February 2024

[#1]

SAS knows it’s a leap year. Do you?

Dear Reader:

Happy Leap Day! Your coding processes probably account for that extra February day every four years. New to SAS or want a shortcut? Check out Chris Hemedinger’s blog post detailing a simple way (spoiler alert: the MDY function) to keep your SAS processes on point.

Signed up yet for SAS Innovate, our data and AI-focused event in Las Vegas April 16-19? Friday, March 1 is the last day to take advantage of the Early Bird rate of $695, a $100 savings over the standard rate. Scroll down to learn more about the conference – ansd an assortment of tips & tricks + more.

Beverly Brown
Editor, Tech Report

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Abundant opportunities to learn, network, get inspired and have fun await you at the ARIA in Las Vegas. As noted above, time’s running out to secure the $695 Early Bird rate. Need to know more before you commit? Got you covered:

• Check out the current agenda—you can filter by areas of interest to see the content and speakers. More sessions are being added daily. The roster of keynote speakers and presenters is also available. Prefer an “at-a-glance” view? This is that.
• You can sign up for new events preceding the Tues., April 16 Welcome Reception. For example, SAS Hackathon Bootcamps, where you’ll be part of a hack challenge that encourages collaboration with AI, analytics and open-source tools on SAS® Viya®. Or CI Connect, where you can learn to deliver extraordinary personalized customer experiences to grow your business.
• Bring your team! Group pricing is the best rate available ($250 each when you register 5 or more people). Great way to divide and conquer all the sessions.

Data viz enthusiast? Check out the Valentine’s Day Data Visualization Challenge
Showcase your creativity and your data visualization storytelling skills. Think outside the box and unleash your unique perspective on “love.” Post your creation in the image gallery and/or check “like” by your favorites.

5 reasons to use VS Code for you SAS code projects
Discover why and how SAS’ Chris Hemedinger uses VS Code daily.

How to split a large file into smaller chunks using SAS
Learn how to split a large (many gigabytes) Microsoft 365 file into smaller chunks using SAS. A blog post, a SAS Support Community article and GitHub resources point the way.

The relationship between factor analysis and regression
Get an introduction from SAS’ Marc Huber to the fundamental concepts of exploratory factor analysis with the aid of linear regression and correlation – and the baseball data set from the SASHELP library.

R Runner: get from SAS to R through a Python tunnel
Find out how R Runner, a SAS Studio Custom Step, helps you program in R from SAS Studio on SAS Viya.

2 approaches to find the largest values in wide data sets
SAS DATA Step and SAS IML offer ways to find the name of the variable that contains the maximum value for each row of data.

SAS Hackathon Boot Camp is coming to Vegas at SAS Innovate
The SAS Hackathon Boot Camp is completely free and occurs on the first day of SAS Innovate, April 16. Participants bring their own laptop. SAS provides everything else: the use case, data, a SAS Viya environment, and mentors with domain knowledge. You can sign up for the event when you register for SAS Innovate.

SAS Bowl XXXIX – SAS Innovate 2024
It's gone by many names in the past, SUGI, SAS Global Forum, SAS Explore, but this year we're dubbing our annual conference, SAS Innovate. The event is a data and AI experience for business leaders, technical users, and SAS partners. The conference is scheduled for April 16-19, in Las Vegas and will be featured in March’s SAS Bowl. Register now and join us at 10:00 a.m. ET on Wed., Mar 20.

Coming Soon: SAS® Viya® Workbench!
Join SAS’ Joe Madden at 11:00 a.m. ET on Tues., March 5 to learn more about this highly scalable, cloud development environment that allows data scientists to rapidly build high-performance models in the language they choose.

Boosting Retail & CPG Profits: Are Your Promotions Optimized?
Join SAS’ Arpit Jain at 10:00 a.m. ET on Thurs., March 14 to learn about the tools that collect, visualize and interpret data so you can boost sales and profits even while enhancing customer engagement.

How Do I Manage My SAS® Viya® Environment?
Join SAS’ Cesar Guerra at 11:00 a.m. ET on Thurs., March 21 to learn about reducing risk, ensuring compliance, gaining insights into performance tuning, and even improving collaboration and access to data across your organization.

Enhance Forecasting Accuracy With Time-Series Segmentation and Machine Learning
Join SAS’ Spiros Potamitis at 10:00 a.m. ET on Tues., March 26 to learn more about the difference between time-series and machine learning techniques for forecasting, and how to improve accuracy.