graduate School Admission

Beyond those resources, please use the chat below to ask questions to get support from our wonderful community of SAS users.  Now they won’t always provide you with the exact answers – because it’s a learning experience after all. But… I’m hopeful that someone can point you quickly to one of our many great learning resources.  Moreover, you can support each other in this month-long Hack by responding directly to other’s questions… because there’s nothing like showing a little sportsmanship in any competition (and then crushing those other teams).

Finally, know that we’re consciously creating one Student Track Support page for the two tracks.  Why?  Because I suspect that there will be a fair amount of overlap in the initial questions on where to learn more.  And, as the questions get a bit more technical in nature, I’m hopeful that you can still learn a thing or two about the work in the other track.  Finally, you all have the same output – video submissions to your Team page – so there is likely to be some overlap in those questions too.  In other words, please help support each other in your joint quest below.  But… save some of the really good stuff for your submission 😊

Happy Hacking!

[LGroves]

Monday, September 16th is here... and we're officially Hacking! 

Best of luck to all the teams!  And please use the chat below when you get stuck!

[vietdoan]

Hi,

Regarding with the timeline provided, my team hasn't received anything from or about a Mentor yet. I was wondering if the Student Track might have a different process. Or should we just wait until a Mentor reach out to our team?

[LGroves]

Hello there @vietdoan!  Great question!

Since we provide the use case + data for the Student Only track, there are no assigned mentors.  So, please get Hacking with the resources we've provided - and put your questions is this chat.  Thank you!

[vietdoan]

How do we get access to this content here. When I use the same link, I get the following:

[LGroves]

Hmmmm.  Did you sign up for the Welcome to SAS Viya Week, @vietdoan?  If not, then registration for those materials has technically closed.  But most of that material should be available in the SAS Hackathon Enablement Portal (https://learn.sas.com/course/view.php?id=6939)...

Finally, one quick Hack is just to get the materials from a teammate that has access...

Hope that helps!

[ijha9]

Hi!

My team changed into the student track last minute. Per a previous post, I see that mentors will not be assigned. However, how can we access SAS Viya? I am being lead to various links that don't seem have a clear answer. I sent an email last week but this method may be more helpful. Let me know if you can help!

[LGroves]

Oh no!  It's hard to hack without software!  @ijha9 - students can/should use SAS Viya for Learners.  And access is here: https://www.sas.com/en_us/software/viya-for-learners.html and is just a few clicks away!

Please let me know if that helps!

[LGroves]

Two great questions came in a sidebar email.  So great, that I thought I'd share them here.  And paraphrase a bit:

Q1: I signed up for the SAS Hackathon under my personal email address.  But SAS VFL needs an academic email address.  Do I need to create a new SAS profile?

A1: Nope! 

• From www.sas.com go to Edit Profile:

• Next, in the Contact Information section, you can change your email:

• Change it.  To your academic email address 🙂

Q2: How do I collaborate directly with my teammates in VFL?

A2: Honestly? It's more complicated than we'd like. 

• Why? We actually have 28 deployments (and counting) for VFL, which spread a load of nearly 7000 students across those environments. So, unfortunately, the probability that you get on the same environment as your teammates when you are randomly assigned is - well - not good.

• Have no fear, there are still ways to share your work. And while portions of the SAS Communities article that I wrote for our VFL3.5 to VFL4 migration over the summer is now a bit old, the content for how to switch within VFL4 is still valid.  See the VFL4 to VFL4 guidance in this post: https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/Transferring-content-from-SAS-Viya-for-Learne... to help you share your work with your teammates.

[vietdoan]

Hi, I am trying to use the SAS Visual Analytic SDK. However, from the instructions, it seems that I would require administrator credentials to do this. My team was planning to create a webapp with React that display the SAS reports and make it available to public. And so, I wanted to enable 'Allow guest access' such that when we display the report on the webapp, the user won't have to logon with SAS and can see the reports. Is there any suggestions on how I could proceed with this?

[LGroves]

Yay - love to see the level of learning going on here, @vietdoan!

This is some unchartered territory the team that provides VFL to academics.  Fortunately, this team includes me... so I am more than willing to help.  So, please try this guidance that I received from a colleague:

If you already have a webserver that is hosting the React application, then you could just Export the Report with all the html visuals + data in a zip file in a SAS Report Package.  You can then import that package to the web server. This will provide you the look and feel of SAS Visual Analytics without having to sign in. 

Want more information?  Here documentation on how to Export a SAS Report Package:  https://go.documentation.sas.com/doc/en/vacdc/v_028/vareports/p0log1ce8qcj4cn15k0oby258pdb.htm?reque...

Please let me know if that works - and well done!

[vietdoan]

Hi @LGroves ,
The instructions seems to work great. Thank you for your help!

[LGroves]

Hurray!  Would love to see your external report when it's available, @vietdoan.  You can always send a link directly to my SAS email at lincoln.groves@sas.com if you don't want to share your secret sauce with the rest of your Hackathon competitors before the competition is over 🙂  

Go Team, Go!

[Ravioli]

Hi @LGroves cc: @vietdoan 

Thank you for the notes.  I wanted to ask another questions about the SAS Visual Analytics. We are trying to share our reports with each other team member so we can work on the same one. However, it seems like when we try to search for the email options, we can't find each other's email. I was wondering if this is an issue of being in different environment. Could I email you a list of our email so that we can be put in the same environment. Or is there any other ways to fix this issue?  Side note: I was able to share my report with 1 other team member, but could not search for the name of the other team members.

[Kalliroe]

Hello!

I am currently trying to generate county-level geomaps with SAS Viya, and some of the county-level fields I have is the FIPS code, LAUS codes, as well as state and county names. While it is easy to geomap data at a state level, geomapping counties is a lot harder as they are not recognised by the predefined lookup data types. Is there some workaround to this based on the fields available from the Student Track 1 data?

[LGroves]

Yay!  The questions are picking up!  I'll answer the last two together in this post, simply to keep the responses streamlined:

(1) @Ravioli - your question is about sharing VA reports in VFL.  Unfortunately, that's a little hard in VFL given how we've distributed the compute load across 27 deployment and have tried to protect the students work.  But, I do provide some guidance in my response to Q2: How do I collaborate directly with my teammates in VFL? above.

(2) @Kalliroe - I can tell from your question that you're on the right track.  Yay!  And I anticipated this question in my Monday email to all registered participants, which I'll repeat here:

• Finally, I’ll drop one helpful hint for Students in Track 1.  You won’t have administrative access in VFL.  But you can still create pretty maps by using the following setting for a Geographic Item:

• As an admin, I uploaded US County Data as a Geographic Data Provider to all of our VFL4 deployments.
• Not sure what all of those words mean?  No worries, keep learning!

Please let me know if those responses help - and keep hacking Students!

[vietdoan]

Hi @LGroves 
Following up with the response about the County Data. We've tried the same steps as shown in your image following the same settings for Geographic item, but the following error pops up:

I was unsure if this was the expected response or not.

[LGroves]

Hmmm - very odd, @vietdoan.  And definitely not expected.

Can you share the full URL of your tenant, so that I can check that particular environment?  Thank you!

[vietdoan]

@LGroves 
The URL is: https://vfl-069.engage.sas.com/SASDrive/
I'm not sure if this is the right URL or not, let me know if you require any additional information. Thank you

[LGroves]

Thanks for the feedback, @vietdoan!  It looks like there was an underlying permissions issue, which I think we just resolved on vfl-069.  My results:

So, please confirm that it now works for you and I can roll out the patch to all the other environments.  And thank you for sticking with us... this functionality is new to us in VFL... and we're learning too!

[vietdoan]

Thank you for the fix @LGroves it seems like I can use the US County Data as the data provider now. But I think there is still a couple of issues
Although, when i tried to map the exact same data as your map, it seems like only 4% is mapped.

When I select the ID Column to be 'FIPS_Original' it does map 99%

But when I try to apply to other data for the 'ID Column' it usually doesn't map or only map 2-4%' 
Following the coloured mapping previously. It seems to map the US correctly, although. It doesn't map at the correct location on the geomap report. It just shows as a small section next to Africa rather than being on the US part of the map itself.

New Notes: I think the US data was just rendered at the center of the map.

[LGroves]

Yay!  I love how much you're learning, @vietdoan - and how much progress you're making.  Excellent work!!!
 

A couple of notes: beware of the ID Column defaults... which explains why the data aren't mapping in some permutations.  Here are my settings again:

So, I'm able to map nearly everything with FIPS Code (numeric).  And, hint hint, it's worth investigating which ones aren't mapping. 

Moreover, know that there's a difference between setting the map... and then applying the variables that you want to map.  For example, when I created my maps, I stated with the Geographic Item US County Map... which lists the County + State name when I hover over it.  I drag it to the canvass with the variable that I want to plot (typically after adjusting that plot variable to  that to the canvass).  And then I add the both the variables to the canvass.  Then I make sure the Object is a Geo Region, because I think that's prettier.  Those settings for an analysis of those 25+ with no high school diploma:

Secondly... way to zoom out and explore the larger plot area!  By doing so you see an implicit decision I made for the group!  The U.S. is a LARGE country... with Alaska 3/5 the side of the Continental U.S.  So, to make your graphs a bit more digestible, I used a MAPS file from SAS which puts Alaska and Hawaii off the West Coast of the U.S..  I recommend that you roll with that setup... because it'll be a lot easier for your audience to interpret.  But happy to hear if you have another vision for your maps... because it's your project!

Again, excellent work... and great job with all you've learned thus far!

[vietdoan]

Thank you for the detailed explanation @LGroves . We will try to keep implementing it. And hopefully, I will be able to send you a link of our deployed project sometimes next week.

[LGroves]

Great news.  Go, @vietdoan, Go!!!